Custom Alerts on a Bluetooth-enabled Bracelet
Update: This got featured on Hack a Day! Thanks, folks!
Update 2: Modified BlueZ packages are now posted at the Files link below. Likely only one is strictly necessary, but I couldn’t be bother figuring out which one it is tonight, so there ye go.
Update 3: The link to the DX Product Page was wrong. The one that was linked seems to be an enhanced version of the one I have. I’d be interested in trying it out if it’s substantially different, but it’s not in the budget.
[This is a follow-up to this article]
Well, it’s that time of year again – the time when I recover from exams by staying up far too late working on backlogged fun things. One of those things was the Bluetooth-enabled bracelet I ordered this spring, which I had been meaning to poke at a bit more. I now have it displaying (almost) arbitrary text, and have a working demo script in Python that shows the capabilities of the bracelet. I don’t feel like rewriting everything in the readme, so I’ll just link to it here. I will however mention the disclaimer that this is a nonstandard hack, completely experimental, and would probably make the Bluetooth standards body members gnash their teeth. Use at your own risk. Here’s a pretty picture!
Files: http://adrestia.creativemisconfiguration.com/files/ffejery/misc/bracelet-hack/
Hack a Day Challenge: http://hackaday.com/2009/02/17/hackit-hackable-bluetooth-bracelet/
DX Product Page: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19489
Happy Hacking!
- The Ffej
COMING, THIS CHRISTMAS…
…a non-zero amount of Blog Content! Wow! How about that?
Ahem, yes, anyhow. I’ve been crazy busy with school, and a project that I can’t talk too freely about at the moment, which is why you haven’t seen anything here for a while. Rest assured, I have been blogging in my brain, and have a bunch of backlog to share once exams are over. In recent news, I got a loaner N900 from Nokia (for the aforementioned project), and I love it. Some of the content pertains to that, and specifically to my experience programming for it. The Ffej will be back next week, with any luck.
Cheers, and Merry Christmas/Other seasonal holidays
- The Ffej
How *NOT* to Write a Multiple Choice Question
I had an exam today, in a course I won’t name. It was entirely multiple choice, and while most of the exam was normal, one question made me rather confused. This was the format of it (I forget the actual question):
A) Answer One
B) Answer Two
C) Answer Three
D) Answer Four
So far. so good. However, below that, this was written:
A) D
B) C
C) A
D) B
Wait – what?! I fail to see why redundancy was needed; it looked like the first block of potential answers had been scanned/photocopied into the main body of the exam, but that still doesn’t make much sense. But redundancy wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t for the confusion that was added. How does it make any sense to mix up the choices for the actual answer? It boggles my mind…
So yeah – don’t do this on tests.
- The Ffej
The Third Kind of Free
Everything is Free. This is the Third Kind. Buy your t-shirts here.
Great Moments in Journalism
28 August, 2009: The BBC uses the phrase “Epic Fail” in the main text of a news article. Epic Win!
15 September, 2009: The New York Times Blogs quotes Urban Dictionary. Apparently the Oxford doesn’t have a definition for “*facepalm*”.
If you’ve seen anything else like this, tell me in the comments, and I’ll add it to the list.
- The Ffej
Einstein Maemo Port – Beta Release
This is just a placeholder for now, because it’s almost 4am. Check out this thread for details: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=317795
I’ll write something real tomorrow 
Goodnight,
-The Ffej
Arch Schwag!
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned on this blag, I primarily use Arch Linux for my personal boxen, as I like its configurability, and KISS philosophy (I have a love-hate relationship with the accompanying DIY philosophy, but that’s another discussion). Because I love Arch so much, I decided to purchase some schwag to show my support, specifically, the beautiful silver pendant they have in the Schwag Store. These pendants look even better than the picture on the product page; I was really impressed with the workmanship, and the Arch logo is just cool to begin with. The lower portion of the ‘A’ has a brushed finish (I love brushed metal), and the upper portion is finished normally. When I ordered, I didn’t realize that the pendants were made on-demand, but luckily, production and shipment were quite fast.
Here’s a picture!
-The Ffej
Internet Sharing with the N810, or “How to make a $400 WLAN adapter”
I’m currently living in the top floor of a house, with the basement rented to another tenant. Being the poor student that I am at the moment, I couldn’t afford Internets for the whole summer (*gasp*), but my neighbour agreed to let me share hers. The problem was that my desktop has no wireless card, and as mentioned, I’m currently poor, so I can’t buy a USB dongle. Thanks to Macer and Luke-Jr on #maemo, I got this my N810 set up to share its wireless connection with my desktop over USB networking.
