John Fleming Can Go To Hell

You know, I was going to leave this well enough alone. A quick Facebook post and done. But then I did some math.

For those that don’t know, John Fleming is a republican representative from Louisiana. He was on MSNBC this morning complaining about potential tax increases for the rich. You can watch that if you’d like.

Here’s the thing. He complained that after taxes and feeding his family, he only had $400,000 to live on. Oh boo-hoo. The average American earns what… an eighth of that. But beyond that, he noted his company earns $6.3 million a year and has 500 employees. Everything else out of the equation, if you do just the straight math of $6.3 million divided by 500 employees, that’d imply that those 500 employees earned an average of less than $13,000 a year.

So, I suppose it’s possible those 500 employees simply work very few hours. It’s also possible Mr. Fleming doesn’t know the actual numbers. Or, he lied. None of these actually garner much sympathy. The man doesn’t want to pay taxes. And he’s in a position to ensure he doesn’t.

Some Changes

Neglect is probably the best word for this blog. It was intended as a spot for, well – for lack of a better way to put it – political rants. Let’s face it, there’s lots to rant about in that arena. However, it quickly diverged into a free-for-all that included game reviews and various projects.

I’ve decided to correct that. This place will still be about my thoughts on current events, and hopefully better updated. That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on other topics. I’ve just decided to post them elsewhere – Typing With Bricks, a blog I’ve set up elsewhere. It’s a new account I’ve set up with Pair.com with a bit more room to experiment. One of my goals is to improve my web design and programming skills. There, I have plenty of access to the tools I need for that. As an aside, this site is hosted at Pair, as well, just with fewer tools, less storage and far fewer databases.

Overall, I hope this helps me focus on each area better. This, in turn, will help me keep these blogs up to date. I should have taken the hint a long time ago when most hits to this blog were searching for game reviews!

I suck at blogs and projects

It’s true. I do. It’s been almost a year since my last update. Oh, and that Arduino project? Yeah, haven’t worked on it since that last post, either.

This summer was crazy hectic. My kiddos were up to visit and we had a blast. My sister didn’t get to run the Mount Marathon in Seward, be went and watched it anyway. It was great, and we tried out a bunch of local foods. Nothin’ much better than halibut right out of the ocean. However, combine that trip with a hellish work schedule, and well, things didn’t go quite as planned this summer.

My trip up the Dalton highway got put off another year, so I didn’t work much on the GPS/Photo project. That’s gonna change this winter (wait… didn’t I say that LAST winter?). I left off that project pretty much where you saw it. I did hook everything up, and it didn’t work, so I need to go back and check my soldering. Dear god, my horrible soldering.

I’ve also been considering a few other Arduino based projects. One I’d like to start is a system for monitoring the parameters of a 40 gallon aquarium I recently set up. I’d like to monitor temperature, PH and nitrite/nitrate. Not an all-encompassing set, but figured it’d get me a start in programming three things I’ve never worked with: sensors, LCD panels and wireless communication. I’d like the project to pull data from the sensors every half hour, display the data on the LCD panel and then send the data to my desktop computer to be logged.

Finding an easy to interface temperature sensor is easy. But haven’t had much luck on the other two, yet. Of course, I’d like to finish the GPS/Photo project first, anyway.

urbanravenphoto.com up and running

Ok, so I’ve been neglecting my blog again. But I promise it was for a good cause. :)

I’ve posted a few times about my photography business. Before it was all focused on stock photography, and the various outlets I sell those images on. Well, now I’ve branched out a bit and have created an online store for my more artistic endeavors.

Urban Raven Photo has been designed using SmugMug as the back-end for sales. I have to give them a big thumbs up for their ability to customize their interface. You can go with their various templates, or you can get more in-depth and create your own styles and layouts. It’s actually kinda fun to see what you can do.

Aside from that, it looks like you can take a picture and sell boatloads of different products, from framed prints to mouse pads. I know I’m sounding like some crappy salesman, but I’m actually pretty impressed with how easy they made it to set up.

Right now, I don’t have a lot of images up. I need to go through my photos and choose the best to put up there. After several years of focusing primarily on stock imagery, it’s nice to have an outlet for my more creative endeavors.

