Introducing LaunchLib

Pew Pew Pew

LaunchLib is a library to make software development on the TI MSP430 Launchpad a lot easier.

Current Features:

- Scheduling mechanism

  • driven from 2ms watchdog timer
  • Callbacks
    • Periodic function scheduling
  • Callouts
    • One-shot function run
    • Self-scheduling functions

- PWM

  • Generation on Timer 0/1

- ADC

- GPIO Interrupt handler

  • Attach GPIO pin interrupts to functions

- Basic State machine handler

  • Easily configurable state machines
  • Event queueing
  • Enter and Exit events for each state
  • State transisions configured by single table

- Uart

  • Selectable blocking/non-blocking RX/TX
  • Built-in compact printf functionality

All of the code is open source and hosted on github: https://github.com/jotux/LaunchLib

UC Davis Picnic Day 2009

UC Davis had their annual picnic day last weekend so I stopped by to check out the micromouse competition.  Watching it made me really want to attempt a micromouse again…..maybe I’ll start something up this summer and if I end up going to grad school I can compete with it later :x .

Click for more pictures

Click for more pictures

Bring Your Own Big Wheel(BYOBW) 2009

Easter Sunday I went to San Francisco for the 9th Annual BYOBW.  Basically it was a bunch of adults riding plastic children’s toys down a steep and curvy hill.  It was unbelievably fun!  I went with zack and we shared a big wheel, which turned out to be a great idea cause it gave us a chance to take photographs while the other was going down the hill.  We each took two runs down and nothing could have wiped the stupid grins off our face the entire way.  I plan on going next year and every year thereafter until I’m too old to ride children’s toys (read: never).   Also, I LOVE my camera.  I got some incredible shots.

Click for the album

Click for the album

Petite Edibles Soirée

Ever since I discovered quail eggs, and made my first miniature devilled eggs, I had wanted to have a mini food party at my house.  Everyone would bring mini foods, mini drinks, mini anything, and we’d all eat and be a tiny bit merry.  A few weeks ago I finally had the party and it was a blast.  We had mini devilled eggs, tacos, hamburgers/cheeseburgers, chicken cordon-bleu, sausages, alcohols, pudding pies, and pizza.  Chris also brought some skittle-brau, seperated by color, and we took turns shooting the different colors.  We called it “shooting the rainbow.”

Click for album

Click for album

I party was just a ton of fun and I’m glad everyone could make it. I plan on having another one next year, so start thinking about the mini foods you’d like to bring.

Flashback: long-legged elves

When I was in the second grade I did an arts and crafts assignment. It was around St. Patrick’s day and we were given printouts of elves that we had to color in, cut out, and pin together.

I took the handout and instead of carefully coloring between the lines, evenly colored across each peice.  A nieghbor saw this, and said that I should color in the lines.  I said that since we’re cutting them out anyways, it would be better to color across the lines.

After we were done coloring, we started cutting out all the different parts of the elf.  Each elf had two segments per leg, and many of the other kids only used one segment to make their elves look short.  I went around to each table and gathered the spare segments, stuck them all together, giving my elf 6 leg segments per leg.  A super-tall elf.

Thinking back, it’s difficult for me to ever remember doing arts and crafts assignments as defined by the instructions.

New carpet

Finally, I got new carpet at my house. That also means I finally moved in, and am officially living at my house. The carpet looks great but all the paint colors I had tried before the carpet install look bad now….so I’m in the process of trying new colors. I really like the white-red-grayscale color pattern, but it’s proven hard to implement. You can see color tests on trim in a few of the pictures.

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Click for album

Multiple returns in Ruby

Oh ruby, how beautifully simple you make multiple returns….

def add_and_subtract(v1,v2)
   return (v1 + v2),(v1 - v2)
end

print "Input a number: "
in1 = gets.to_i
print "Input another number: "
in2 = gets.to_i

result = add_and_subtract(in1,in2)
print "#{in1} + #{in2} = #{result[0]}n"
print "#{in1} - #{in2} = #{result[1]}n"

Shaky stars

Went out tonight to try and catch a glimpse of Lulin, but due to light pollution and cloud cover I couldn’t see it :-(

I was playing with my zoom lens though and got some shaky pictures of stars. The SD card in my camera is wireless, so when I got back to my desk the pictures were already in picasa. I just loved the way they turned out. Cheggim out:

click for album

click for album

Smackdown in Sactown 2009

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Click for album

When I was going to CSUS I helped found a club, and one of my first few semesters there we started an event called the Engineering Expo.  At the exposition, a show-and-tell for the schools engineering departments, there is a one-pound battlebot competition called Smackdown in Sactown.  This year was the 5th such compeititon.

I drove Kevin’s robot, which I built for him, Emsee Frypants.  I lost the first fight, but went undefeated after that all the way to the finals to win. I’m still getting familiar with my dSLR, so many of the pictures didn’t come out well, but others look fantastic.   Can’t wait to take some more.