Tony is a Geek

Ever wanted to build a robot?  Of course you have!  You could just " buy " one pre-done and job done, but where's the fun in that? I was thinking..... robot interest flared at the end of the 90s and early 2000s but like the mobile industry it took a bit of a nosedive afterwards, just like the mobile industry.  The technology has now moved on leaps and bounds, what would be involved in building a robot that you could just bolt together and write a little bit of C code for? Back in the day( late 80's ), I got a GCSE in electronics, it interested me, but it was too low level.  I learnt the colour coding of resistors, making PCB boards, etc... but I'm a developer, not an engineer.  I don't " make " widgets, I " use " widgets to get a job done.  It took a few years for me to realise that. Keeping that in mind, now that the Arduino has matured and the Arduino Shields have come on a long way, these have now become " widgets " tha...

Google....good old Google have decided that the phone is not enough being just a phone.  It needs to evolve. Let me introduce you to PROJECT TANGO : " Project Tango brings Motion Tracking, Depth Perception, and Area Learning to mobile devices. Thousands of developers are building experiences that do things like finding your way around, measuring your world, and walking through stories. Show everyone what you can do with Project Tango by getting a Tablet Development Kit, creating an application, and uploading it to the Play Store. We believe this journey is one worth following." Well, I "was" building myself an Arduino based robot this week that could basically do all these things shown in the nice diagram above.... I'm now wondering if I should bother?  or should I just get myself a DEV KIT and use all the cool new tools/toys from Google instead? Nah, I think I'll continue building the robot side of things myself....and wait for...

After blowing the dust off the Arduino 'robots' that have been sitting on a spare desk in the "home office" for the past couple of years, I decided to see how much things have changed in the land of the new buzzword: Internet-Of-Things (IoT). I just ordered 9-10 items from DFRobot (how did it reach £200!?!), but, as they are in China, it's going to take a little while to receive the parts.  One of the items I ordered was the TEL0047 WiFi Shield for £50. In my impatience, I set about seeing what else was available.  I discovered the CC3000 WiFi Breakout board for about £30 , it looked promising. Then I found the Sparkfun ESP8266 WiFi Shield at Pimoroni.com for £15 including P&P.  [BUY] button pressed.  Arrived the next day. Then the fun began.......... [ CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT HOW TO SETUP AND USE THIS WONDERFULLY CHEAP WIFI SHIELD ]. If you don't have something hooked up to the internet soon, I'll be very surprised!

Augmented Reality and Pokemon Go.... just moved up to a whole new level! Pokemon Go for Android & iPhone Told you 2016 was going to be the game changing year :-)