On the stock front, I’ve updated my stock site to better match the newer looking interface of the SmugMug based site. I’m not overly pleased with the results. I need to make it much easier to find images, or at least the site that their sold on. However, since this on my personal site, that will mean a lot of updating of the database I built to contain that info. I neglected that for far too long, so it’s going to take a while to get it up to date.

One of my “resolutions” for this year is to get my photography business in better order. As the various business models for stock imagery continue to ebb and flow, I need to take better advantage of the resources that are available. I’ve been slacking lately, and that can only mean bad things for a business.

Anyway, would love to hear any comments on the various layouts of the updated sites.

SQUEEE

I have it on good authority that SQUEEEEE is the sound of pure internet joy. I take it that you must also bring your hands up near your chest and wiggle them around while saying it.

Today I received my distinctive red box from SparkFun that signified that my order was here. This makes me a happy, happy camper. Again, I’ve gotta give SparkFun kudos for their quick shipping.

So, to repeat myself (’cause I’m not a great blogger who updates stuff daily…), the project is to create a device for my motorcycle that integrates a GPS, with display, and a camera. The idea is to take pictures either at a set time or distance interval. The original idea was to use a cheap-o off the shelf digital camera. However, my camera died. Instead of buying a new digital camera, I decided to purchase a camera “break-out” board that integrated a small camera sensor and lens. That cut the cost to less than half what I’d expect to pay for a new full digital camera.

The project is based on the Arduino platform, and follows the ideas presented by the JARV.org geotagger project. Well, it didn’t start that way, but why reinvent the wheel AND the car…

Anyway, on to what I received from SparkFun today.

Arduino Evolution
The smallest item in that photograph is the Arduino Pro Mini. I’m working on the project right now using the largest one on the left, the Arduino Duemilanove. However, ultimately I’ll be moving it to the Mini. This will save me some space. Given the limited space of my motorcycle’s handlebar, all space is at a premium. The width of the project is now dictated by the width of my GPS, which is slimmer than the Duemilanove. It’s not a big space savings, but I’ll take all I can get.

Mini Camera
I was absolutely amazed at the size of this camera. As a friend pointed out, I shouldn’t be so in awe, given the size of cameras in cell phones these days, but I can’t help it. It’s so freakin’ cute and small. John from JARV.org did suggest I stick with an off the shelf digital camera, noting this is pretty much hobby-grade. I tend to agree. While this is a nifty piece of kit, you focus it by screwing in and out a small lens. That lens, as is, is mighty loose. For what it is, the lens is pretty decent quality. I just don’t trust it to maintain focus on bumpy, unpaved roads. If I do use it, I’ll have to find some – non-destructive – way of holding focus.

MicroSD breakout
This is the microSD card breakout board from SparkFun. I know I’m repeating myself again, but how small storage has become makes me giddy. Two gigs on a chip the size of my thumbnail? Awesome! Makes me wonder where we’ll be in another few years. Anyway, this will store the images after the GPS data has been inserted into the IPTC headers of the image.

Everything!
And this is everything, together. Just about everything I’ll need for the project is right here. All that’s missing are the connections from piece to piece.

To follow the path of what’s happening – The GPS provides a visual at all times, even when not in use by this project. Currently powered by a pair of AA batteries, but possibly by motorcycle battery later. The GPS is attached to a signal conversion board taking its RS232 signal and converting it to TTL and sending it to the Arduino.

The Arduino, in turn, is connected to both the camera and the microSD card. At specific times (or distances) the Arduino will be programmed to activated the camera, take an image, grab the GPS data and inject specific fields into the image data. That image data, then, will be stored to the microSD card. Everything then goes back in to waiting mode until that predetermined time or distance occurs again. Loop until done or until the microSD card is full (or stuff that currently run on batteries drains them…)

Right now, as shown in the picture, the Arduino is powered off a polymer lithium ion battery. I’d rather power everything from the motorcycle, which should have 6 volts to supply. I’ll tackle that later (motorcycle is currently frozen up at -20F outside my apartment. :( ).

So, now that everything is here, I can start getting this all put together and programmed! Yay!

Wheeeeee

Back up and running. Never had that much trouble updating WordPress before. I suspect I missed some basic instruction. What was most odd was that all of the administrative functions worked just fine, but there was absolutely no display from the user side. Strangeness, indeed.

