The very first funny Cat Video? (Video)

Just watched yet another funny cat video on Internet. I wonder when our fascination with funny cat videos began. It turns out that the earliest cat video dates back to the birth of motion pictures. Thomas Edison the consummate commercializer of his innovations made earliest movies to promote the motion picture camera "Kinetograph. After the initial popularity of these penny movies (penny was the cost of ticket) of humans moving, dancing and sneezing waned. He moved on to man's furry friends. In 1894 the boxing cats motion picture was hit among the audiences at the penny arcades.

Getting started with Arduino Starter Kit

I have always been fascinated by electronics. Growing up I tried to learn electronics by reading radio repair guides and engineering textbooks in vain. Always got stumped by mathematics and dry tone of the books. The advent of Arduino changed all that. Now it is easier to learn electronics without getting bogged down by technicalities and focus on making something fun!.

The 'Arduino Starter Kit' is suitable for self-learning Arduino with simple fun projects. Lot of attention has given to developing course material and overall ascetic design of this kit. The Starter kit comes full set of high quality electronic components and a 170 page project guide book. The ready to use cardboard cutouts makes it great activity kit that could used by parent and the child.

The project guide book explains all the basic electronic components, their function and use in a simple lucid manager. The quality
of the book and its design is very tasteful. The programming code is explained in full detail. Further online resources are also
provided to aid learning.

Here is complete list of the components that are bundled in the kit.

• 1 Projects Book
• 1 Arduino / Genuino Uno
• 1 USB cable
• 1 Breadboard 400 points
• 70 Solid core jumper wires
• 1 Easy-to-assemble wooden base
• 1 9v battery snap
• 1 Stranded jumper wires (black)
• 1 Stranded jumper wires (red)
• 6 Phototransistor
• 3 Potentiometer 10kOhms
• 10 Pushbuttons
• 1 Temperature sensor [TMP36]
• 1 Tilt sensor
• 1 alphanumeric LCD (16x2 characters)
• 1 LED (bright white)
• 1 LED (RGB)
• 8 LEDs (red)
• 8 LEDs (green)
• 8 LEDs (yellow)
• 3 LEDs (blue)
• 1 Small DC motor 6/9V
• 1 Small servo motor
• 1 Piezo capsule [PKM17EPP-4001-B0]
• 1 H-bridge motor driver [L293D]
• 1 Optocouplers [4N35]
• 2 Mosfet transistors [IRF520]
• 5 Capacitors 100uF
• 5 Diodes [1N4007]
• 3 Transparent gels (red, green, blue)
• 1 Male pins strip (40x1)
• 20 Resistors 220 Ohms
• 5 Resistors 560 Ohms
• 5 Resistors 1 kOhms
• 5 Resistors 4.7 kOhms
• 20 Resistors 10 kOhms
• 5 Resistors 1 MOhms
• 5 Resistors 10 MOhms

You will also learn how to program Arduino using Processing programming language. The fun projects: Love-O-meter, Zoetrope, motorized pinwheel helps you build skills gradually. The first simple projects could form the basic model for your more complex electronic projects in the future.

I highly recommend buying the Arduino Starter kit. It is not cheap at USD $99.90.

Keep watching this space for more reviews of Arduino kits and books.

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Animata Open Source Real-time Animation

In my efforts to explore the use of technology in art and social change. Looking at few ideas in creating new media installation art. Following my friend Prayas's advice I first looked at Animata developed by Budapest Kitchen.

The software is not currently in active development. Though I was able to compile it on Ubuntu gnu/Linux machine using the latest code. They were some stability issues.

Here are the instructions to compile and run Animata on Ubuntu LTS.

# Download Animata from https://code.google.com/archive/p/animata/source/default/source

 $ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-source/v2/code.google.com/animata/source-archive.zip

# Uncompress the archive

 $ unzip source-archive.zip

# Change direction into animata source directory

 $ cd animata/trunk

# Install the dependencies

 $ sudo apt-get install scons
 $ sudo apt-get install libfltk1.1*

# Build

 $ scons

# Run the build

 $ ./build/animata

That's all folks. Please let me know your experiences with Animata.

Testing Unity3D editor on gnu/Linux

Few days ago Unity3D editor support on gnu/Linux reached an important milestone. Thanks to efforts of Na'Tosha Bard and her team, we now have mainline beta builds of Unity3D editor for gnu/Linux operating systems. This has been my long time feature request (Kudos Na'Tosha!).

Now gnu/Linux could become a platform of choice for Indie game developers. Along with Blender for 3D characters design and game environment asset development and Audacity for game audio.

You can download the Unity3D gnu/Linux beta builds in this thread. The latest builds would be in the latest post of this thread, so don't forget to scroll down until you find that last post.

# Download the Unity3D editor .deb package using wget or torrent. 

$ wget -c http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/linux/unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb
--2016-09-01 19:07:08--  http://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/linux/unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb
Resolving download.unity3d.com (download.unity3d.com)... 175.28.3.10, 175.28.3.16
Connecting to download.unity3d.com (download.unity3d.com)|175.28.3.10|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 206 Partial Content
Length: 2680067522 (2.5G), 718427586 (685M) remaining [application/x-debian-package]
Saving to: ‘unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb’

unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.d 100%[+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++===================>]   2.50G   446KB/s    in 22m 36s 

2016-09-01 19:29:44 (517 KB/s) - ‘unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb’ saved [2680067522/2680067522]

# Install the downloaded package using dpkg program 

$ sudo dpkg -i unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package unity-editor.
(Reading database ... 697456 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack unity-editor-5.5.0b1+20160830_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking unity-editor (5.5.0xb1Linux) ...
Setting up unity-editor (5.5.0xb1Linux) ...
Setting permissions on chrome-sandbox...
Done.
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.3~bzr0+16.04.20160701-0ubuntu1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6ubuntu3.1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu5) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.15-0ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu3) ...

