Made a controllable iPhone robot face!

Isn’t the internet a wonderful place?

The other day, I stumbled across instructions on how to make an iPhone robot face called Mimbo!   Here’s my finished result:

Little Miss 10 helped me cut out the cardboard template.  Unfortunately we ran into a few small issues:

* We started folding the robot cardboard body together BEFORE we cut out its eyes – bad move – it’s easier to cut the eyes out first!

* There is no mouth on the PDF template!  In the end, I cut one out, but then realised that the eyes and mouth didn’t match the iPhone face later on.   I moved the eyes and mouth around to fit.

* I spent a couple of hours wondering what to do with the .pde file!  After much Googling I found that you need to install Processing, which is a program which provides a programming and application platform.    You can download Processing from here:  http://processing.org/

* I followed the advanced instructions and got it working with FaceOSC.   What this does is let you control whether the robot smiles depending on whether you’re smiling or not!  It’s pretty cool!  I discovered that there’s a whole community around FaceOSC and interfacing it with other software (in particular music performance software) that I’ll have to explore another day.   It was refreshing to see that Osculator found FaceOSC with no problems.  However, it didn’t seem to be routing any events to Processing.   After some mucking around, I found that in Osculator, you can click the Parameters button, and then set up where to route OSC events.   It seems mine was being routed directly to my iPhone instead of through Processing.   Just click “OSC Routing”, then enter in localhost:8000 to route OSC events to port 8000, which will be picked up by the Processing script.

Definitely a very good introduction into TouchOSC.  Now to try to hook up TouchOSC to other things like Traktor!

Instructions here:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Mimbo-A-Friendly-Robot/#step1

2011 Gone!

Wow, I can’t believe another year has drifted by!

A few personal thoughts on 2011:

One Post A Day is too much!

Yep, I started with a noble but in the end, unrealistic goal of one blog post a day.   I think I burnt out so much that it partly contributed to little to no blog posts for the rest of the year!   I’ve been thinking lately about the purpose of my blog – it was really to document things/tricks that I’ve found/done/learnt or taken time to figure out so that I can refer back to it in the future and possibly help others.   And this seems to correlate to the posts I get the most hits from and the people who comment about my posts.   In 2012, I definitely want to go back “to my blog roots”

Youth Church Band and Guitar!

One great community give back in 2011 was getting involved in the Youth Group Band at church.  OK, I don’t’ really consider myself a “youth” anymore, but it was fantastic to get involved, see other youths get involved, introduce more “youthful” music/repertoire at church, and do it all by playing the acoustic guitar more!   So much that I even had 2 guitar lessons towards the end of the year that really inspired me to do more in 2012.

Date Nights

This is something wifey and I have been struggling but I’m happy with how this went in 2011.   One date per month (minimum) on the anniversary of our wedding date.   Now that the kids are older, we tend to go out with the kids rather than without since it’s “easier”, but when we do go with the kids, we’re missing out on our own couple time.   Definitely something I want to continue in 2012!

Photography Returns!

I think 2011 was the most successful year so far in getting something back from my photography hobby.  Enough to partly upgrade my DSLR to a D700 anyway.  But I wonder now whether I should start actively pursuing paid work or continue the “for fun” aspect.   There was a time near the end of 2011 where photography started becoming a “chore” which is definitely NOT what I want it to be.  I started losing that creative/inventive spark and I don’t want that to happen again.   On the other hand, I now thoroughly recognise having to charge a reasonable amount for my time and “talent”

Giving The Kids Space

The hardest thing I did in 2011 as a parent was giving the kids more space and trusting them more, especially Miss 12.   I definitely struggled with the concept of actually NOT helping with her homework, trusting that she’ll study for school tests without my help and complete her homework in time.   There’s still this hidden urge in me to want to help her, help her do her best, force her to tell me how school went – but this never worked out the way I wanted.   Time and time again in 2011, I found that it was the moments when I didn’t say anything and just let her be, that she would be happier and there would be those magic moments when she would make her own effort to open up and talk – often just before bedtime.    Parenthood doesn’t get easier as the kids get older – it just changes

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Finally, thank you readers, friends and family for coming and visiting my blog!  I really hope you find it informative, sometimes entertaining, and sometimes thoughtful  May 2012 bring much more happiness and joy into your lives!