AR Drone #BarCopter Day 4

Its working! The video above is a basic functionality test of the BarCopter in action. Due to some frustrating firewall issues I couldn't show this running on my phone but the end goal will be for this to be a webapp on your device that will work once you connect to local WiFi.

There is still problems with the software hardware I'm dealing with. The hardware on the drone isn't communicating all the time to the software on my server. It works sometime but not all times... this could be because of various crashes I've had ^^;. The drone still favors one direction and during take off and hover it, leans that way throwing off predetermined routes.  I still need more surgical tubing to get the volume necessary to carry 1 oz and a way to load and unload the liquid. 

There will be more updates soon

AR.Drone Project Day 3 - PC controler

Time is that non linear progression of wibbly wobbly stuff that IMO there is not enough of when it comes to my projects.  Since my last post most of my time has been devoted to a client project ( that I can not wait to tell you folks about ), but now that is coming to an end I have a little time to get back in to R&D mode for the drone project.

As I've been training with the flight controls of the drone, to find its limitations some of my classmates/teachers have come up with a pet name for the drone. The drone has become affectionately known as Betty, loosely based off the Ram Jam song because the damn thing goes wild... from time to time.

About two weeks ago I attended a talk/workshop hosted by HTML 5 Toronto on how to make a AR.Drone controlled by JavaScript. It was a really cool talk and the system that Joshua Kelly and Tasveer Singh developed works, however the system is really designed to control the craft, albeit from the web browser. The goal of my system is for a user to say what drink they want and say what table they are at, the drone will "simply" fly to them.

Today my focus has been on finding ways to make scripted flights and I have made some major head way there. I have right now two possible solutions to make this happen:

The first comes from the AR Drone developer guide its self. In the handy PDF it has tutorials for Linux command script, I haven't coded in that environment in a while so I'm hesitant purely because there isn't much time left. However from the look of  creating a predetermined flight should not be difficult. 

My second option is a windows based one. The lovely folks at LBPC Labs created a program to simply control a AR.Drone from a windows computer. Beauty part about this service is that you can make custom Python scripts that the program will respond to. I don't know Python yet but from the look of the example code it looks pretty simple... compared to Bash. 

 I'm leaning towards the second option because the built in drone functions with the program seam simpler to work with then figuring out how I'm going to make a Linux box without using a virtual box. My interaction design looks a little like this.

For those who cant read my writing (which if you can, I have an award for you), this reads:  

User - Webapp

Writes to

que.xml

Is read by

PythonScript - which repeats every 30 seconds

Sends commands to drone, drone executes script, waits for user input, the returns to base.

This is getting really interesting but given that i have less then 30 days in this program there are so many other projects that need my attention. I expect the next time post about this i'll have some cool video for you to check out.

AR.Drone Project Day 2 - Flight Tests

Today sadly I do not have a lot of coding time to dedicate to this project (dealing with few other cool apps I will update you on in a few weeks), however I did want to do a more prolonged test flight today and start putting the battery threw its paces. 

Indoors the stabilization is really wonky at times... often it stabilizes its self vertically on to a wall... could be that I haven't read the instructions / warnings but I get the feeling that this isn't meant for close quarters, which is problematic if I want to debut this at the portfolio night

Further more In the video above I wanted to test out the control types in the video, I want this thing to fly by its self threw programming however the fine tuning of that will have to become something of an art. Moving forward for even half a second to long could mean a rotor to the eye instead of a tasty beverage.

Low Altitude flights are also wonky, especially under 30 - 50 cm. Again its something to do with the auto stabilization one side sometimes cant generate enough lift so the other motors compensate and send it flying. Battery life is also something to be left wanting for, after a full night's charge I only had about 25 mins of flight time. 

AR.Drone Project Day 1

ITS HERE!!!

Thank you to my friend, Jessica Keating, for getting me this really great deal on the drone. 

Pictured above is my new Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 aka an unmanned air vehicle. This thing is pretty sweet, appart from it being a helicopter its has 2 "HD" cameras that face directly forward and downwards and the way you control it is threw a really niffty app on Android device ( it does come on iOS too!)   

The great thing about what Parrot has done is release an open SDK for developers to work with, IMO great forward thinking on their part. So my idea is to make this thing in to a kind of airborne waiter, a system that would receive an order from a work station or a mobile device and then fly automatically to that location and drop off its payload of a drink.

