Hotkeys for Arduino!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Developed another ‘for Arduino’ Mac App! This one lets you use custom global hotkeys to control your Arduino. Let me tell ya, it is SUPER useful! You can learn more about Hotkeys for Arduino here!

As I was making it, I realized how easy it is to just be able to control actions on your Arduino. So I had RoboBrrd reacting to different shortcuts, so it could easily open/close its beak and flap its wings.

Since this app is more ‘action based’ rather than ‘pin based’, I find it more open ended to be used in different projects!

Here’s a quick video of the app:

I really really really enjoyed making this app. It made me realize how cool Matatino is. Really, I spent 4 hours on getting the hotkeys working, then I drop in Matatino and POOF it works! How cool is that?!

It’s on sale right now for $0.99 on the Mac App Store! The small amount of money goes towards RoboBrrd and funding more development.

…have you ever wondered what ‘funding more development’ really means? I have, and I’m pretty sure the universal commonality between this is buying more junk food to keep us programmers happy. It probably changes from dev to dev though

Posted in: apps4arduino.

apps4arduino – Meters for Arduino on iOS, Introducing Wijourno!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Meters for Arduino is now available for iOS! You can get it on the App Store here:
http://itunes.com/apps/metersforarduino

It communicates with Meters for Arduino on Mac, which just had a 1.1 update. You can get it on the Mac App Store here:
http://itunes.com/mac/metersforarduino

Meters for Arduino on iOS works with the magic of Wijourno. Wijourno lets you communicate with your iOS devices and your Mac.

It’s a lot of fun, since you can send messages to specific devices, or broadcast a message to all devices. I’m imagining things where (for robots) you could have the iPad displaying lots of diagnostics and such, the iPhone would be the controller, and the Mac would be the data logger and connection to the internet!

Check out the apps4arduino site for more information, including some details on how you can use Wijourno in your own Apps. Can’t wait to see what people are going to make with this!

Posted in: apps4arduino, Programming, Projects.

Apps4Arduino – SALE and INTRODUCING Buttons for Arduino!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

=== SALE and INTRODUCTION! ===

Introducing Buttons for Arduino!

Interact with your Arduino in a quick, native and intuitive way using Buttons for Arduino!

=== Features ===

✔ Turn on and off your Arduino outputs with ease using the circle buttons
✔ Finely adjust the PWM outputs using the rotary sliders
✔ Customize button colours
✔ Full-screen mode (supported on 10.7+)
✔ No coding necessary
✔ API available

=== Works great for ===

:: Mood lighting – Have some LEDs connected to your Arduino for backlighting your computer desk, or similar? Easily control which LEDs are on and off to create a mixture of colours to suit your mood

:: Quick testing – Experiment with different outputs and combinations for your project, without touching a single line of code

:: Teaching students – Focus on the outputs and circuits without distractions. Demonstrate what happens when an output is on/off, and when the PWM changes from low to high

:: Live demos – Effectively communicate your project’s output ideas and concepts with others

:: And more! – Arduino projects are only limited by your imagination! Create the next best project, and use Buttons for Arduino to control it

To use Buttons for Arduino with your Arduino, install the ButtonsApp library from Buttons For Arduino’s support website and upload the included example sketch to your Arduino.

That’s it! Sit back, relax, and press some buttons!

Meters for Arduino and Buttons for Arduino are on SALE for $0.99 for a limited time! Celebrating the Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire NY!

Get them on the Mac App Store here:
http://itunes.com/mac/buttonsforarduino
http://itunes.com/mac/metersforarduino

Also available as a tweetware option:
http://robotgrrl.com/apps4arduino/meters.php
http://robotgrrl.com/apps4arduino/buttons.php

Buttons for Arduino and Meters for Arduino are open source under the BSD 3-Clause License! Fork their repositories here:
https://github.com/RobotGrrl/Buttons-For-Arduino
https://github.com/RobotGrrl/Meters-For-Arduino

ENJOY!

Posted in: apps4arduino.

Apps4Arduino

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, August 15th, 2011

This past week I have been working on a project that I’m really excited to unveil to everyone It’s called Apps4Arduino, and its purpose is to showcase the software that we are making for cool hardware projects, and to help others get started with their own software adventures for their hardware projects.

We created Matatino, which is a Cocoa framework for Mac that provides a straight-forward way to communicate with your Arduino through its serial connection.

To demonstrate Matatino is Meters for Arduino, which is old VU meters for your analog inputs on Arduino. Here’s a video of Meters for Arduino in action:

The code for Matatino and Meters for Arduino is released open source under the BSD 3-Clause license. You can find out more details on their pages.

