Is it time for mbed yet.!?

Despite last week only being a four day week its been quite exhausting mentally. And even now into and though the weekend I have felt quite warn down. Is it the warm weather we are having? Have I been extra busy and can I go have a lay down on my mbed now.!?

I’ve been busy putting out some extra blogs again this week first starting with a review of the National Electronics Week at the NEC which was good for me as the show allowed me to meet lots of people I normally only get to talk to via email or Twitter.

Then on Wednesday the whole Internet exploded with 555 contest stuff again, OK little over the top, but you get what I mean. Wednesday night we saw Chris Gammell and Jeri Ellsworth announce live the results. I have like all the people involved been very impressed with all the entries and personally feel I could not have matched them. However I did release a blog I’ve had for a while about looking at the 555 Timer and seeing if it could be matched with a microcontroller.

The other news I have is that my son Matthew (13yrs old) who has been playing around with electronics for awhile now has started experimenting with an mbed. He has used the processing language for some time now but been a little limited by it, played with the arduino but I think has fallen for the mbed. His first blog - yes he is blogging too! - is over on DesignSpark and talks about his first project. He is now working on getting the USB and Ethernet stack working so he can make it into a small web server as well as display stuff on an LCD. If only I’d had this stuff as a kid!

I’ve also spent some time looking at blogging and getting me updates out to you all. Blogging is about doing what you enjoy and talking about it but I enjoy the feedback and networking. So after watching a video about using twitter and social media I’m changing how I announce my blogs. I’ll now be using HootSuite to send out a tweet at around noon in Europe and than again at around noon for the USA. This is not about getting more followers - its about giving people the chance to see my blog. As I have stated before the world has lots of time zones and tweets get lost over night. So this way I’m just getting tweets out when your awake to see them.

So the last thing I’m up to apart from trying to get my project pages sorted (maybe I should start!) is to put together a 555 robot line follower which I have now sort of promised Erin I would do - I love a challenge and love robots so will work on this over next week or two.

Stay safe, Paul :o)

Summary of Week | National Electroincs Week | Gadget Show Live

So the last week has been another really busy one with two shows, a seminar, blogs and testing video blogs for Resonance Weekly.

So like most weeks I started by putting together my blog for EngineerBlogs and this week was about how I felt FPGA engineers were being pushed into using the numeric library and not considering std_logic_arth. Not that I was supporting either but was surprised I did not get a single comment especially after the feedback I’d got on DesignSpark from my original blogs. Maybe I was just explaining it too well and everyone agreed with me.!?

A big chunk of the week was taken up with the National Electronics Week (#NEW) and The Gadget Show Live (#GSL2011). NEW was very towards surface-mount and PCB manufacturing which was OK if into that - I’m not. But had a good time meetings and talking to both the RS Components (DesignSpark) and Farnell (element14) teams. I’ve now got to write this up over this week and will post on DesignSpark this coming week. Promise!

The GLS2011 show is live visiting a massive PC World, Currys, Maplin store all in one. All the big Gadget names are their like SCAN, Cisco with Flip Camera (oddly!), NVIDIA and tons more. Again I will get a full blog by the end of the week with some pictures too! I also bumped into the presenters of LadyGeekTV which as yet I’ve not talked about, but I tell you more in a upcoming blog about the great work they are doing.

So you would think that was a enough for most weeks but no because on Wednesday at ebmpapst we had a Seminar. OK I was not presenting but spending a morning on your feet again was very draining but good to meet visitors and customers.

So to my two major Geeky things this week. First off if you get the eTech magazine (issue 6) then you will see that I have an article in it. This time round eTech is all about communications and I’ve done a bit on how you can communicate with modern hi-tech fans and gets lots of information and control out of them - long gone are the days of just switching them on and watching them go full speed.

I have also worked on the Resonance Weekly pilots as last weeks one have really bad audio and people were saying it was hard to understand. So I used a voice over and created an animated host that looks like me. This would have gone out at beginning of the week however it took ages to imports the audio as my files were too big. However I think its quite good this time. What do you think?

So apart from getting all these blogs done I don’t have a lot more to do, but think that's enough for now. Stay safe and tweet you all later.

Busy days and lots of blogs

When you get started with blogs you are often told that you should keep regular blogs and stick to your content. However my blog posts are far from regular unless you count the ones on EngineerBlogs. So why is this and what Am I doing about it. Well I have this and more to say...

I’ve not had much time to write blogs to be honest. The blogs I do for DesignSpark are encouraged by my company ebm-papst UK as they help to keep our profile up. This is good for us all as I get time to blog, DesignSpark get content and you guys get engineering blogs that's not full of marketing buff. However I've been busy training our technical and sales staff, have project to work on so blog time has fell back. But May will change, Training will be done and I’ll be back blogging on there. Also not to forget all my reviews of kits and product will appear on there too so look out for them too!

My blogs on here and how I use this site will also be changing soon too. I want this site to be about me as a hobby electronics engineer. I want to share all the odd projects I’m working on as well as talk about the details of stuff I’ve done for past employees (Stepping round the IP). I need to sort out where to keep my project pages as blogger is not designed for that.

The other thing that has taken host here for now is Resonance Weekly and its Pilot shows. For now this is their home while I develop how it moves forward. Issues like last weeks audio will get addressed and I’ve got a new Pilot due very soon and hopefully this will get some better feedback.