# Start Unity3D editor on command line by typing  
$ /opt/Unity/Editor/Unity

You can track various bugs in this Unity3D Linux Editor forum. There are few of well known issues, such the excessive CPU usage bug (lovely nick-named 'Spock') and here.

Please don't forget to share your experiences with testing Unity3D editor on gnu/Linux.

Noisebridge Hacker Trip to China #6

If you are excited by my previous post about Shenzhen the silicon valley of hardware, then here an exciting opportunity to visit China with fellow hackers and makers.

Every year San Francisco based Noise bridge hackerspace organizes a trip to China. This trip gives makers and hackers an chance to learn what's happening in China.

This year the trips covers vast tracks of China from Beijing to Hong Kong. You'll have an opportunity to attend various events such Shanghai Maker Carnival and Maker Faire Shenzhen along with a visit to local maker spaces and hackerspaces.

Here is tentative schedule.

• 10-October-2016 -- Leave home for Shanghai (arrive in Shanghai on 11-October)
• 11-October-2016 -- Meet in Shanghai (hotel TBD)
• 11-October to 17-October -- Shanghai
• 15-16-Oct: Shanghai Maker Carnival
• 17-October to 19-October -- Hong Kong
• 19-October to 24-October -- Shenzhen
• 21-23-Oct: Maker Faire Shenzhen
• 24-October to 1-November -- Beijing
• 1-November-2016 -- fly home (arrive NA or EU on same day)

Send an email to the organizer and put your name up on the Noisebridge hacker trip to china #6 wiki page . Too bad I couldn't join the China trip this year but I'll try to join the next trip.

Blender missing shared library gotcha!

Here is a simple solution to Blender missing 'libavcodec.so.54' shared library on Ubuntu Xenial (16.04.1 LTS) box. There are numerous posts about this problem but very few solutions.

$ blender
blender: error while loading shared libraries: libavcodec.so.54: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution for Blender missing library

Let me share what worked for me. Let's try to locate and add the library to ldconf path.

# Install the libavcodec-extra package using apt-get package manager.
$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-56

# Verify the location of libavcodec.so.54 file path.  
$locate libavcodec.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.56.1.0


# Create a new ldconfig file with proper path to the shared library. 
$ sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf.d/blender.conf

# Add the following line in the file. 
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

# Rerun ldconf 
$ sudo ldconf 

# Start blender normally. 
$ blender  

That's all folks!. Enjoy blender.

Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Video)

Follow maker and hacker extraordinary Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang to Shenzhen, China. This Wired.com documentary provides a rare insight into Shenzhen,the silicon valley of hardware. Understand what makes Shenzhen produce such innovative products at an incredible speed.

For me, the one most striking highlight of this documentary was to learn about 'Shenzhai' culture, it is akin to hacker or maker culture. I believe the values of open design, sharing of technical know-how and healthy dose of hubris defines Shenzhai culture. It drives the innovative product design in Shenzhen. Today this culture of design and easy availability of manufacturing facilities is attracting designers, makers, hackers and entrepreneurs.

I hope you'll enjoy this documentary and hopeful make your way to Shenzhen in near future.

Google Cardboard 360° Photosphere Viewer with A-Frame

In my previous post "Embedding Google Cardboard Camera VR Photosphere with A-Frame", I wrote that some talented programmer would probably create a better solution for embedding Google Cardboard camera photosphere using A-Frame.

I didn't know that Chris Car had already created a sophisticated solution for this problem. You can view it here on A-Frame blog.

You first might have to use Google Cardboard camera converter tool to make your Google Cardboard photosphere.

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Embedding Google Cardboard Camera VR Photosphere with A-Frame

Early this year I started looking into the VR (Virtual Reality) web applications. Web browsers now natively support VR applications using WebVR JavaScript API. We can now design virtual worlds using markup language and connect them to devices such as Oculus Rift and Leap motion controller using just a web browser.

To hit the ground running with WebVR. I started an experiment to capture Hackerspace Phnom Penh using Google Cardboard camera app and display it using A-Frame framework. The Google Cardboard camera photosphere is not supported by A-Frame. But the positive responses to my query encouraged me to try an hack using A-Frame Panorama component.

Is it possible to embed Google cardboard camera image capture in a @aframevr powered site?

— Arky (@playingwithsid) December 17, 2015

And it works. Almost I had to tweak the scale setting a bit to try get the perspective right but it does work. The ideal solution is to create a A-Frame custom component, that I leave it for more skilled people.

The markup needed for this demo is simple, you can achieve this with one line.

<a-scene>
     <a-sky src="img/hackerspace.vr.jpg" radius="2400" scale="2 1 2"> </a-sky>
    </a-scene>

You can see the demo on Youtube or visit this webpage in an compatible web browser.

Eco City: Projection Mapping For Social Impact

Japanese artist Hidetaka Nakamura uses animation to bring about awareness about social issues in Cambodia. In this post, I talk about his Eco City project, he makes large screen projections of animations drawn by children on the wall of underground sewage plant. The children visit this underground sewage plant along the river front of Phnom Penh, they participate in pop quiz about environmental issues. The animated characters teach the children about recycling and garbage disposal.

This the second edition of the Eco city project in Cambodia. I'll be working with Hidetaka on the next projection mapping to bring real time animation of the drawings and immersive interaction of projection mapping next year. Stay tuned.