As for the name “Matatino”… It took an insane amount tries to get the license and naming right for this framework, that we had to just take it one step at a time. Basically a Hakuna Matata chillout (because apparently these two words will solve all your problems!). So, Mac + Hakuna Matata + Arduino = Matatino!

Go and visit the website to learn more about Apps4Arduino- really excited to see what people will make with it!

Posted in: apps4arduino.

Stwutter Available!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Stwutter is now on the Mac App Store! BUY IT NOOOW!

Stwutter, the Mac App that does Twitter + voice is now available on the Mac App Store!

Here’s a short teaser video too:

You can also view it on YouTube.

There’s more information available on the Stwutter website, robotgrrl.com/stwutter.

If you don’t have a Mac to download Stwutter, tell your friends that do have a Mac! Spread the word!

Posted in: Mac, Projects.

Stwutter Introduction

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, April 18th, 2011

Here’s a video of a Mac Application that I have been working on. It is Twitter + speech. The tweets speak to you, and you can speak back at the tweets. I’ll post an update when Stwutter is available for everyone! In the meantime, enjoy the video:

Or you can view it on YouTube.

Posted in: Mac, Projects.

Yelling Robot – Titanic with Wings?

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, January 28th, 2011

Yelling Robot was a Mac App that I released at the beginning of the Mac App Store. Thanks to a critical bug, it sunk like the Titanic.

The critical bug was that the files were being saved to the application bundle. At the time, the documentation never explicitly said that this would not work. Rather, it suggested to save in the appropriate location in the Library. It turned out that Mac App Store Apps are a little different than Mac Applications. Have you tried to delete a Mac App Store App? You won’t be able to, because of the permissions. This is essentially what was happening to us. We were trying to save to something that wasn’t able to.

It was interesting to see how fast Yelling Robot sunk. I was documenting the status of the App during the whole day, here were some of my notes:

9:30AM
Yelling Robot #14 on USA
Yelling Robot not on top charts for Canada

10:30AM
Yelling Robot #11 on UK
Yelling Robot #20 on USA
Yelling Robot not on top charts for Canada

11:00AM
Yelling Robot #21 on USA
Yelling Robot #65 on Australia
Yelling Robot #11 on UK
Yelling Robot not on top charts for Canada

12:15PM
Yelling Robot #11 on UK (rated 2 stars, 5 1 star ratings)
Yelling Robot #82 on Canada
Yelling Robot #26 on USA (rated 2 stars, 5 1 star ratings)
Yelling Robot #60 on Australia

1:00PM
Yelling Robot #14 on UK (rated 1.5 stars, 8 1 star ratings)
Yelling Robot #60 on Australia
Yelling Robot #69 on Canada
Yelling Robot #31 on USA (rated 2 stars, 6 1 star ratings)

Here are some observations from the notes:

1) Once again, Canadians never download my Apps. I thought it would be different for Mac App Store Apps, but it wasn’t. It sucks because I make them here in Canada! You would think that people would at least download it…

2) The UK still seemed to like it even though it didn’t work. Weird!

3) The one-star ratings KILL YOU.

We were able to push an update out before the weekend, so that was really good. This was nice because all of a sudden, you get to see the ratings go up and up and up! As of today (Jan. 28, 2011), we are back to a 4.5 star rating.

We went from a 1 star to 4.5 stars! Woot!

The wind for Yelling Robot has been keeping up for a very long time. With iOS Apps, we usually see it die within three days. Yelling Robot has been going strong for weeks.

I think this is because of a few reasons…

1) We were #1 in Entertainment (Free) for a while
2) It’s a FREE Mac App, not many of those around

For a while, I was wondering how on earth so many people could be downloading Yelling Robot, day after day it never seemed to tail off. “Were there really that many Mac OS 10.6 computers out there, that would want to download Yelling Robot? Wow!” It does turn out that some fireplaces are now currently ranked higher than Yelling Robot in the Free Entertainment, and our downloads are tailing off. Being on the top of the charts evidently does help.

So, the ride of Yelling Robot was pretty good. I would have enjoyed it more if we didn’t have that critical bug. I wonder what would have happened?

To answer a FAQ, “Why is Yelling Robot a 17+ Application?” … it is because to some people it may not seem clear that what you type in the text fields will actually be said, OUT LOUD. We didn’t want any mishaps on that end. There is not any 17+ material in the App itself, it is just a precautionary measure. There is actually a review that demonstrates this:

That’s why we made it 17+. Exactly for the above situation.

Now that we are over the initial hype, what updates would everyone like to see in Yelling Robot?

Posted in: Programming, Projects.