PLC and Hardware Control

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Aha! Thank you, Dad for my new Arduino hardware controller (and the partially-outfitted Craftsman toolbox to make my life simpler when building stuff)! Easy easy to program, and easier to wire up!

There was a time a few years ago that we were playing with a Seimen's PLC at my old job, and the process to program it via their development package was more confusing than anything. I've seen Lego Mindstorms being programmed: VERY complicated. Arduino has taken these shortcomings of other PLCs and simplified -everything- to make these things easy to understand. All you REALLY need to know is basic electronics and basic programming structure (preferrably in C) and you too can program up one of these things.

The interface is amazingly simple. No frills, no complicated menus, no toolboxes or hundreds of buttons to hunt for in some confusing tree structure of some far-off galaxy of a development suite. Open the development software and you get a single window with a single text box and a base menu. Open one of the examples from this window (simply File>Examples), and you get another window with some predefined text in the textbox. Simple.

So really, the only things keeping me from creating some amazing electronic system now is 1) lack of resources, and 2) a blockage in my own mental creativity.

If I wanted to create a mobile robotic system, I would need motors and drives for them: something which I simply do not have at the moment. But I don't know if I WANT to make a mobile robotic system. Or a light fader. Or a garage door opener (actually, NO I do NOT want to make this. It's been overdone), or something else. So for now I just have to settle for IBBLs in random or pseudo-random or extremely predictable patterns. Fun stuff though! More to come, maybe!

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I want ideas. Perhaps if I open a poll, or something similar, I can get your feedback (and mine as well). I have about 25 minutes, so let's see if I can get something set up in that time...

Edit: See big fat link above (or QR below).

Pandora Music

Pandora.. Great selection of music, stays on topic and all that. But seriously..is there a way to prevent the computer inactivity timeout? Stops playing, starts giving me whiny messages of "Are we playing to an empty room? It costs us to play these songs so we don't want to be playing to nobody."

However, I've got my computer set up with a Kensington FM transmitter so I can listen upstairs (bad laptop won't support hardly anything streaming, bad sound card, etc.). So no, Pandora, you're NOT playing to an empty room. You're playing IN an empty room. But yes we are all still listening.

Running a short test right now to see if that notification is based on website or computer inactivity. If computer inactivity (mouse movement, screensaver, etc.), I'll just keep mouse jiggler running when I want to run Pandora, and that should keep it live. If not, I'm screwed. Either that or I'll just by a Wi-Fi media player one day. When I have actual money that is.

Initially I had hoped that they might have something like an open API which would allow me to develop (with more effort than I'm willing to put into it), an application which would let me control playback from a remote machine. But alas. No... However I did find a plugin hack to play Pandora in Winamp. I'll look into that. Hopefully if that works, I can set up a few Winamp tools to work with it and be able to control it remotely from there. However, this hack uses Pandora Mini, which I believe is a scaled down, no controls version. Well, maybe it's like mobile with Like, Dislike and Fastforward. We'll see. I'll have to try it out later, but right now I'm blogging. Come on!!