Clip On LED Reading Light Tear Down.

So, how many times have you used one of these little L.E.D reading lights, been fascinated as to what's inside but have been just too lily livered to take it apart?.

Well i've done all the hard work for you and here it is in all it's naked glory...

(click to enlarge)

(note: no reading lights were hurt in this project and the top picture is actually the 'after' one)

That 'Hidden' iPhone Location File for Windows Users

So, you might recently have read of the Pete Warden/Alasdiar Allen hoo-ha about that 'hidden' tracking file on your computer which has a record of everywhere your iPhone's been?. Personally i think the issue is more about disclosure than security but i still wanted to see said file, great, but the write up on their page is for Mac nerds.So here's a quick 'work around' for Windows users, you'll need...

• Firefox (FF 4 friendly)
• The SQL Lite Plug In 
• GPSBabel (optional,used  to create KML file)
• A Google account to view Map

Firstly navigate to the iPhones backup folder which on Windows Vista is usually here...

 C:\Users\*user*\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Now in this folder there may be several folders with long numbered names (i only had one), if you check the details you should navigate into the newest one. Then open info.plist with a text editor, it's reasonably readable and you should find an entry near the top which gives the Device Name for your iPhone. (this is just to confirm it's the folder for your device, to look at anyone elses data would just be plain rude).

 Now in the original Mac write up there's a way to determine which of the many obscurely numbered files in that folder is the (location) consolidated.db file, with Windows this doesn't appear to be forthcoming so some trial and error is in order. First i listed the files by size, biggest first (click on size on top line), Then open up Firefox and the SQL Lite plug in (it should be in options menu).

 Now attempt to open the files one by one using 'Connect Database' (the little folder icon), make sure you have 'File Names' drop down menu set to 'all files' in explorer bar to see them.You'll probably get a Error message for the first few....

*Update*  i've been led to believe the relevant file begins with the numbers 4096... (hat tip Owen)

but keep going (i think mine was the fourth file down the list ) and hopefully...

The good stuff  is under 'CellLocation' (in the Browse & Search' Tab)

 (I blacked my stuff out but stalkers can still find me on FourSquare).This can be exported to an XML file, the 'to do' now being to convert it to an KML file and view the numbers as a map (i'm not bleedin' Keanu Reeves you know!!)

Midge

*Update*  re' viewing on Google Maps: There's probably easier/better ways to do this but if you go the 'Execute SQL' Tab in SQL Lite and enter...

SELECT Latitude,longitude FROM CellLocation

followed by 'Run SQL' you'll get a Table of just the Latitude/Longitude readings, which can then be saved as an .csv file (manually add a row with lat/lon column headings in a spreadsheet (eg. Google Docs))

 Using the ('free') GPSBabel program you can then then convert this into a KML 'Google Earth Keyhole Markup Language' file (it's a relatively intuitive program)...

*Errata*  Use 'Universal csv with field structure in  first line'  instead of the plain 'Comma seperated values' shown in picture below

Then it's just a quick wonder over to Google maps, create new map and import the KML file to view the locations.

*UPDATE*  If your familiar with Google Fusion tables you can import the KML file into that to view as a map as well (hatip Ian)

Now be prepared to be very disappointed, the locations appear to be very vague and certainly don't have the Big Brotherish accuracy which everyones banging on about.

Mrmr Open Sound Control Client to Arduino

This quick project was mainly a proof of concept for someone else but here's a fuzzy video and some info.



Using the Mrmr iPhone app to create an Open Sound Control client which talks to Processing, which then talks to the Arduino, which then lights some (mismatched) LEDs.
(Sending a Byte of data to control Port B.)

Mrmr app can be found here
mrmr.noisepages.com/​

Code can be found here with Osc_EX prefix (there's some notes in the comments)
pastebin.com/​u/​Midge

Circuit is just four LEDs connected to Pins 8 to 11 with 1K resistors.

This blog post is just offered as a quick reference (and somewhere to dump the video). I can't really enter into any technical discussions, there's plenty of info out there but here's a couple of tips...

• Always check the Mrmr client is talking to the Same Port that Processing is listening to.
• Make sure you change the addrPatterns in the 'If' statements.
• Check your Firewall, they can sometimes block OSC signals.
• Mrmr console was transfered by connecting iPhone to PC using XAMPP as a server (put file into htdocs folder)

Geeky Advent Rehash.

Well ok, it's five months late but here's is my rushed take on tinkerlog's Geeky Advent widget (instructions here) the interesting quirk with these things being the way an LED is used as a light sensor. I've built it using an ATtiny85 instead of the ATtiny13 which requires a tweak to the code to allow for the slight differences in the ADC registers...

ADC Reference voltage

ADMUX = ( 1 << REFS2 ) | ( 1 << REFS1 ) | ADC2; //internal ref 2.56v, sense on PB4

ADC clock prescaler

ADCSRA = ( 1 << ADEN ) | 7;

prescale set to 7 (divide by 128) as i'm led to 'believe' it improves accuracy if the main chip clock is set to 8Mhz

Fuses set to switch off chip prescaler.
avrdude -c < Your Programmer > -p t85 -U lfuse:w:0xe2:m -U hfuse:w:0xdf:m -U efuse:w:0xff:m


Seems to work ok but may need some tweaking to the 'AMBIENT_LIGHT' variable.
not demonstrated is that the LED's light up one LED, Two LED's, Three LED's, Four LED's on each reset, (apologies for blurry video but i'm using a crap digital camera)

Hacking Car Boot Sales.

What's that?, £3.60 for a thumb joystick!?, i'll not line their pockets says i. So it's off to the great British insitution that is the car boot sale. I managed to pick up two Playstation controllers for the reasonable price of one whole quid (actually the one on the right was a quid, the guy let me have the Sony one for nicks as it had a button missing). Back home and after some deft work with a soldering iron i now have four two axis joysticks (complete with switches), four electric motors , two preset potentiometers AND an LED.That works out about 10p a component, a good days work allround methinks.