Now I came up with this idea before I had actually flown the device and as the rest of my class here will say, my first flight was not the greatest. These are some of the logistical problems that i face with the device.

• Rotor Wash - The blow back of air from the propellers  isn't intense but it will make light weight objects fly away (could be a problem for carrying liquids)
• Weight Restrictions - While the thrust that is able to be output from the Drone is quite impressive I don't know if it could handle taking off with a pint of ... water on its back.
• Autopilot - The way I'm hoping to implement this is using a JavaScript library I found online, and will also be hearing about tomorrow thanks to HTML 5 Toronto! The problem here is because of the two above issues its going to take a while to figure out how to make it fly a static path let alone a dynamic one.

This is something I want to have as my big portfolio piece for my programs showcase night in 4 weeks time its just going to take a lot of time. 

Space Game (A Flash game Live Blog)

Get the code!

Buy the game!

So here is the deal i have to make an android application in the next 24 hours idk how im going to do it but its going to happen so yeah.

Here is what im going to build. This is a space game where the user starts a new game makes a new ship and then flies about the universe avoiding enemy ships and asteroids. Points are awarded for how far you get in the "overworld" and when you hit an enemy ship or rock then you go to a mini game...

I kinda want to make this like temple run so that if you screw up then you just die but alas I need to make this unique!.

Alright to be honest its been a long time since I really used flash (AS3 in general(aka like 2 months)) so I'm finding this to be a little ridiculous to be tripping up on little things. My other problem in code right now is that I opened this application as an AIR for Android app and every time i go to test it does not open up the swf properly. So right now im coding blind with out the ability to test. fun times.

...I miss PHP....

Alright I'm at a bit of a point right now. I'm trying to get this all done in flash pro but i do have the option of using FLEX, which is a lot easier for the little things but i have no idea how to do the fun logic bits for. I think i can use both and import the gameplay from flash pro and just do the UI in FLEX... it will take some testing.

this works fine in FLEX and only took like 5 mins to make

Lunch time - on today's menu RIBS!!!!! so pumped about this they were on special at our student union pub, heres the description from their FB page

"St. Louis style Pork Ribs braised in Rolling Rock and Mesquite BBQ with Mayfair Slaw and Fries..... $10"

For the same cost of subway Sheridan Student Union had this to offer

2:31 pm ---

Alright some progress has happened since lunch. I'v been fooling around in flash builder to see if i can get stuff working. I can but its difficult because im not well versed in that way of coding. 

I stopped coding the UI and nav elements and started to work on the meat/potatoes of the game ( the actual space part) within Flash pro. I have added an infinitely scrolling background and the player on to the screen. 

The controls for the player will be click on the ship to run engines (to move) then tilt the device to turn and avoid stuff in your way.

3:58 - DEVICE TESTING!!!!

Alright im pretty pumped, just got the AIR version of the app running on my Note 2. I had to do a bit of research to find out how to import the accelerometer, but it was easy enough (adobe has some good videos). 

Anyway about the test. This was really to check out how the accelerometer worked, which it did pretty nicely. I need to make some walls for the Player Ship so it doesn't run off the screen. Also I'm not sure if its the app or my phone size but when the background refreshes a small part of the white canvas is visible. I need to fix that but i need to find out what end the problem is at.

Also for anyone following this and want to see my code I'm going to put it up on paste bin, if you can help with any of the problems please give me a shout!

http://pastebin.com/zrZPjJFN

Photo time!

7:20 -

Alright so I guess the law of diminishing returns is a real thing. For the past few hours i have been working on adding to this app and not making much head way. Since my last update I have been focused on adding enemy ships. Good news is they are getting on to the stage... albeit one at a time...and they just sit there... and they currently break the app.

Regardless the major victory today was getting this thing on to my phone and getting the accelerometer working. I'm going to get on my bus and get some sleep... I will continue on this tomorrow!
 

Dawn of a new day -

Alright so I'm rested, I have my green tee and my HTML 5 tee shirt on I am ready to code some actionscript! I've been in the lab since 7 am working on the enemy problem from last night. I went to Timmies with fellow developer and class mate Andrew Lawrence, among the small talk about the day the subject of our applications came up. I showed off my app to him and it brought out a major flaw in my control scheme.  

