more for self notes than anything

I moved into a new apartment on August, and so far, it's been great.

One of the things that I noticed when I got the keys to the apartment was that the front-door key was labeled "do not duplicate."

I normally copied a set of keys just in case I lose them, so I checked the internet to see if the "do not duplicate" denoted a physical difficulty or a moral request. The results pointed towards the former. Search results pointed out that these keys required a special "owner card," and locksmiths needed a special copying device for these specific locks. Inconvenient.

Meanwhile, I was humoring the thought of getting my hands on a Raspberry Pi, but I couldn't really think of a reason to justify the purchase.

Well, the two thoughts crossed ways, and the conclusion of "I should program something to open my front door" was made.

How?

There's an intercom system in the apartment, and I supposed that having something press the door open button would be something.

And the click on the check out button was made.

That was about 2 weeks ago.The Raspberry Pi is now here, and I have already started messing around with it.

After working on it a bit, doing research on implementation and "learning" Python whenever it is needed, I thought that recording my progress would be a good and organized way to look back on it.

This is that record, and I'll try to write as much information as I can.

Couple of posts would be a recap of my progress to date, and future posts will be more of an update.

Comments

duty cycle testing

Now that I saw a physical response, I should try to make it similar to how a servo should be controlled. Servos are actuators that receive (expect) position input (as opposed to motors, which receive speed/intensity input). Simply put, it registers input as pulses, decoding the ratio of high (a "on" signal) to low in a given period as a position value. A better explanation : http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-8-using-a-servo-motor/servo-motors As I am waiting for my servo to be shipped, I will continue to work with the LED light. As opposed to my previous setup of having the light turn on every time the request is given, I will have the light turn on and off in a regular pattern until a request is given, upon which the pattern will change for one "cycle" (on-and-off pair). The on-and-off logic (previously the LED control logic) will be run in a separate thread: def dCycle(*args): global dCVal ...

dabbling with android

I've been wanting to dabble with Android development recently, and yesterday I realized that there is a Socket.IO client API available for Java/Android. The API is pretty straightforward, so I loaded a test Android project I had made for going through Android basics and connected to the OpenSesame Node server. and it works! I mean, the interface is non-existent and it's really just bare-bones, but having the servo respond through an Android application was pretty refreshing. (the web client and the android client "communicating" with each other--messaging is pretty much for debugging purposes)

playing with servos

some servos that I had ordered were delivered. the instructions suggested another brand/model of servos, but these were a much more economical (cheap). I tried adding them to the hand: I'll have to print the "pulley" pieces that will be attached to the servos. meanwhile, I did somewhat (hackily) got the wrist to work, for now: you keep hearing the "usb plugged out" sound in the background, and that's because the servo was being powered by the arduino. the servo's power draw appears to be causing a shutdown of the device. will need a better power source for the servos. it feels like these pieces that are supposed to be plugged into the servo will have size issues.

the quest for robots

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