XBMC and Revival of WiFi Radio!

Well WiFi radio kind of fell off the face of the earth for awhile.  I had a chance to get a free XBMC (Xbox Media Center) kit from Element14 and I figured it would make a great revival of WiFi radio.  Here is an unboxing video of the XBMC kit

and here is a picture of the Pi
DSC01325

Hopefully I’ll get to post more updates and work on this project throughout the summer. I’m also doing more projects with Ben Heck including working on another project for an episode as well as possibly doing a Kickstarter project. More details on that later.

Another Ben Heck Show Appearance

Well, this will be a quick little post, mostly for a location to drop some files.  I made another Ben Heck Show appearance, this brings me up to 3.  The video can be seen here

 

All the videos can be seen here

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLty7pvZZzbVi8Ud1Tei8N7pI25UojzUFa

 

 

It was a cool experience as it always is.  Some guys from Engadget were there to film as well and it was cool to talk with them.  Also Ben and I got in an abbreviation contest which was fun. VHDL stands for VHSIC Hardware Description Language, with VHSIC standing for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit.  That is the coolest one I know.

 

Anyways, a few people have asked for the code and such so I will embed it at the bottom.  I have the Android code and the TI Launchpad firmware code, both in separate zips.  The Android code was written for either Jellybean or ICS, don’t remember which, and that was for the rotate command, like the pot stir app.  The APK is in the zip file.  I didn’t take the time to really document as I’ve been a busy guy.  Hopefully I’ll get to do a life update and an update on my ShapeOko CNC machine shortly.

 

Anyways, here you go

Android SANTA Project

TI Arduino Code Files

3D Printing-Minecraft-Shapeways

Next week is my Wife’s birthday.  She loves Minecraft so I decided to get her 3D printed versions of our Minecraft characters from Minetoys.  Minetoys uses Shapeways as their “factory”.  Shapeways 3D prints parts via several methods, these use printing a binder (glue) onto powder, then put more powder, print more binder, more powder, etc.  See more info here.

The parts came in today, see below

My character looks a bit like Cthulhu (looks better in the game with extending tentacle head) and hers was a diamond block based character.  The back of my character is wings

She was very excited and loved them.  As I have been looking into these technologies, I was kind of bothered by the mistakes on the right arms of the characters.  Mine has a big blob of material and hers has a divot in it.  I am not sure if this is the best quality powder-binder printing can do, or if it was a just a bad print.  Either way, it was an experience as my first ordered print and I’m pretty satisfied overall.

Skin files

 Colecago

 Kiloari

 

Took a bit of reverse engineering to get these.  To see any player’s Minecraft Skin, use the following format

http://minecraft.net/skin/username.png

ex

http://minecraft.net/skin/Colecago.png

 

Stay tuned for 3D printing and CNC update/preview!