Google+ Hangout Extension – Arduino Example

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, October 21st, 2012

Get your Arduino working with Google+ Hangouts!

I hacked this together a while ago, and now here is the tutorial for it. A lot of people have requested it, so hopefully it is of help!

Check out the video!

In order for this to work, there are four main parts. The web app, Processing sketch, Arduino, and Google+ Hangouts xml.

The web app is the core of it all. The way it works is that it uses web sockets for communicating between the browsers, and a tcp socket to communicate back to Processing.

Processing is listening to this tcp socket, and then it tells Arduino what to do.

To get it working in Google+ Hangouts, the web app is included as an iframe. If your camera is pointing at the Arduino, then everyone will be able to see it work!

I have posted the code for all of this on Github. Go check it out!

A large amount of the code was based off of the code by John Schimmel: node-session. He was really awesome on Twitter helping me get it working!

The tutorial, with all the steps listed out, is over on RoboBrrd.com. I really recommend looking at it, because it tells you where to replace the variables for your own ones.

If you decide to take the plunge and try it out, I created a long in-depth tutorial walking through the code.

I really hope that this helps people out there to get started! I would love to control some of your robots and blinky lights through Google+ Hangouts. Oh yeah, and it would be great to see them on the Robot Party!

Let me know if you have any questions along the way, and I can try and answer them! Gooooood luck!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot Party, Tutorial.

Open Hardware Summit 2012

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Join us at the Open Hardware Summit 2012! We will be giving a talk, doing a poster presentation, and also demoing RoboBrrd.

Our talk will be during the Hardware & Materials session, somewhere in between 11:30 and 1:00! It is called: Sharing the Inspiration with Robot Kits! Check out the description here. It’s only 5 minutes long, but I aim to leave people more inspired anyway!

When building a robot, transitioning from using accessible resources to designing a kit version is often times very challenging. One of the underlying motivations to tackle this challenge is the ability to share your inspiration with more people. This talk will discuss reasons to jump in and design a kit version, and how doing so will benefit the community. It is intended primarily for those who have not had the experience with designing their own kit, but can also be beneficial for experts to communicate their lessons learned as well.

Our demo is about RoboBrrd of course! Look for D7, and that will probably be us. You will be able to check out the new Seagull RoboBrrd, as well as Impy RoboBrrd, and see what some of the kit pieces will look like. For more info see here.

RoboBrrd is a robotic bird character that has an entertaining personality, and can interface with virtual learning applications. It is designed as a do-it-yourself kit, providing an introductory experience into the world of robotics engineering. This demo will showcase the intractability of the RoboBrrds, including feeding it virtual fruit, and putting different hats on RoboBrrd to change its behaviours!

Our poster is about the Robot Party. Look for P3, and it will be it. Alternatively, it may be located at the same place where our demo is. From the poster you will be able to learn about the Robot Party, and how it can inspire many robot builders. Check out more details here.

The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions. This poster will showcase screenshots and descriptions of various moments featuring makers who have created robots and shared their knowledge on the Robot Party. It will be fun and colourful to look at, capturing the spirit of many of the Robot Party hangouts!

I’m looking forward to what the badge will be for OHS this year. Will it be tasty? Blinky? Who knows! Also hoping for some really nice freebies, because I want to build more crazy robots!

Looking forward to meeting everyone at OHS and learning more about the open hardware world. If you see us there, feel free to stop by and say hello!

Posted in: Fun, Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!), Robot Party.

Special Edition Robot Party! LMRv4!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, June 15th, 2012

There is a special edition Robot Party this Saturday! We will be broadcasting the Lets Make Robots v4 fundraiser celebration! Anyone who has donated can be entered to win 5 prizes from Adafruit. The drawing will be done on air, so it will be really fun!

Here is the time that it will be broadcasted:
Saturday June 16th @
• 5AM PDT (UTC-7) (Vancouver, San Francisco)
• 8AM EDT (UTC-4) (Toronto, New York)
• 1PM PST (UTC+1) (Britain)
• 5:30PM IST (UTC+5.5) (Mumbai)
• 9PM JST (UTC+9) (Tokyo)
• 10PM EST (UTC+10) (Sydney)

Countdown:

We’re really looking forward to getting the chance to meet robot builders who haven’t been on the Robot Party before!

To join the hangout, leave a comment saying that you will want to be in the Robot Party on my G+ page. This way I can add you to my circles, and when the hangout begins you can press the ‘Join Hangout’ button. Please bring a robot to show if you are planning to join the hangout!

You can still watch the hangout stream if you don’t want to be in the hangout! The stream will be live on the Robot Party page, where you can tune in and watch it! With Google+ Hangouts on Air, the recording is automatically saved and uploaded, so if you can’t make it, you can watch the recording!

This is similar to the previous special edition LMR fundraiser Robot Party celebration, where NilsB showed us his awesome chaos bot and picked the winners!

