Neato XV Signature pro vision blocked error

I got this robotic vacuum cleaner a while ago. Don't remember when I bought it. Maybe 4 months ago?

Two days ago it started having this annoying error, "My vision was blocked. Please press OKAY (4027)"

Just pressing OKAY will start it again, and it will run for 10 seconds and stop again. It can stop anywhere, no black or shiny objects nearby. At first I was afraid something was broken. But then I remember that I have never fully discharged my battery, as it says in the manual, you should do that sometimes but not too often.

As with almost every manual you read something like "Make sure the battery is fully discharged before charging it", "avoid quick, short charges" etc. A lot of people say that this is not true.

But I have a feeling that it might be true, well it should be true anyway. Lol, a "feeling" is not really proof of anything, but just my intuition. So I did fully discharge the battery by keeping it away from the charger and using spot-clean a few times until it complained on low batteries. Then I waited till it just shut down. And trying to start it again would just turn it off.

Then I let it charge over night and clean in the morning according to schedule. And it worked! It cleaned my entire apartment without any errors.

But then I messed up again, I read somewhere that it was better to shut the unit off completely when not using it. By switching off the power switch that is hidden in the dustbin compartment. I don't clean everyday, maybe just a few times a week, so what is the point having it in the charger all the time. But I think that it reset the memory and everything. It did reset the clock *grrr*.
And maybe it reset any memory it has on my apartment layout, which I guess it has. I started it again and then it wanted to charge the battery again, just like it was an empty battery. Although it was a fully charged battery. Overcharging is never good I thought. So I was a little bit afraid that I had f*ed it up.

I let it clean my apartment again. And it was going around randomly like it did the first few times. Getting the vision error I think once or twice. I decided to let the battery fully discharge once more and charge over night. So I was hopeful this morning that it would not get the vision error, but it did :( 5 or 6 times. But just pressing the button will make it go again.

I hate it when things brakes. Usually you're afraid it is completely broken and goes back with it to the store. When the error itself sometimes is just very easy.

I noticed that when it starts to get the vision error, the battery symbol shows a completly depleted battery. So therefore I think that this is a battery problem.

There is some battery calibration procedure in the Neato. I don't know if that is only for use when replacing the old battery with a completely new battery. I need to check what the manual says about that.

But I suspect that the program in the Neato "thinks" that there is more battery power left than there really is, resulting in lasers and the spinning thing it sits on doesn't get enough power. But I am just guessing. I'll read about battery calibration, If I keep getting this error I might buy a new battery. If that doesn't fix the problem. I will make use of the extra insurance I paid for it.

Chinatown

I can really recommend this game. It is probably my #1 favorite boardgames.  Even if I have only played it two times in my life so far :)

I was introduced to this game by some friends at school. I thought it was so fun I had to buy it. But it wasn't available anywhere. I finally found a copy that i bought and recieved a couple of weeks ago.

I played it with some friends at my place. And it was a long time I had so much fun at home :)

The game can easily be explained as being similiar to Monopoly, but it is actually more simple than monopoly I think. And the strategic part of the game, trading, is much much more fun. On the board there are streets and buildings. A difference from Monopoly and Chinatown is that Monopoly can go on and on almost forever. While Chinatown only has six rounds, or years in the game. This might seem short, but I think it is just enough to make it fun and not to tedious and long. Monopoly can get quite boring, while Chinatown is very lively and fun. The part of the game where there is trade is the most fun, and takes the most time.

Each round, or year, consists of a few steps. The first step is to give the players some buildings where they later can build stores and restaurants. On the board, each building has a number. Players get a certain amount of buildingcards depending on how many player and which year we are in. Each buildingcard has a number corresponding to a building on tje board. A number of buildingcards also has to be thrown in this step.

So now each player owns a few buildings and place their colored markers on the buildings they own and the buildingcards are tossed.

The next step is to pick business tiles. From a black bag each player picks a number of business tiles. Depending on how many players and which round we are in.

If I remember correctly now. I think this is the part where you place the tiles. Each tile has a number on it. So for example a restaurant with a number six, needs 6 restaurant tiles together on the board to make a complete restaurant. In the end of the year, you get your income. There is a chart describing how much an incomplete store gets, vs a complete one etc.

But the most fun part of the game is trading. I dont remember if trading comes before placing the tiles or after. Meaning the first round there would be no store tiles placed. Just owned buildings. Anyway, when trading anything goes. You can trade a building for money, some store tiles for a building, a building for a building, or whatever you need and what you have to trade with.

You want to own buildings close together to make your business larger. So if another player owns the building next to yours you might want to buy that. Or maybe he wants more of a certain business type, a fish store for instance, he/she might be willing to trade for 50,000 and a fish store.

Don't forget the two tiles, when they have a store tile placed on it will generate 20,000 income each year, but dont forget how many years we have left to play. Well, the trading discussions can go on for a while and it's very fun :)

After all trading is done, we move on to the next round. And the players get their income for the business that they have built.

