Tony is a Geek

After working my way through a course on C++ and The Unreal Engine , I noticed some really interesting overlaps between the work I've been recently doing on robots and the work I'm going to be working on next year ( Cognitive computing ). Anyway, just thought I'd link to this great book, that is also available for free to read online (downloadable pdf available, as well as a real physical book). You can use Watson to help out too......

I don't know what you were doing a couple of months ago?.... but I know what I was doing with one of those BMW i8s :-) This was my "office desk" There are times I love my job..... "The Internet of Things is transforming our relationship with the physical world. In Munich Germany, IBM is creating a new global center for collaborative innovation side-by-side with clients and partners. IBM will invest $200 million US to make Watson IoT HQ one of the most advanced facilities in the world. BMW is one of the first collocated partners and together, we will start a new pilot program to explore the role of IBM Watson in the BMW i8 hybrid car. BMW engineers & IBM experts will work together in "collaboratories" to explore Watson technologies for personalization of the driving experience. With conversational interfaces & machine learning, cars will get to know their drivers better."

Interesting, Google have announced their new Android of Things : CLICK HERE to access the PREVIEW certainly something to keep an eye on. https://developer.android.com/things/index.html If you have a Raspberry Pi 3, you can download an image and get going pretty quick.  I'll give it a look over the next few weeks.

This one? or this one? https://vapor.codes/ https://vapor.codes/ "Create modern web apps, sites, and APIs using HTTP or real-time apps using WebSockets. Nearly 100x faster than popular web frameworks using Ruby and PHP. Swift is fast by every meaning of the word. The latest cryptographic ciphers, digests, and LibreSSL's new TLS (SSL) make security easy. With middleware and Swift extensions, you can add custom functionality to Vapor that feels native. The static type system allows you to write less and do more. Vapor apps are very concise and even more powerful. With autocomplete, debugging, and breakpoints you'll spend more time creating and less time fixing. " I like the definition of "fun"......not quite how I would describe it, but, hey-ho, I'll let you decide :-)

some "light" reading for the next month or so....... should keep me busy and out of trouble....or it could get me "into" trouble  :-D

Another week, another "this will solve world peace" Linux Distro.... except, I like the look of this one: http://zorinos.com/ There is an ULTIMATE version that currently costs $15 and adds a load of things. For trial purposes, there is a CORE version , that has all the essentials, minus a few of the custom elements. If I get time this week, I'll do a USB install onto a 64Gb USB stick and see how easy it is to transition over to, or whether it is just like using a Debian / UBuntu distro with a new set of wallpapers....

PolySync Arduino-fest..... but you have to have a Kia Soul...for now: If you’re tired of waiting around to get an autonomous vehicle, PolySync’s  Open Source Car Control Project  (OSCC) development kit can be had for under $1000. Autonomous cars are still in their infancy, and can cost upwards of $100,000. If you’re willing to do some of the work yourself—and trust a machine you modified to drive you around—PolySync has an Arduino-based kit (nearly) available to help you build your own. You can pre-order a kit right now for $649, and you’ll have program each Arduino module yourself when you receive it. You’ll also need a 2014-or-later Kia Soul on which to install it, chosen for its combination of drive-by-wire controls as well as relatively low price. Keep in mind, however, the project is intended for R&D and off-road use only. The OSCC Project is built around a number of individual modules that interoperate to create a fully controllable vehicle. ...

Zigbee...Zigbee....Zigbee..... yep, I have quite a few of these in my "Arduino" stash drawer. Have you used the Zigbee in any of your IoT projects?  If so.....you might want to read on.... " Within the next few years, billions of IoT devices will densely populate our cities. In this paper we describe a new type of threat in which adjacent IoT devices will infect each other with a worm that will spread explosively over large areas in a kind of nuclear chain reaction, provided that the density of compatible IoT devices exceeds a certain critical mass. In particular, we developed and verified such an infection using the popular Philips Hue smart lamps as a platform. The worm spreads by jumping directly from one lamp to its neighbours, using only their built-in ZigBee wireless connectivity and their physical proximity. The attack can start by plugging in a single infected bulb anywhere in the city, and then catastrophically spread everywhere within minutes, enablin...

"Elementary, my dear Watson"..... A fast and Open replacement for Windows and MacOS.  Interesting. CLICK HERE to find out more.

