(link)

Here’s the Soapbox video:

Dan says this about his animation:

Spontaneous Overflow is the latest animation I’ve done with Flash. Quite abstract and symbolic but always with the same degree of nonsense. In "Spontaneous Overflow" I was challenged by the statement of William Wordsworth who called poetry as a "Spontaneous Overflow of powerful feelings"
William did a good job explaining through words, now is my time to explain it in a visual art form kind of way..
Hope you like it.
Dan Metalmadcat [2009].

Dan’s website is metalmadcat.ya.st.  Here’s the video:

Unfortunately, multi-touch doesn’t work on my Toshiba Protégé M700 tablet PC yet, but I’m still hopeful that Toshiba will put out drivers before 7 is released.

edit: Here’s another:

…it looks like it’s breathing.

Before:
 

Process:

After:

So here’s a demo/tutorial:

More information about FRI version 1.4.0.0 is available here.

My goal was to have a generic robot with a camera on it that all of the club members could write code for.  First the task was to make the robot bounce around in an arena marked off with red tape, then the goal was to make the robot follow a line (curvy, with sharp edges, with dead ends, whatever), then it was to make the robot solve a maze.  It was a lot of fun, and a great learning experience.

One look at the robot shows that I definitely care about software way more than hardware.

 

It may not look like much, but surely you know that personality is more important than appearance, and besides this little guy has spunk.  If I were to continue this project, though, the next step would be to make him less fat.

Here’s the maze.  In theory the robot can solve any maze of this style.  (Yes, the end of the maze is a mouse pad. )

Here is the robot solving the maze.  Keep in mind that the robot can be placed in any part of the maze with the end anywhere else in the maze.�

I found by experimentation that the longest time it can take the robot to solve this maze, given any start and any end, is 1 minute and 54 seconds.

If there’s one bit of advice that I think new Botball members need to know, it’s to be patient.  The first version of my maze-solving code was really just code that made the robot follow lines.  A later version would only solve a maze if it never encountered a dead end, and there’s always the version of the code that makes the robot flail about sporadically.  So be patient, and don’t try to tackle the whole project at once.  Get little pieces to work, and use that to build off of.  I in no way assert to be the authority on robotics, but I have learned a thing or two.

Oh, also precise names.  Don’t go calling methods “dog” or “cat”.

Download the code here.

Here I made a video explaining in general terms how the robot stays on track when following a wall:

So you may want the code to mess around with, and if you do then you’re in luck!  Not only is there a link to download the code at the bottom of this post, but I also recorded two videos of me explaining it, or attempting to anyway.   Warning: It may be a little boring!

In this video I explain the defines, whose values you can change to make the robot behave differently:

In this video I explain how the rest of the code works:

(Note:  I found an error in the deadEndInSight method.  I fixed it incorrectly on video, but it should be right in the download below.)

I pronounced FRI the wrong way the last time I said it.  It’s pronounced "free" now.

There are so many possibilities, but whatever you do, there is definitely one place to start: actually unlocking the phone. Doing that is usually tedious and confusing, but last August I made an “unlocked” settings file to remove the tediousness and a video tutorial to take away the confusion.

Note that this process only works on Motorola Razr V3m phones from Verizon. Also note that unlocking the phone probably voids the warranty. I haven’t heard of this process breaking any phones, but if it does, I’m not liable.

Enjoy!

edit, January 19, 2008:

It seems the server hosting P2K seem edit, hacktherazr.com, is down. P2K Seem Edit is now packaged with the readme file and seem file in the download below.

Verizon Razr V3m Unlocking Kit (Revision 3)

edit, January 29, 2008:

Here’s the list of changes that this process makes, taken directly from the readme.txt file included in the download:

Here’s what changed about your phone:
USB Transfers are enabled.
Dial-Up Networking is enabled.
The orange background on the outside screen is changed to the wallpaper.
The “vibrate then ring” feature is now available.
The “continuous backlight” option is now available.
The “classic”, “continental”, “attention” and “moonlit haze” ringtones are now available.

If you’re curious, you can look up the actual seem edits that were made by cross-referencing this list with this page.

Edit, February 18, 2008:

For those who forgot to make a backup of the default seem, or those who otherwise don’t have access to one, here’s mine: Verizon Razr V3m Default Settings

Note that in principal it is best to use the backup that you made yourself. My backup should work on your phone, though. (Please tell me if you find otherwise.)

Edit, March 10, 2008:

I am declaring comment bankrupsy. It’s too hard to keep up on all the comments, and there are people who are much more knowlegable about this topic than I am. If you have a question, then I recommend that you direct it to the hacking community at http://hacktherazr.com/forum or http://motorola.howardforums.com.

Comments with links to other good sources of information are still appreciated.

Thanks, and happy hacking!

Edit, March 14, 2008:

An awesome reader explained how to put ringtones on the Razr without buying any software. I put his explaination in this other post. Thanks, Sendherastar!

Edit: March 28, 2008:

Izzyd has this to say:

Heya all, it’s been a while do to some personal matter,but after reading threw some of these posts I’d like to shed some light. For all you folks who have just gotten a VZW v3m things have changed from when it was originally released. With VZW’s new .01.19.07 firmware  a lot of stuff from before will not work at all, and other things need to be done in a different manner which is why certain things do not seem to work right. Whatever VZW did in the new firmware has locked us out of things like using MPT to transfer ring tones it just will not happen, another thing is the seem edit for USB transfer on the new firmware is not needed they already have it done for you. I could go one and on but I see there is some confusion and I’ll do what I can to stop by more frequently to point folks in the right direction. One thing plz be specific tho and let us know what carrier you are with and what firmware is on your phone that does make a difference these days, 4 months ago it wouldn’t have mattered, but thx to VZW they threw us for a loop which is why we see so much more confusion now.

Edit: June 27, 2008:

Verizon has closed the back door of using a Razr as a dial-up modem for free internet access. When you try, every webpage you load just gives you a message saying something like “The device is not authorized”.

There are a few caveats to Remote Desktop, though.  For one thing, while all editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista have Remote Desktop built in, only the “elite” versions have the ability to allow to be connected to.  That means that if you want to connect to your desktop computer at home, it better have Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Media Center and Tablet Editions, Windows Vista Home Premium, or Windows Vista Business installed on it.  Reasonably so.  Setting up Remote Desktop is not for the faint hearted, certainly not for someone who uses a computer with Windows Vista Home Basic on it, anyway.  Getting Remote Desktop up and running around a home network is easy enough, but the hard part is getting it accessible to the world.  This is because of limitations in networking technology.

Nevertheless, once Remote Desktop is set up, it can be as easy as double-clicking an icon at your work or school computer to gain access to your home computer.

A while back I made a video showing how to set up Remote Desktop, so I think I’ll put it in here.

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