Deep Dream

I have been experimenting with the Google deep dream neural network.

https://github.com/google/deepdream

These are some of my favorite results so far

Here is another result with an image from Eraserhead as guide

And this was the guide

A picture of a Cow

And some other cows outside my window

A picture of my cat.. Or dog? :)

And another random one.

Same image, just at different resolution.

Dogs, dogs, dogs and even more more dogs seems to be something that is trained into this network.

Lab upgrade, new projects and cancer

I have not updated my blog in a long time. I have had serious problems with my health. In 2010 I was cured from Nasopharynx cancer. However, I recieved a very strong dose of radiation therapy that has caused a new cancer, osteo sarcoma in my cheekbone. Half of my cheekbone has been removed surgically, but a tumour still remains. I have tried different types of chemo treatments, where all of them have resulted in seriuos blood infections (Sepsis). Currently, I am spending my time at home, without getting any type of treatment.

I have started to eat apricot seeds, hoping that might do anything. I'm not really the kind of person who believes in non proven alternative medecine. But it's really no harm in a few apricot seeds in this situation. All I can do is hope.

Next week I will test a small dose of radiation therapy, to see if it has any effect on the tumour. No guarantee it will work, but I can hope.

I am spending my time doing things that I love to do. Alot of the projects I have written about before on this blog have kind of died. That happens alot with projects, I guess for everyone. They grow too big, and then you get bored :/
The only way is to just keep working I guess. But I don't really feel like working on those right now.

I have used some saved up money to upgrade my home electronics lab. And there are plenty of things that I would like to do. I bought some new equipment, a Keysight 34465A multimeter, Keysight E3643A Lab Supply, HP 33120A Signal Generator and a Keysight 1733C LCR meter. Later I also installed an antistatic mat on my desk. I think it looks really great now :)

I have not really been doing anything useable yet. I have been trying a CP2102 USB to Serial chip, added a PIC18f26K80 and I am about to connect it to a BMI160 acceleration and gyro sensor. For no real purpose really, I just want to do it because it is fun. I might use the BMI160 for some project later. I have been thinking about building a quadcopter/drone. So I guess I need a acc/gyro sensor for control of the motors, sensing tilt and speed/acceleration etc...

I also want to do something with my Nixie Tubes that I bought, probably a clock with temperature and humidity sensors, outdoors and indoors. I have SHT25 for temperature and humidity and I bought some modules from Microchip for MiWi which I will try if I can get it working.

I have been thinking about maybe making an analog synthesizer if possible, or not too difficult. Also a tesla coil has been an old dream of mine :)

Here is a picture of the messy looking prototype board, and it works :)

I just bought the New 3DS

I just got the smaller version of the New 3DS, not the XL. The other smaller version with faceplates.

I have been playing Xenoblade. And I think, actually, that the smaller version is too small, it kind of sucks. I bought the white one because I liked my old White 3DS XL so much, I didn't want to buy a black or blue one.

I wanted to keep my white, because I really liked it. the New 3DS XL isn't available in white. :(

So I got the smaller New 3DS which is available in white. To be honest I regret not buying a New 3DS XL, because I can hardly see anything on the small version. It is a strain on my eyes, the text in Xenoblade is too small. It's like the game is made to be played on the XL version.

Another thing about the faceplatable New 3DS, the plastic kind of looks cheap and seems to have lower quality compared to the old 3DS XL.

I hope Nintendo will release a White New 3DS XL later.

Millennium Falcon in OpenGL using objParser

I dowloaded a Millennium Falcon model from blendswap and used my objParser program to convert it into OpenGL C code.

I used this Millennium Falcon model by KuhnIndustries http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/48469

This is a rendered image of the model, rendered in Blender

Export the model into .obj in Blender. And this is a video of the GUI mode in objParser.

Convert Blender models into OpenGL code

I have been trying to make games lately, my first attempt was to try and make a 2d game by rendering a character model I made with an Orthographic camera in different angles. The result was this



I didn't really know what to do with that though..

But I also wanted to try and convert my Blender object into c-code. There are probably lots of scripts to be found out there. But I want to do something on my own.

I made a wavefront .obj parser in Flex and Bison that I used to convert the file into c code.

https://github.com/Spekkio/objParser

I made this spaceship in Blender



Then I converted it into c code using objParser and implemented that code into a program.



There are lots of things that can be done with the objParser tool, for example texture locations can be exported, colors etc. I've been thinking about implementing LUA support, to be able to write scripts for the export routines. To make it possible to output to any type you wanted to, VBO's, JavaScript, etc. It would also be possible to implement it as a loader.
I am a little bit worried about the linked list that I wrote though, I don't know how well that will work on very large scenes. Pre parsing a file to check how much memory a file needs before maybe a good thing, I don't know ?