The user needs to keep their thumb on the ship to keep the game moving , this wasn't going to be my final way of controlling the forward motion of the ship but holding down a button was apart of the original plan. This means the user is sort of blinded to the enemies that can hit it from above. So after trying a couple of diffrent ways to implement a new control scheme; new button areas, tilting the phone forward,  The answer was given to me in an off hand comment from a fellow classmate, Dave Reidstra - a Swipe!

So after a few lines of code added and chunks of code removed this is how my controls act now:

User swipes up to start the engines (move forward),

Once engines are on, user can tilt left or right to move the ship toward the respective side

User can stop the ship by swiping down.

Other bit of awesome news. A friend of mine, Noah Shantz, is in the ilistration program here at Sheridan College. Since my drawning skills rival that of a caveman I asked him if he would help develop some of the art for the game. Last night I received an email will 3 ships for the game and as you will see in the next screen shot, they are pretty sweet :D.

Give Noah some love by checking out his site http://octopusillustration.prosite.com/111822/home

Dawn of another day.... more like afternoon

Alright things have been a little slower going then I firs thought how ever progress is being made. Enemy ship art has been added and a scoring system have been added just to make it more "game-y" for now. The problem I'm working on now ( and was last night too) is to make multiple enemies on to the screen. The previous enemy spawner has been streamlined in to something that I thought would make it easier to add more enemies to screen, it doesn't work tho. The thing is its less lines of code then what was in there so it gets to stay. 

Because of time I should probably move on from this point but its really bugging my that i cant figure this out. What I am thinking about doing is just making another enemy spawner for the hell of it and see what that will do, I still need to add in asteroids then make the mini games for both the turn based battle and the asteroid one.  Anyway more screen shots of doom deploying  

CES Want List Day 1

Things I want from CES 2013

The TetherCell - an bluetooth AA battery

Samsung's "curved OLED TV"

4-Hour Chef Contest

Hey everyone, so I have entered a contest to make a trailer for a new book coming out soon called The 4 Hour Chef. The book is an awesome knowledge base to help you learn everything you want to know through cooking, kinda sweet eh? 

The book is written by top selling author Tim Ferriss, some of his past books include 4 hour work week and 4 hour body ( I think you might be seeing the trend now :P). His past books help people gain efficiency  through elimination, ie 80/20 principle, and lead more productive healthier lives.

Since the book is about learning new things I did my visual part all in flash animation (something i have always wanted to learn). Its a bit rough in parts i know but I tried my best.  For the contest I just need to get a bunch of views on the above video. What I could win is for some cash(awesome) and some face time with the author(much more awesome), The opertunity to talk with this author would be really cool and if you all could help me make that happen there will be high fives in your future from me.

You can pick the 4 hour chef up on amazon or if you live in the GTA I have seen it in book stores around 

Games I'd Be To Scared To Play On Oculus Rift

By now if you haven't heard of the Oculus Rift you have then either been on living under a rock fro the past few weeks or your still playing all of your steam summer sale games. The Rift is a great step forward in gaming technology as well as being a throwback to some terms we haven't hear of since the 80's & 90's.  VR or Virtual Reality was the buzz word of my childhood with the virtual boy from Nintendo and 3D becoming a big thing on video game consoles, then 1999 rolled around and the idea of having some kinda head gear that felt we were in the game kinda died. Now the Oculus kickstarter has well over a million dollars the probability of having HD VR head mounts is starting to become a reality. 

Now that gaming has taking this next step to becoming a star trek holodeck, a kind of scary realization came over me... I am going to be terrified to play some games. So I have made a list of a few of the games i think will be scary as all hell to play on the Rift. Thanks to @48volts for help with this list!

1.  Amnesia: Dark Decent 

This game is scary enough with a darkened room and a good set of head phones, in fact there have been times where I have jumped watching a video of a video of this game (true story). Now imagine that you have to actually physicality turn your head in order to see if the monster is behind you or not, I think that will add another level of fear to this already scary game. Side note I'd also say Slender is another made-to-make-you-wee-yourself game I'd be terrified to play.

2.Resident Evil

None of this over the shoulder, wishy washy action thriller game play we've been been getting with the games like RE: 4, 5, and 6. The original resident evil was truly a game of survival horror,  with visuals that made you cringe and sound design that makes great use of complete silence, this game on its own is scary enough. If there was an eloquent way to make it in to a first person game this will make many grown men reach new high pitches of screams.  