Anyway, it appears to be working again. If anyone notices anything weird, don’t hesitate to let me know.

To Boldly Go Where Others Have Gone Before

As Greg pointed out in a comment to my last post someone has worked on a project similar to mine. I have to say, their solutions are much more elegant than my own. So, in the spirit of design, I’m gonna totally steal a bunch of their ideas. :) The use of a dedicated camera breakout board will simplify my project tremendously. I’ve postponed working on that part of the project for two reasons. One – my camera died and I hadn’t bought a new one yet. Two – I really had no idea how I was going to accomplish turning on the camera, focusing and then taking a picture. I had a kludgey idea of using servos, but that was overly complex. Another idea was to find a bluetooth enabled camera, but that would likely be spendy.

The JPEG Color Camera breakout board from SparkFun eliminates this problem. The only downside is that the images will be of a lower resolution than an “off the shelf” digital camera. For this project, that’s a compromise I’m willing to make. And the fun of these breakout boards is that should a better camera come along, it should be relatively easy to replace.

There are two other aspects of the JARV.org project I’m going to utilize. First, since size is a concern in my project, I’m going to switch to the Arduino Pro Mini, a smaller version of the microcontroller that I’ve been using. Additionally, I’ll be switching from the SD card format to the microSD format using this microSD breakout board, also from SparkFun. I still get a kick out of how small data storage has physically become in the past decade. That you can fit several gigs worth of data on something no bigger than my fingernail is amazing to me.

Since I still want the display from my eTrex Garmin, I will be retaining its use, so the work I’ve done so far is still valid. I’ll still need the conversion circuit, but I can get rid of the bulky GPS datalogger shield I’ve been trying to get to work. Let’s face it, with essential tremor anything I have to solder is suspect. I’m happy I got the conversion circuit working, but I still can’t figure out where I failed on the datalogger. Everything I’ve ordered now has been prebuilt. No more relying on my crappy soldering.

One other aspect of the JARV project really sold me on their design. The JARV project injects the GPS data directly into the EXIF data of the images. I was going to simply tie images with a text file that corresponded to each image. I expect roughly 600 images from my trip up the Dalton Highway this summer. That’s a lot of images to cross-reference with GPS data. If the data is already tied to the images in the EXIF data, a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of time will be saved.

Placed the parts order yesterday. Oddly, it seems every time I order something from SparkFun, I do it right at a holiday. Despite that, they’ve always done a really good job getting things here quickly, doubly impressive since it seems like it takes forever for anyone else to send stuff to Alaska.

I want to thank Greg for pointing me towards the JARV project and John at JARV for paving an easy to follow path.

Delving in to new territory

RS232 to TTY
Pictured here is a circuit I was working with last winter, trying to convert the RS232 signal from the Garmin eTrex GPS to the TTL signal understood by the Arduino. I made two of those damn boards and neither worked. After intensely looking them over today, I found one that was salvageable. All that needed to be done was correct a couple of the solder points. And voila, it now works. That means I am now farther along then I managed to get last time. I’m now in new territory.

Sample dataRight now, all that the Arduino is programmed to do is take the data from the GPS and parse it out into a human readable form. An example is shown here. Basically, it breaks the data down in to its individual parts and sends them to the serial reader of the Arduino IDE. I’ll eventually want to send that data as a text file to an SD card to store for later use. The previously mentioned GPS data logger shield will do that work. I never completed its construction last winter, so I’ll need to finish that up before I can continue with that section of the project.

The other part of the project is the camera. I still need to pick up a new cheap-o digital camera. There are plenty that fit the bill. I’m considering the Nikon Coolpix L20. It’s small and can generally be found for under $100. Samsung also has a couple of cheap cameras. Why cheap? Cause I’m likely to break the damn thing trying to get this project to work. Cheap equals easy to replace.

Some other things that need to be figured out, aside from triggering the camera shutter, include:

  • Where and how to mount the control box on the motorcycle
  • Where and how to mount the camera on the motorcycle
  • Weather proofing everything
  • Batteries – specifically, battery life and recharging
  • Shock resistance – this is, after all, the Dalton Highway we’re talking about
  • Integrating the GPS data files in to the digital images