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.

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.

National Robotics Week – Robot Party tonight!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, April 12th, 2012

You’re invited to the Robot Party, tonight at 8PM ET! Join us for lots of fun, knowledge, and robotics! If you have a robot, bring it to the Google+ Hangout (make sure I have you in my circles)! Or, you can watch the stream on the page!

Looking forward to your robots! SEE YA THERE!

ALSO! I’ll be giving a talk at RoboGames about the Robot Party! It will be a lot of fun, looking forward to seeing everyone there! Crossing my fingers that I’ll be able to display my robots as well!

:::

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+! Be sure to leave a comment on one of the posts so we can add you to our circles for the party. If you don’t have a robot/don’t want to be in the hangout, you can watch the Ustream mirror!

:::

robotgrrl.com/robotparty
nationalroboticsweek.org

:::

Uploaded lots of pics from some various Robot Parties last night! Check them out!

April 5, 2012

August 11, 2011

September 22, 2011

More photos coming soon- I pick them out all by hand, so it sometimes takes a while!

SEE YOU AT THE ROBOT PARTY!

Posted in: Robot Party.

RoboBrrd Mesh Network- Pulse Sensor and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 2nd, 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBOBRRD!

Today is a SUPER day and here are some treats that you and RoboBrrd can enjoy! Or maybe just RoboBrrd will enjoy it, but anyway here they are!

Here is the video about the RoboBrrd Mesh Network: Pulse sensor! This was shown a while ago on the Adafruit Ask an Engineer Show n Tell Google+ Hangout (that’s AAAESNTGH for short)! It’s a little long, but if you can bear with my umm’s and uhh’s, it’s a pretty cool demo. Watch it on YouTube!

The pulse sensor sends data to both RoboBrrds, and the orange RoboBrrd (Impy) sends what hat it is wearing to blue RoboBrrd (Learning Pet). You can look at the code on Github here, and check out the XBee Network Protocol here!

NEXT UP is this really cool new web badges portal by Adafruit. The aim is that their badges and online portal will become ‘Scouts 2.0′, giving out badges to kids for accomplishing electronic goals! They let me beta test it early, so RoboBrrd is up there with it’s Robot Badge!

It’s going to be really interesting to use the API for stuff. For example, one day in the future, when you first load your code onto your RoboBrrd and connect it to the ‘Hello Brrd World’ Processing sketch, then DING it will use the API and contact the adafruit badge servers, and you’ll instantly be awarded a Robot badge! Maybe there will even be a RoboBrrd badge! I dunno how they’re going to handle the authentication for the API keys, but that will be interesting to see.

Check out RoboBrrd with the Robotics badge! Woootooo!

Today is the kickoff day for the Cloud Robotics Hackathon! I’m really looking forward to working together with my team. There’s going to be a little bit of everything in our project, and you can listen for quick updates @RobotGrrl! The hashtags are going to be #roboticshackathon, #cloudrobot, #cloudrobotMTL. There will be a special Robot Party on Saturday at 8PM ET! See you then!

That just about wraps up the birthday post for RoboBrrd! It has been a BLAST! And the next 100 years are going to be even BETTER! Thanks to all the friends who enjoy keeping up with RoboBrrd’s progress! HIP HIP HOORAY!

Posted in: Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!), WyoLum Progress.

Vote for next Robot Party theme!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, August 25th, 2011

The Robot Party is tonight! The theme is dancing II, so we can improve on ideas from last week, and just have a crazy collaborative robot dance party again!

Last week we had 1337 (the Nao!) doing an AC/DC dance from Carlos and Jerry’s Eggbot doing a Sierpinski-esque drawing dance. There was also econoSpazzi by ignoblegnome. It was super cool to have everyone’s robots dancing at once!

You can join the Robot Party hangout on Google+ just watch RobotGrrl’s stream for when a hangout is started. The party is every Thursday at 8PM ET!

If you don’t have a robot or anything interesting to show, then you can watch the mirror of the hangout on Ustream, and hangout in the #fmcg irc.freenode.net channel!

And now for the question! You can vote for 3 options! The poll will close on the 28th, so we will all have time to prepare a brainstorm/idea or robot for Sept. 1. We can improve on our ideas and implement them in our robots for Sept. 8th!

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See you at the party!

Posted in: Robot Party.