3.Tom Clancy: Splinter Cell

Okay now hear me out on this one, stealth action as almost always been done in 3rd person allowing players to see around walls and keep a general eye on an entire area. Lets say Sam Fisher loses his ability to see himself, not only will the difficulty ramp up but the thrill of keeping of in the shadows and the fear of being found out would be pushed over the edge.

4. Alien Vs Predator 

This muliplayer free for all game would be crazy to play in VR.  If your the Aliens that sort of nervousness of tracking and stalking your pray,  the Predators being like the Sam Fishers of this universe and then god help you if your the humans. This game could come back as one of the first horror multi player games.  

5. Half Life 2

We Don't Go To Ravenholm.... enough said.

Bonus Katamari Damacy

I'm sorry but the scariest thing, even beyond Slender & Amnesia, if it somehow gets on to the rift Katamari Damacy. Just think of The King Of The Cosmos coming up right in your face yelling  at you to roll up everything i sight... and then taking that ball o stuff making it in to a star AND THEN singing that damned theme song....... That's the stuff nightmares are made of.

PRESTO App Design

Last March for a class I started designing a mobile application for the PRESTO card, a NFC transit pass here in Ontario. The PRESTO system is innovative in that its used for a number of different transit systems, its frustrating though how behind the times it is because of how hard it is to fill up and find information on what transit routes it works on. 

The biggest usability issues found were in order to get in to PRESTO to fill up your card users have to enter in a long card number that would be near impossible to memorize. Once you got in to the site you have to jump through a view pages to enter your credit card number in order to top up your card, then it takes up to 24 hours for the payment to show up on your card. The only way to check your balance (while not at a PRESTO kiosk) is to log in to this website that is not mobile friendly.

In addition to all the PRESTO back end stuff the other side to this app was to build a more user friendly transit app. In a survey given to the public two features that the public wanted the most were: GPS tracking of buses and trains, as well as a cross transit system trip planner. 

Now to fix all of the above problems this was a possible solution:

- Custom username/password

- Persistent up to date PRESTO card value 

- Map with GPS location data of selected transit route (on front page)

- Easy in app payment

- Cross transit system trip planner build in to app

This lead to the following progression of wire frames: 

I'd like to thank everyone who filled out a survey all those months back as well as, Richard Paul & Alwin for with helping with the survey and some of the design work, as well as my teacher Andrew Smyk. 

A New Leaf!

Looks like a new webpage design was in the cards today! Welcome to the new and updated Best Website In The World aka my (Brian Best) personal blog. Here I post different thoughts or ideas, along with photos videos and a whole lot of other stuff. The goal of this website is to help you learn a little more about me for both social (i.e "hey I just met this Brian dude I wonder what he's all about?") or for professional reasons ( i.e "hey this Brian dude just applied for a job I wonder what he's all about?").

So anyway here's a little blurb on who and what I am

WHAT AM I?

Tech Geek:

Firstly I am a Technology Media Savvy guy. I obsess with knowing all about the latest iPhone rumors, I have dreams about Google Glasses. I like to know everything there is to know on the latest trends on: computers, the Internet, social media and tons more. 

Radio DJ:

For almost 4 years I worked as a DJ at INDI 101.5 FM (CIOI) on a number of different shows, namely: Red wings hockey, Friday night live to air from This Ain't Hollywood, Insomnia, and my longest runing show Role Models. While I'm no longer on the air due to moving away from the studio I still maintain a love for the profession.

Online Host:

Since leaving Hamilton I have started up a podcast with a friend, and fellow geek, Adam Gatan. Downloadable Opinions is a weekly podcast  all about video game news, for about 45 mins each week Adam and I sit back and talk about whats happening in the video game world. Its a really fun time and you can check out an episode here. 

Event Planer: 

For the past year I have worked for the Milton Downtown Business Improvement Area or Milton DBIA for short. My job was to be an assistant to the executive director to help out in any tasks they needed. The roll had me doing every kind of job you could think but most memorable was working on planing events. In the past few years I have helped plan events for over 50,000 attendees,  and had a great time doing it!    

Photographer:

While not being my most active hobby I really enjoy going out and taking pictures. Some of my work is available here on the website, Some of the work you will see feature some of my friends like Jessica Phillips, Crystal, and Holly. Photography is a hobby that's better when shared with friends, and having them be apart of the work is just awesome. 

TL;DR: My name is Brian Best I do a number of tech/media related things if you ever need someone of my talents then please contact me because I am available for hire.. for now! Here is a photo of some cute puppies for you to enjoy.