Toys for me to work on over the next couple of months:  Raspberry Pi 3 C programming... Combine Arduino, webcam and a Sherman tank with WiFi capabilities.... and finally, insert some radio equipment and motor into this boat, so it too can be controlled over the internet, etc.... also put a load of sensors on everything to capture data and feed back to Node-Red IoT services. If you have any other/extra ideas of what I could do with these, please feel free to let me know :-)

If you are not up to much on Saturday/Sunday October 29/30th, get online and join in: " IoT With The Best second edition is a two-day online conference tailored for developers wanting to explore IoT deeper and enjoy an interactive empowering experience while connecting with peers from all over the world.  Join from wherever you may be, the world's top IoT experts to get inspired and learn from their tech talks and masterclasses.  Explore the hardware, software, data and services behind IoT. With The Best is the biggest Online Conference Series for developers. Join 100 IoT experts (CEOs, CTOs, Architects, Researchers and Devs) for exclusive tech talks, live coding and demos on sensors, smart grids, smart homes, smart cities, intelligent transportation, connected devices and wearables. Go further and benefit from 1-to-1 mentoring sessions with the speakers. " CLICK HERE

After receiving my Can-Bus Arduino shield & cable from ElecFreaks (very fast P&P!), having a little play around with some C code and then soldering the pin legs on, it was time to give it a little test run in the car.  I chose the 2016 Mercedes c200.  Why? Well, it was the nearest :-) ( I had an old DFRobot Romeo knocking around, should really be for robot programming, but it does the job ) Hmmm...... well, after a little bit of fiddling I managed to start reading some data and boy, is it chatty! Somewhere in the end of that file are the codes from the Drivers side window going up and down. Next step, isolate the ID codes and the commands and replay them back to the car.... (or just identify which ones give me some useful information) CLICK HERE to see some C Code and it working for REAL!

Some of you might know that I've been building a custom car ( for what feels like an eternity ) and I have kept it really basic with no modern technology at all.  ( Hey, I've seen some of the code you guys (and myself) write, I'm not trusting that in my £100k car! ). Here's a photo of earlier in the year, minus lots of things, working brakes being one of them, hence the custom low-loader delivery truck: Check out the ongoing journey at the website CLICK HERE So whilst I keep Lil'Merc nice and dumb, I do have an MG F, a Subaru Sambar and a shiny new Mercedes c200 company car, that has LOTS of new technology. I went through a cycle of getting various OBDII bluetooth devices for the MG F, only to find that is was built 6 months before that technology was adopted and has a MEMS unit in it, which is not compatible. Sigh.  I even did some diagnostic work with this guys Android app to try and get it to work, with no luck.  So I did what I do best.  I ...

Well, you could have done this previously ( of course ), but is is sooooooo nice to see that this has become more mainstream. If, like me, you have played around with Arduino ( for many many years! ), then you most likely were coding in C.  Then the Raspberry Pi came out and everyone was excited, yay! it was a mini-Linux 'puter that could do stuff with GPIO pins ( or not ), but a vast majority of the code you found was for Python. Begrudgingly, I did actually use some Python to control my Maplin robotic arm from a web page, which worked and the code did make sense.  But, and this is a big BUT, I don't know, maybe I'm old skool, I just didn't LIKE coding in Python.  It felt like Perl ( now who remembers that nightmare from the early 2000s!!! ), it allowed you to do a lot of stuff and you could hack stuff together, but come back in 6 months time and you were none the wiser.  Don't even think about picking up code from someone else! Anyway, I digress, through a ...

I was invited to do some work at the new IoT Watson offices in Munich : Highlight Towers After work, I was invited for a meal...I was told there was an interesting guy who was going to join the team.  Anyway, due to some error with the restaurant booking, I had the pleasure of being on a 4-person table with John Cohn for the entire evening. I'm not sure who was the geekier / nerdier.  As you can imagine, Arduino's, MQTT, Pi's, Robotics, all-the-IBM stuff and a ton of other stuff was talked about and laughed about.  It was a great evening and helped me to realise, I should stay as I am and not "become what management structures" think I should be. Continue to have fun and actually do that rare thing: ENJOY what you do.  If you do not, stop doing it, do something else.  I know I have fun & actually enjoy what I do. Look forward to some "fun" postings over the next year - rather than "an IBM sales blog" (as a good Friend recently...