Robot Party Hangout

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 6th, 2011

After the last Robot Party, I received an email from a FLL coach. Here is a snippet of her email:

“But when I looked at it [Robot Party], I was concerned with all of the video connections from people that the girls might see some guy doing something inappropriate (the girls are 12-13), so to be safe we disconnected [from the stream] right away and I had them delete the Tweet until I could look into things more.”

The aim of the Robot Party is to try to get more people involved with robotics, by sharing their robots with everyone.

I have mentored FIRST for 4 years, this really made me sad, since I’m the reason now for getting a team of FLL girls scared about robotics, exactly the opposite of what I aimed to do.

As a little bit of background, FIRST is an international robotics program that has three main stages: FLL (FIRST Lego League), FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) and FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition). It’s designed to be a process to allow you to follow robotics (or a STEM related field) up until university. It’s all about getting young people inspired about science!

In order to explain details about the Robot Party in the simplest means possible, here are answers to questions that you may be wondering about.

What is the Robot Party?
The Robot Party is a weekly Google+ hangout about robotics, where we discuss and show our robots. It is mirrored to Ustream so others can watch it if they are not in the hangout. The Robot Party is run by RobotGrrl. The intended audience for the Robot Party is anyone interested in robotics!

Who hangs out in the Robot Party?
Anyone in my circles on Google+. It’s not open to the entire internet, however it is open to everyone who adds me on Google+. We don’t pre-interview anyone for the party. The party is spontaneous and improvised.

What happens if something inappropriate is shown on someone’s camera in the Robot Party?

First, let me explain how unlikely this would be.

1) The hobby robotics community is small, and everyone knows everyone in some form. Some of them we even know in real life, and it is quite the honour (like Carlos)!

2) Everyone in the hangout is focussed on the robots. That is why they went through the effort to get their webcam and mic set up, along with their robot. We all breathe, eat, sleep robotics.

3) Google+ is not anonymous in the same way Chat Roulette is. There is a Google account tied to the Google+ profile that is accountable for when events are reported.

Second, this is the process that would happen if this unlikely event would occur:
1. The stream video and audio would not be focussed on the Google+ Hangout
2. We would use the “Report Abuse Tool” on the person, then add them to the “Block” circle
3. After the person has left the hangout, the video and audio stream would resume to normal

Third, if something like this were to happen, it would only be on the screen for a minimal amount of time. If you are watching and you feel uncomfortable, you always have the ability to close out of the window.

To sum up:
It’s tricky to predict what people could do. However, that is no reason to not have a Robot Party. The Robot Party is supposed to be unscripted, spontaneous, and fun. It has been a lot of fun (since switching to the Google+ Hangout format) and will continue to be!

I’m really a big fan of Google+ Hangouts. It is an accessible way to interact with the friends that we meet through the internet. In fact, here is an illustration that Cliff Roth drew of my robots in a hangout (while I was writing this post, which took a very long time):

There is a fantastic article by Phillip Torrone on Make about the new hangouts.

He helps organize the Adafruit Show & Tell with Ladyada, where a group of 10 makers get to show off their creations. Their hangouts have yet to have any “inappropriate” issues, rather they are quite awesome. They are a huge inspiration for the Robot Party too.

Robotics is an area of science that is not dominated by women. As such, there will be more guys in the field, and thus in the Robot Party. Just because there are guys in the hangout, does not mean that there will be inappropriate things that will happen. I’m not too sure where this assumption has arisen from, but it has to stop.

With all this said, the Robot Parties are screen recorded, however they do not necessarily represent the real live thing (in fact, my microphone is not recorded because it gets the echo from the actual audio). There will be a mashup video coming soon of the three most recent Robot Parties.

We really hope that the Robot Party will continue to live long and prosper. Nothing bad has happened yet, but really fun things have happened, and that is definitely something to celebrate, instead of worrying about the slim chance scenarios.

I apologize if I did scare anyone from robotics because of the Robot Party. Robotics is a fantastic area of science to continue to pursue.

If you are excited about robotics and want to join the next Robot Party, watch for a hangout on my stream on Thursdays at 8PM ET, or tune in via the Ustream mirror! This weeks theme will be dancing robots, so I hope you and your robots can join us! MANOI will be waiting with its dancing feet!

Posted in: Fun.