Sunspots

I've finally mastered getting the sunspots to talk, but the electical side went off the wall

Final and working configuration. 

1. Stick wires directly in the board. 

2. Need gnd, +3volt and D1 ( we are making a divider ) 

Need to check out Maplins - what would they suggest for putting in the board to keep stuck in.

Grant Application progress

Had a meeting with M over the mini grant application I'm putting in. Looks like the original application budget is missing - but I'm moving so slowly likely to be out of date. 

Darrell didn't sign on the dotted line over the application looks like he wants to talk about that. When I went to check the time it looks like I didn't get into his diary so I'm in again. 

I've still got a lot of stages to go through before I can get the application into the grant body! 

Sun spots

The sunspot people came and gave a talk today. I managed to get a loan of 2 +base station. Very nice they have ZigBee + battery so all the communication is sorted out for you (neat). I'm going to build one to do the floor sensing job. I had a meeting with Yvonne about visualising both choice of route (walking/lift) AND had the measurement of building buzz.

Paul is going to sit and draw some tracks through the ground space. 

Odd thought of the morning.

Listerning to the radio news about political approach to handeling the kinds of database problems by junior members of staff. What would happen if you built a tangible interface to a database - columns represented by cards. Place the cards down to make queries. 

Possible to handle privacy issues automatically? 

More hard ware

I've been talking to paul about which hardware to get for the floorstickies project (digit-stickies). Looks like we will get one very powerful projector for the floor and two more for tables (including on LED one). 

Also the Arduino's are turning up with the Xbee transmitters by the end of the month. 

I've left the mac mini running in the floor collecting sound but I have problems remotely connecting to it. Need to sort out a longer cable for the vibration sensor. 

Results from the first Pilot study

1. flat power supply so can close box. 
   
2. longer vibration sensor cabel.
3. add temp./light sensor ( fans come on when its hot) 
4. wireless mouse/keyboard good. 
5. enable ethernet point and run everything remotely. 

Generally went quite well but I'm not sure about the vibration  (stair case) data. Need to enegage this fully on Monday.  

We now have about 2 hours worth of data. 

some progress

I've managed to get the sensor stuff working on the mac mini - the sound + vibration recording. 

Friday morning I'm going to take the stuff upstairs and try recording for a while. The big problem is how to share the data - How to get stuff from the wireless ouguest net to the intra net where I would store my database... 

frustration + joy.

I've been trying a number of ways to get the ambient buzz visualisation system working. I've been beset by set backs - I asked to get hold of an dead lap top as an active sensor but was told to ask for a lone pool machine. The down side is you can't loan them out for a month only a few days. The machine I did loan (PC) as fairly useless - it took hours to get going and then I have prfound problems trying to log on then the internet seemed not to work at all. 

I switched to the mac -mini. Not the best solution as I will have to get the machine out from under the stairs when we have a visit planned next week. I've been having huge problems with the mini- ages to log on( I think its using wireless) and the keyboard stopped working ( batteries died and not more in the lab). Next the mouse (PC mouse) started to behave funny. So I've stolen Paul's he is not into day. But after rebooting and trying to atach ethernet I'm not getting very far. 

I'm currently aiming to put the mac mini + monitor in under the floor ( with security cable) to monitor noise  + vibration on the stairs and while that is in I'm going to get the pressure sensor working with the Arduino which I want to calibrate (along with the other sensors). Ideally I want to contact the mini over the network to check on how it is going (note enable remote access). 

ON the good news front - we have got the money to build the floor stickies stuff.