Monthly Archives: August 2011

Kristi Lehr 8.04.11

Today has been a very good day.  I have managed to create the framework webpages for the Visibility 2 documentation/training.  I feel so inspired and excited!

Lots of information overload from the Dreamweaver Adobe TV classroom tutorials… but I am loving it more and more and its all finally starting to “click” for me!

Tom De Vito 8.4.2011

Start: 11:30

  • Got the first simulation for the audio-tactile feedback system to work.
  • The pressure sensors seem to respond very well and with some tweaking it can feel natural.  Pressure on the sensor makes the simulated number go down, touching the pad with very light pressure holds it at whatever position you are at, and releasing makes the number go up again.  It will be interesting to see how it works with more fingers.
  • The sound module is extremely slow and there is no really good way to loop the track.  Longer samples will help reduce this issue.
  • Tried both the 1W exciters and the bass shaker.  The bass shaker is a bit bulky which makes it not ideal for having multiple fingers.  It still might be cool to have this in the base of the next prototype to give you a thump when you make initial contact with a object.  The 1 W exciters put out a good amount of vibration with less sound.  The form factor of these will allow us to have more of them per finger and on the palm to give better feedback of which parts are touching.  I have not tried the 30W exciter yet.  It is also bulky but may be good for the center of the palm.
  • Phil came up with a new idea to use the PC to produce the more realistic sounds like servo motors or collisions with object of different materials.  This would allow us to use whatever sound we like without having to worry about the vibrational properties of the tone.  It also allows for feedback of motion in free space without activating tactile vibrations that should only be used for touch.
  • There are a few glitches that need to be worked out plus I took a couple of shortcuts to make testing easier.  Currently everything is in one sketch because it was quicker to smooth out the problems then if it was split into the appropriate classes.  It is also running autonomously at the moment with no computer interaction.  I will have to fix this to make scaling to a multi-finger prototype easier.

end: 7:30

Mike 8.3.2011

  • Went over the prototype project structure with Phil, decided to change from hierarchical to flat
  • Restructured the build, fixed a few errors, set up eclipse files, and checked it in, waiting to try it out on Phil’s machine

Phil 8.3.11

8:00 –  1:00 VISIBILITY

  • Going over Mike’s m2 project setup
  • Played around with getting m2Eclipse to create a workable Flex project. A couple of things worth noting:
    • When looking for an archetype to create a flex prokect, make sure that the “Show the last version of Archetype Only” is *not* checked. It it is, then only the org.sonotype.flexmojos do not contain working options. For my test flex application I used flexmojos-archetypes-application 4.0-beta-3
    • You need to right-click on the project and use the Change/Select project type selection to set
    • Open the “problems” tab and use “quick fix” to resolve “ignore” pom files. Note that you have to selec *the already selected* options in the dialogs.
    • Rebuild the project and create new HTML wrappers, and everything should work
  • Left early to do a real-life towers of Hanoi problem with my car, a bicycle, the repair shop and home

Mike 8.2.2011

  • Completed the prototype build structure of a multimodule flex web app
  • Created a set of instructions for setting up a workspace and checking out / building, ran through it once with a fresh eclipse
  • Fixed a memory issue with the Hudson server
  • put the new webdesk build on Hudson

Dong Shin 08.02.11

  • PPM Changes
    • change length of Description in Funding Request and remove maxLength validation
    • ALTER TABLE `funding_requests` CHANGE `description` `description` TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NULL DEFAULT NULL
    • fixed Obligation/Outlay showing where it shouldn’t – no data in funding request, but in Direct Cites
    • database change – DBUpdateSQLs08022011.sql
  • make table editable in Database Table Management
    • ALTER TABLE <table_name> COMMENT = “editable”;
  • uploaded latest PPM and database update to /exchange/080211

Tom DeVito 7.29.2011

  • I found its very important to insulate the high-powered amplifier from the 1W amplifier using capacitors.  If not the lower powered amp overheats
  • Switched the resistor for the amp control signal back to 2 1k resistors in Parallel and reverted the signal values to their original.  I was having a lot of weird issues but this seemed to fix it.
  • The sound still seems to be wavering a bit but this may be the sample.
  • Amplifier is now working correctly.  Mute is not needed because the volume gets low enough.  A jump is required from “mute” to first audiable.
  • In trying to find a way to auto loop a track, with the least interruptions possible, I found that the best way will probably be to use the busy line on the somo and send a replay track command whenever it stops.  I didn’t experiment with this yet.

Phil 8.1.11

7:30 – 4:30VISIBILITY

  • Finished getting all the projects into Hudson
  • Installed new hudson (2.1.0)
  • Adding Email-ext plugin – done.
  • Had some odd problems with Hudson (blank screen) that required bouncing the server.
  • Tried to deploy WebDesk – it required a version of flash player that wasn’t installed.
  • Went over some bugs with Trish
  • No progress on opening the port