Month: November 2011
Python Pidgin Dbus Monitor
This is a script that registers a callback with Pidgin’s Dbus interface, and then sends a message in response whenever anyone sends an IM. I’m using it for a chatbot, but it could easily be extended to do things like switch X10 light controllers on and off, get the state of hardware connected to the target computer, and so forth. Pidgin has to be running and configured to use Dbus, but it does that by default.
'''
Created on Nov 18, 2011
Watches pidgin over Dbus and responds to incoming messages.
'''
import dbus
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
import gobject
class StupidResponder():
def getResponse(self, message):
#This is where you would do something clever to come up with a response
return "Insect! I cannot bear your words! They are TOO TINY!"
def got_msg_cb(account, sender, message, conversation, flags):
purple.PurpleConvImSend(purple.PurpleConvIm(conversation), responder.getResponse(message))
if __name__ == '__main__':
#load a response generator
responder = StupidResponder()
#Connect to pidgin on Dbus
main_loop = DBusGMainLoop()
session_bus = dbus.SessionBus(mainloop = main_loop)
obj = session_bus.get_object("im.pidgin.purple.PurpleService", "/im/pidgin/purple/PurpleObject")
purple = dbus.Interface(obj, "im.pidgin.purple.PurpleInterface")
#Add the callback
session_bus.add_signal_receiver(got_msg_cb, dbus_interface="im.pidgin.purple.PurpleInterface", signal_name="ReceivedImMsg")
#Listen
loop = gobject.MainLoop()
loop.run()
Some Short Notes
The ToyBrain project has been on hold for a variety of reasons, mostly time and money. I finally have enough money to order the motor driver chips I wanted from Digikey. They are on back order, but should arrive near the end of the month. Once I have those, I’m going to put together a little video of the first boards doing a variety of motor driving tasks. That video will go into a Kickstarter funding round to get the second edition of the boards produced and populated.
At least one of the ToyBrain boards is going to end up hooked to a computer via the serial port at one end, and a vibrating motor at the other end. I’m reviving an old project to add a teledildonics plugin to Pidgin. It will allow a remote user to use commands like /harder and /faster (and of course /softer and /slower) to control the speed of the vibrator. That one may not make it into the Kickstarter video.
I found an interesting post about laser power ratings recently. It covers the relationship between PWM and laser output power, which is going to be useful for the power supply that I’m building for my laser. Once I build that power supply, I’ll be in the rather interesting position of having designed a cutting laser power supply that can be built from easy-to-obtain materials. Hopefully, that will knock the price down enough that more people can do DIY CNC laser builds. I may also make that PCB available as a kit, so people can build their own.
I also looked up TEA Laser plans again, and started wondering about making a dye laser. The TEA laser emits in the UV range. so it could be used to pump a UV-reactive dye. Vitamin b12 (in energy shot drinks) and tonic water both are UV reactive, so it may be possible to make a yellow or blue laser using a dye that is drinkable. Normally, laser dye is a toxic dye in a toxic solvent, so this would be pretty neat for the home experimenter.
Behold!
I have HEALED this man’s WOUNDED STEREO!
One of the users of a mailing list that I’m on had a nice stereo receiver with one bad channel. Stereo has two channels, and while one worked, the other simply had no output. I opened it up and found that the signal lines from the amplifier run through a relay to the rear panel connectors. I can think of a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that when you power it up, there is a period where the circuitry of the receiver stabilizes and effectively “boots up”. During that period, it might put some sort of really loud signal out over the speakers (and blow them inside out) unless they are disconnected. Once everything settles, it is safe to connect the speakers. The other possibility is that if you short the speaker connection, the receiver can detect the excessive current flow and disconnect the speaker hookups.
Whatever the reason for them, one of the relays was DPST, with one pole for each stereo channel, and one set of the poles didn’t close when the system powered up. I figured this out by plugging in an audio source, turning the receiver on, and then tracing back from the connector until I found an audio signal. There was nothing at the connector, nothing where the connector joined the PCB, nothing at one pole of the relay, music at the pole it was supposed to be connected to.
The fix was to remove the board with the relay on it, pop off the case of the relay, clean the contacts, push them a little closer together, and put it all back together. If the relay had really been shot, it was a pretty common size, and would have been easy to replace. Overall, the receiver was well-designed for repair, and the service manual was available online. I will give Onkyo props for using one size of normal philips-head screw throughout their case, but did they really need 41 of them?
Notacon Talk on Brain Hacking
This is the talk I gave at Notacon in 2008. It’s kind of goofy, but provides a broad overview of wireheading/neurohacking technologies.
Crazy Talk
This is a program that I wrote about ten years ago, to generate nonsense from a given input text. It builds a statistical model of the input text, which allows it to determine, given any two words, what the most likely third word is. Then it can use the last two words of those three to pick a new word, and so on. Since it doesn’t always pick the most likely word, but selects randomly from all options based on likelihood, it tends to create abrupt switches of concepts around short phrases like “it to” or “in the”.
For bonus points, it posts to a Blogger blog, assuming they haven’t changed their API.
It’s written in Perl, and I assume still works. If not, updating it to Python would be fun, and a good excuse for me to practice my Python.
Adding smarts to common materials
I found a couple of neat sites, and figured I’d link them here so they get more google juice, or link sauce, or whatever combination of a wet thing and food seems appropriate.
The first is the MIT High-Low Tech Lab’s Kit of No Parts. This site has suggestions for ways to incorporate electronics into a lot of other materials, such as wood and cloth, to make more engaging interactive objects. Things like speakers built out of seashells are a lot closer to art than useful products, but that’s part of the intent. It also inspires me to build a device that records and plays sound, and hide it inside a very large seashell as an art project.
The second site is called How To Get What You Want, but that’s rather predicated on you wanting fabric sensors, odd conductive materials (felting wool!), hacked toys, and so forth. There are a lot of good ideas here, waiting to be remixed into other cool stuff.
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