This guide assumes a Linux desktop with usbnet support available (try running modprobe usbnet as root to find out if you have the module), and an N810 with root access enabled. I’m going to also assume you have the PC Connection Manager installed on your tablet, as it makes things simpler for most people, and also quicker to configure on the fly.
- On the Desktop: as root, run
modprobe usbnet
ifconfig -a
this should list several network interfaces, and one of them should be called usb0 (or some other number, if you are already using USB networking for something else). Write down the address listed under wlan0
- On the N810: plug your Nokia USB cable into the N8×0, and into your desktop. Then run the PC Connection Manager applet from your tablet’s control panel. Click “Advanced”, then the ellipsis (…) button at the top. Click “New”, and name our profile something like “HappySharing”. (It really doesn’t matter what you call it.) Select that profile, and click “Select”. Under the Tool Manager tab, uncheck anything you don’t want. If you don’t know what it is, just uncheck it – it shouldn’t affect what we’re doing, but if you don’t know how it works, you probably don’t want it on . Under the Network Manager tab, under “USB Network”, select “Network” from the combo box. Then enter the following in the text boxes:
IP address: [same as your N810's wlan0 address, noted in the first step]
Gateway: [Whatever your router/gateway's IP address is]
Network mask: [for most people, 255.255.255.0]
Click “Save”, and then “Apply”.
- On the Desktop: as root, run
ifconfig usb0 192.168.x.y up
route add default dev usb0
Where x is the same subnet as your wireless router (usually 1 or 0 for consumer models), and y is an unused static IP address on your network (check your router settings to find out where the DHCP-assigned addresses start, and choose a number lower than that).
- On the N810: as root, run
route add -net 192.168.x.y netmask 255.255.255.255 dev usb0
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/proxy_arp
Where x and y are the same as in the previous step.
After this is done, everything should work. Try pinging something from your desktop (you’ll need to set up static DNS servers – 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 work fine, if you don’t know any others off the top of your head). Each time you unplug your N810, you’ll want to use PC Connection Manager to select the “None” profile, and every time you want this set up again, you’ll have to switch back to the profile you created, and then redo the last two steps.
I may well have forgotten some detail, or made some assumptions in writing this other than what I mentioned, so if you notice anything that doesn’t look right, or doesn’t work, please let me know in the comments.
Happy forwarding,
- The Ffej
Photo Contest Update
I received a nice e-mail today, informing me that I had won the Overall/”Best-in-Show” prize from my university’s engineering photo contest. My winning entry was the one entitled “7-SEG”. So, thanks to the judges at the ESSS!
- The Ffej
Yakuake “Air” Theme
Well, I still don’t have the MoarConky OpenBox themepack ready yet (I forgot about a minor licensing issue, which I’m taking care of – updates to come), but I’ve been working on a theme for Yakuake, KDE’s drop-down Konsole. There don’t seem to be very many good quality themes out there that are also modern in appearance; in particular, I was mildly annoyed that no one had created a theme to match the “Air” Plasma theme in the upcoming KDE 4.3 release. So, I decided to take up the task myself. After a lot of trial and error to get things looking right, I ended up with what I’m releasing as v0.9 of the themepack, which can be found here, on KDE-Look.org.
Yakuake "Air" Theme
I’m not entirely sure I’m happy with the tabbar, but it will do for now. There is one issue with it right now, which is why this release is labelled as 0.9 rather than 1.0: after adjusting the transparency of the corner images for the titlebar, only the top half of the corners would render properly, and one can click through the bottom half to windows behind. This has me rather annoyed, but I haven’t yet figured out what the problem is. :/ This theme was inspired by Plasma’s Air theme, but is my own work, and I’m releasing it under a Creative Commons CC-By-SA license, as with most of my content. Feel free to modify it to your heart’s content, but please do me the favour of posting a comment here so I can see what people are making of it. Full SVG Source files are here. If anyone knows why the corners aren’t rendering properly, please post a comment here, or on the KDE-Look.org page, and let me know.
As always, I like to hear what people think of my work… good? bad? needs improvement? Let me know!
- The Ffej
About This Blag
Here you will find updates about projects I'm working on, awesome things I think other people should hear about, random thoughts, and all manner of things related to Electronics, Software, Linux, Gadgets, etc.