Yes, you read that correctly, SpeechRecognition in your web-browser from a 2Kb JavaScript library... CLICK HERE to try out a sample web page CLICK HERE for GitHub Oh, did I mention that it can also be used by your ARDUINO! That is pretty darned awesome.... (and here's a video of some chap coding with it in AngularJS .  all very simple)

Using "Watson Conversation Speech to Text" to control a simple physical IoT device It has been a couple of months since I did anything "exciting", I just noticed this great developerWorks recipe and thought, "Hey, I've got to share that, it's pretty awesome!". So, CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ARTICLE It also contains the code to get you up & running, see section (6) at the bottom of the page.

Use IBM's Personality Insights API to analyze traits shared between two Twitter users. I don't do Twitter, so, it's of no use to me, but hey, you might find it useful? CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE OR CLICK HERE

Fancy having a quick run through of setting up IBM MobileFirst Platform Server Foundation v8 and having a working app as a starter for ten?  Then look no further. Here's a Slides.com presentation of how I made this work for me:

I am absolutely, in no way, making any implications that I have anything to do with this type of technology, but I thought this was a good article about "Tomorrows World" getting closer to today: CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE This is the sort of technology for cities, that a society that I would like to live in, could use to help them go about their day, without the risk that some neanderthal uggs decide they are going to trash/abuse and ruin it for everyone.... maybe, Japan is finally calling to me?  ;-)

So, you've setup your IBM MobileFirst Platform Server UAT/TEST/INT environment and now you want to perform some Performance Testing to see how much load your MFP Servers can take before failing?... Then you start the cycle of tuning, tweaking, enhancing and squeezing to get the best performance for your specific environment... But, what tools should you use? How should you go about doing performing this task?  Well, you could Google/Search on the interwebs and find some information that may or may not help you OR you could follow my guide below: CLICK HERE FOR AN INDEPTH WALKTHROUGH OF SETTING THIS UP YOURSELF Full credits go to Nir Grande and his original Blog post about this subject, I hope I've just enhanced the explanation for people who are applying the setup themselves.

Want to see timezones on one screen:  http://everytimezone.com/ CHECK IT OUT HERE

A few months back I started a little experimental project with a Bluemix Watson Dialog service . Whilst this was great, it lacked a UI method of manipulating the XML file that runs the service. I got my propellor hat out and set about rectifying that.  Here's what I came up with. If you want to know more about it, you know what to do...... : CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

My Oculus Rift arrived today: Pretty awesome, but I don't have a Windows PC powerful enough (or with a good enough graphics card) to use it.  shame.  Guess I'll stick to the Samsung GearVR for a while longer :-D

A really cool 6 minute video showing a potential future with Augmented Reality: CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO

A short while back I was surfing good old eBay, when I stumbled over a Minitel machine. After doing a bit of checking on wikipedia , I found out that it was an old 1980s machine that was the Internet before the Internet....but they only switched off the service in July 2012! It involved you dialing up a phone number, connecting your phone to the device and then using the keyboard and special orange function keys to navigate around. It looks to be like a Prestel / Teletext / Ceefax / CompuServe type of "internet".  Remember those days :-)  If you're from the US, then think early days AOL (before the free CDs). Anyway, I happen to have won a bid and the nice snug little device arrived at my humble abode waiting for me to do something useful with it.  First of all, I was surprised that it actually worked!  It powered on and everything!  I say, "everything"...as it just sat there with a blinking cursor and didn't really do anything at all.  Oh and ther...

Build end-to-end apps using Swift with Kitura.  Kitura is a new, modular, package-based web framework written in the Swift language. Put simply, if you write iOS apps using Swift for iPhone/iPad, then you can now write Swift code Server-side.  Personally, I think I'll stick with writing JavaScript server-side as I've been doing that since 2001 and I'm not a hipster... >CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT HOW TO SET THIS UP ON YOUR MAC< >AND RUN THROUGH A HELLO WORLD PROJECT<

Pyra pre-orders go live today: CHECK OUT THE SPECS HERE >PRE-ORDER FROM HERE<

A Raspberry Pi3....an old radio/speaker box... time to make a "portable" music player, that not only plays local music, but streams from Spotify etc..etc... and is controlled from a web-app that you control from your web-browser (running on any device you fancy) CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW TO SET THIS UP