Beauty and the Beast
Finally, the last accessory I ordered for my Raspberry Pi Zero (that’s the little red thing behind my keyboard) has arrived – an Acer 43″ ET430K monitor. The Zero won’t quite drive this monitor at its maximum resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, but as you can see, you get enough real estate to do real graphics […]
Charting Reaction Times on the Raspberry Pi
Earlier this week I collected some reaction timer data on my Pi using the BBC micro:bit as an input device. I only produced an “ASCII art” chart at the time: times←ReactionTimer.Play times 251 305 294 415 338 298 294 251 378 ReactionTimer.AsciiChart times 425| 400| * 375| * 350+ 325| * 300| […]
micro:bit Reaction Timer in APL on the Pi and BBC micro:bit
I have a bit of a cold today, so I decided that instead of hopping in an icy car and driving to the office in order to spend the day drinking coffee and answering e-mail, I should stay at home, turn up the radiators, make lots of tea (with honey!) and have some fun writing […]
Morse Code – Revisited using the BBC micro:bit
As mentioned last week, I have found a new way to provide a front end processor for my Pi, the BBC micro:bit. This week, I have started putting the new system through its paces: The microbit class in our GitHub repository has been beefed up to make it more resilient in the case where serial […]
Raspberry APL Pi and Python on the micro:bit
A couple of years ago I spent many happy hours writing APL code to control robots which each embedded a Raspberry Pi. It was fun but it was a bumpy ride – my interest eventually faded when I discovered that it was just too difficult to make sense of raw accelerometer data, which I was […]
Turning to a Heading with an MPU-9150
As the odour of fried electronics dissipates in the air, I’m unexpectedly afforded the opportunity to write this blog post a day or two earlier than planned. The on-board compass was exhibiting significant deviation, so I consulted my nephew Thorbjørn Christensen at DTU-Space. Thorbjørn makes a living designing magnetometers for space agencies around the world, […]
Making Controlled Turns with the DyaBot
This blog originally started when I took delivery of the DyaBot, a Raspberry Pi and Arduino based variant of the C3Pi running Dyalog v13.2. The architecture of the ‘bot and instructions for building your own inexpensive robot can all be found in blog entries from April to July of last year. The downside of only using inexpensive components is […]
Dancing with the Bots
Last week the ‘bots were busy preparing for the J Language Conference in Toronto, where they made their first public appearance together. Upon returning to Bramley they continued training and we are proud to present the first recording of their new dance: [embedplusvideo height=”400″ width=”584″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1u6Knob” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/oO50UqFBsCw?fs=1&vq=hd720″ vars=”ytid=oO50UqFBsCw&width=584&height=400&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=1&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep3993″ /] The ‘bots are both running […]
The Blog is Back!
It is now 3 weeks since we shipped Dyalog version 14.0 and released the new Dyalog web site, so it’s probably time to stop celebrating and get back to work. The ‘bot batteries have been recharged and the ‘bots are learning to work as a team using v14.0 futures and isolates. That’s all I can […]
APL-Controlled Robot Performs Death-Defying Stunts Using PiCam
Regular readers will remember my whining about the poor precision of both infra-red and ultrasonic sensors. But today, the Raspberry Pi / Dyalog APL – controlled “DyaBot” was observed driving on a dinner table – where the slightest navigational error could mean a 3-foot plunge and certain death! How can this be? [embedplusvideo height=”400″ width=”584″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/19azC9S” […]
Comparing Sonar and InfraRed Data
Of course, it was an illusion that I would be able to get straight back to the robot after vacation, there were a few other jobs waiting like the Dyalog’13 Conference Programme (the DyaBot will be making a couple of appearances, of course!). However, it appears I have now made enough flour to be able […]
Return to the Robot
It has been more than a month since my last blog post, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’d lost interest in robots. It *is* true that I have been rather distracted by customers, including a trip to the USA. It is also holiday season, and I have been to a music festival. However, […]
Sonar Arrives for the Robot
Following the release of Dyalog APL for the Raspberry Pi came a hectic week with no time to play… But now the next sensor has arrived, so it is time to power the robot back up. In the video below, we practice turning it through 180 degrees using APL. [embedplusvideo height=”356″ width=”584″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/W6IIcNK0g0U?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=W6IIcNK0g0U&width=584&height=356&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep8492″ […]
Elementary Cellular Light-Emitting Automaton
In response to an earlier post on driving an 8-bar LED using the Raspberry Pi, Roger Hui commented that 8 lights should be sufficient to display the output of a 1-d Game of Life. The code snippets displayed in this post are based on some working code that Roger was also kind enough to forward to me. The […]
Dyalog APL now available for the Raspberry Pi!
Although the news had not yet appeared on the Dyalog webpage when this was written, the CTO blog has access to exclusive sources and is therefore able to present this scoop: The big day has finally come – Dyalog APL version 13.2 is now available to anyone with a Raspberry Pi, and can be downloaded […]
Fun with APL on the Raspberry Pi (without a Robot)
The official release of Dyalog APL for the Raspberry Pi now looks as if it going to happen on Friday! In preparation for this, we have been working on some examples to demonstrate things you can do on your Pi without a set of wheels attached – like making lights blink! [embedplusvideo height=”356″ width=”584″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ztLIQgszE1s?fs=1″ […]
Visualising Sensor Data using APL on the Robot
As described in a recent post, our robot now has an Infra-Red distance sensor, which allows us to measure the distance from the front of the robot to the nearest obstacle. With respect to the autonomous navigation code that we wish to write, this will be the cornerstone! In order to evalute the perfomance of […]
C3Pi Opens Eyes at the APL Moot
This weekend, the Dyalog C3Pi reached the final stop on the European spring tour, attending the British APL Association’s Annual General Meeting and “Moot” just north of London, where the robot met the famous mice from Optima. The day before, the C3Pi also travelled to an OSHUG meeting in London on Thursday, where Romilly Cocking was talking about quick2link. Alas, poor C3Pi was […]
Driving my Pi
Back from the APL meeting in Hamburg, where my C3Pi made it’s first appearance on German soil (and a few days meeting with APL users in Milan). I’ve extended the control program which was used to make last week’s figure 8 video to give me some “hand controls”. I do appreciate that it is inadvisable for humans to […]
APL – Coming to a Robot Near You
APL on the C3Pi One of the biggest joys of being the CTO of Dyalog is that you get to write code to help evaluate prototypes of proposed language features, or new tools and tutorials that we are planning to make available. This past week has been one of the most exciting for a very […]
