Thought I had better write another update before everyone got bored and stopped visiting my site….. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I really crack myself up sometimes, what with my awesome jokes and stuff (whatever).

Anyway, this afternoon I had another crack at that remote LED display project I have been working on for the last 4 months or so. Basically it was to be a bluetooth enabled 16×16 computer controlled RGB LED display. I originally wanted a way to see the weather (and other things) for the day just by looking at something on the wall and the actual smarts were to be in the computer which just sends frames of data to this thing to display. Sort of like a giant wall mounted icon

I haven’t actually touched it for ages so it took a while to work out what state I had left it in but now its all working again and I have been working on the control software. So far I have a little program that looks like an icon editor that I can use to draw shapes and then send them to the display.

The next step is to encapsulate this functionality into a C# library that will allow me to add frames together into sequences with appropriate pauses and transitions and then run the whole thing through the display with one function call. Also that way I can reuse the functionality in different apps that may want to use the display in different ways.

I still need to set up the bluetooth module I have (it is currently all running through USB) but that shouldn’t be too hard it will basically act like a serial port exactly like the current USB connection.

(The control software)

(The display - running on a single 8×8 LED module at the moment)

The Apple iPhone is finally out and the world has gone crazy.

.
.
.
.
.

Still no cure for AIDS.

Funnily enough Cisco has decided to sue them after all for trademark infringement (they actually own the ‘iPhone’ trademark) even though they had been in talks to prevent it.

I don’t want Apple to be bought by Cisco and sold to Microsoft for $10 as someone suggested today (after all, they DO make nicer products than anyone else at the moment) but it seems like they deserver a bit of a bitchslap in this case given that they sue everyone who has anything podlike or applesque in their names these days.

Maybe Cisco will only send their work experience ninja assassin lawyers to sort this one out…