So what can we expect in next few weeks while I try and get all this sorted. Well next week in the UK its the National Electronics Week (NEW) at the NEC Birmingham. All the big guys will be there; DesignSpark / RS Components, element14 / Farnell and ARM just to name a few. I’ve got my ticket so will be going myself on the 12th. I’ll be taking pictures and maybe some video so look out over the next week as it will all be posted on DesignSpark who I’ll be stealing stuff off their stand! ;o)

Also next week is The Gadget Show Live which is a massive event here in UK for gadget lovers and its attended by a massive crowd. If you have not heard of it then check it out, and next week, yes I’ll be blogging about it on DesignSpark too as I have a pass to the show!

So till then - stay safe people!

GoAnimate hits YouTube | Video

So news on YouTube this week is that they have added animation tools that allows you to create your own videos without ever picking up your camcorder. The site offers three animation packages; Xtranormal, Stupeflix and GoAnimate. So having done a bit of video editing and have a keen interest in making films I gave it a look.

Each package offer very different looks and feels and my personal favourite is GoAnimate. You get pre-designed sets, people and props to use that are all real easy to use. Special effects like cuts, pan and zoom work real well and additional effects are very good too (but don't over do using them when making a film!).

This first video I put together though YouTube to just play with the idea and see how it works. As you can see you can use a special text-to-speech tool so you don't even have to record your own voice. Its a little clunky and flat but plays quite well.



After making this video I found that while trying to make a second I could not add any more text-to-speech. I was told I could purchase more but that was a coming soon feature. So I guessed the tool is limited by how many effects you can add or that this new feature on YouTube is limited somehow. I've not been able to find out what these limits are however, as there is no details on YouTube or GoAnimate about limits / usage which is poor!

So I joined the GoAnimate site and made a second video over there. Again features appear to be limited. As you use special features these use up credits. You can get more credits form completing tasks and getting views - I think. Again I have found the details of what you can do limited and hidden from my searches. There is lots of info on going pro and paying to get 'GoBucks' that pay for this stuff but I can't tell you how much a single text-to-speech credit will use up so could not work out how much credit I would need for a video. Oh and you are limited to 2 minutes which means your making shorts, not videos.

Personnel I feel GoAnimate should have a nice page explaining what charges get applied when stuff is used, and how many hits gets you credits back. If people want to use it long term then details need to be clear - or maybe I'm just thinking like an engineer too much?

So why should you and why was I interested in animation? Well there are a number of great shows out on the web right now including; Videos by Jeri Ellsworth, EEVBlog and Jeremy Blum as well as news channels like 'Hay' etc. But these are all quite hard work to put together. Editing is going to be needed and with animation you can avoid all the filming, lighting and sound stuff and get straight to it.

I've been asked by a few people if I was considering doing a show also - well I have no intention of appearing on screen and do not have the audio kit to record good audio with. So when GoAnimation came in front of me - well I'm tempted. But my content is free and so if the time I spend on them so investing in a service like GoAnimate is not for me when its going to hit my pocket. Hopefully GoAnimate will make charges visible and then maybe... Well who knows...

Anyway this is the second video that is hosted on GoAnimate (Free-?):

GoAnimate.com: monpjc screen test two | show idea by monpjc

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Free Stuff : DesignSpark and element14

So over the last year I have been blogging and tweeting about electronics mainly on DesignSpark but will be doing more on element14 as well as my normal blogs on here and over on EngineerBlogs.

During this time I've collected the odd bit of free stuff from both DesignSpark and element14 so here is what I have.

As added bit of fun hopefully elemant14 and DesignSpark will reTweet the link for this blog and at the end of the week we can see who brings in most hits for me! ;o)

Full List includes:
Pens from both
Bags from both
T-Shirts from element14
Shirt and polo top from DesignSpark
Mug from DesignSpark (Tea not included!)
Sports Bottle from element14
Fold-away frisbee and pouch from DesignSpark
Ice Scraper from element14
Credit Card USB and standard USB pen drive from DesignSpark both 2GB
standard USB pen Drive from element14 1GB

Blog Hits = X^-2 | Trends in Traffic

Over last few months I have noticed a patern to hits on my blogs. not only on my site here but on other sites also. Below is the typical graph I get for one blog post after it has been posted.



What looks to happen is after posting it either though RSS feeds, email updates or following a tweet about the new content every hits the page on the first days or so. This graph as the title of the blog suggests is a mathematical formula X^-2.

What is interesting is when you apply this to a site that posts new content everyday but none at the weekend - you get peek traffic on Wednesday due to the overlapping trends as shown below.



These graphs assume that each blog is of equal interest and the same amount of people come back each time. We know however content will differ in interest and that Fridays have a drop off more than shown here - why? Well there could be lots of reasons but you will find that traffic shape is more 'bell' shaped. I could also suggest that if you post on a site that has lots of other bloggers, then Wednesday could be your best day to post. But don't tell everyone as they will all do the same.

I'd like to hear if you have seen the same trends or have reasons for the drop off on a Friday.

Which Blog to Write Next | Result | 555 v Microcontroller

So a few days back I was wondering which blog to write next. Wanting to keep my public happy I gave the twitter poll site TwtPoll a try. The sites very good as it allows you to select different type os question formats, post your question on twitter and monitor the results.

So my question was "Which of the following, from its title, would you like me to blog about next?". This got sent out on twitter and considering I have around 200 followers I got back 28 votes. OK not a massive amount but that more than 10% which I was pleased with.

So in all I found the site helpfully at running the poll however... As shown below your given the option to display the result in your own blog page - no matter what I ajust it spills out all over the page.! :o( I'll be contacting them about this.!

As you can see I now have to go off and write about blog to see if a 555 is better than a microcontroller at being a 555 timer! The other blogs will all get written in time but now I know what will be popular with my audience so thanks for voting!