Last night’s Robot Party was a blast, thank you to everyone who showed off their cool projects and robots!

Hope to see everyone at this special edition Robot Party!

Posted in: Robot Party.

Robot Party Rocks with Google+ Hangouts On Air!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

When Google+ opened up their ‘Hangouts on Air’ feature, the Robot Party has been running much better!

Now instead of using Ustream, we are able to use the Youtube stream to broadcast the hangout. This seems to work a lot better.

Of course, the normal issues still occur, with various internet connections it can still be a bit troublesome.

The best part is that the recordings are automatically uploaded! Here are two Robot Party recordings:

and…

We will be trying this again tomorrow, since the Robot Party is tomorrow!

If you have a robot or project that you want to discuss with everyone, then join the Robot Party hangout! It’s always a lot of fun to see where the robots are going and how they progress. You can meet lots of new friends on the Robot Party too!

Hope to see ya there everyone!

—

What is the Robot Party?

The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders from all over to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions! It is for all age ranges, young or old, just bring your robot!

Posted in: Robot Party.

Robot Party tomorrow!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

The Robot Party is tomorrow, Thursday at 8PM ET / 5PM PT! This week might be a little different than other weeks thanks to Google+ Hangouts on Air being available to everyone! This is such a super step forward, and will hopefully help greatly with bandwidth issues.

We will be broadcasting LIVE from Evil Mad Science! We may also be giving away a goodie or two, more details on that soon to come! There will be lots of robots, maybe we will put the webcam on the CNC again!

What is the Robot Party?
The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout that brings together robot builders from all over to share their robots, knowledge, and ask questions! It is for all age ranges, young or old, just bring your robot!

The Robot Party is every Thursday at 8PM ET! If you have a robot, join the hangout on Google+ HERE! Be sure to leave a comment on one of the posts so we can add you to our circles for the party.

Hope to see ya at the Robot Party!

Posted in: Robot Party.

Robot Party Extravaganza Recap!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, May 7th, 2012

The Robot Party from last week was fantastic! It was LIVE from Evil Mad Science where we showed the LetsMakeRobots v4 drawing with prizes from seeedstudio using NilsB’s robot that Andrew relayed for us! PHEW!

There were many cool robots on this Robot Party! It’s most excellent to see everyone helping everyone! Here we are holding up some robots, the Eggbot and RoboBrrd and a Medium Tank!

You can watch the recording of the Robot Party on YouTube on this playlist!

Here is part 1 of 5!

The complete list of winners is here!
http://letsmakerobots.com/node/31820

Chaot’s live drawing is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeTsyiKaJoQ

RobotFreak’s live drawing is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxVMKiFoXto

It was great to see the robots working live! Here was another robot that stopped by- DataBus from the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Challenge!

Eaglesnest Robotics was also there! They got to show off their Meggy Jr RGBs to the Evil Mad Scientists themselves! Pretty cool!

Didn’t get a chance to donate? Good news! Adafruit Industries has added 5 more prizes! So pop over to LetsMakeRobots now and donate! More info to come on when they will be drawn, and maybe more special things will happen!

LIVE ROCKS! Special thanks to Evil Mad Science for being there LIVE and their speedy internet to broadcast the Robot Party!

See everyone again on Thursday, 8PM ET / 5PM PT!
http://robotgrrl.com/robotparty

Posted in: EMSL, Fun, Robot Party.

Robot Party: LetsMakeRobots v4 Celebration, Prizes from seeedstudio, LIVE from EMSL!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

The ROBOT PARTY is tomorrow at 8PM ET / 5PM PT! This is a very special edition broadcasted LIVE from Evil Mad Science that is celebrating the fantastic website LetsMakeRobots and their recent version 4 fundraiser! If you donated to their v4 fund before May 1st, then you were entered into a drawing to win 5 fabulous prizes from seeedstudio! You can still donate to LMR anyway!

But the fun doesn’t stop there! How are we to determine who will win these prizes? With a robot of course! During the Robot Party, Chaot by NilsB will be randomly drawing the 5 lucky winners! This robot was finely crafted and is very intense in its science, so go and check it out on LMR!

There’s even more! The Robot Party will be broadcasted LIVE from Evil Mad Science! Last week we had robots on top of robots on top of robots, and this week there will be more of that! Many robots, and you can ask whatever questions about the robots that you want! Ever wanted to go on a shopbot CNC ride? You’ll be able to! Also, congrats to them for 100% more evil mad!

We hope to see you there as it is bound to be a very exciting time! There shouldn’t be as many technical difficulties as last time, as the internet is now very speedy! Since we had a special request to post the recording of the Robot Party this week, if you can’t make it you will be able to watch the recording! Bring your robots, and see YOU at the Robot Party!

Posted in: Robot Party.