Project Madness

[Thomas McGrath III]

So, after coming up with the Flow Control for serial communications and playing with the Arduino Uno for a couple of days I now have added the ability to present Commands and Arguments from LC to the Arduino Uno. This could have been where we were a few weeks ago if the read until EOF worked with the Uno and if we had more Buffer tools in LC. That said this is actually so much better than the MacBrick and previous versions of I/O boards.

Madness:
So I can read the Uno and send to the Uno and then now I can send commands w/args to the Uno. What can I do with it?

I know! I'll write a program that reads the brightness of the screen on my TV and since most Commercials are brighter than the show or movie I am watching I can determine if a commercial is on and turn down the sound for a minute or two and then turn it back up after the commercial. I take photoresistor readings and based on those look up the time and channel using EyeTV for the channel (TV is mirrored on pc) and the time from LC and the Tv Show that is on from TitanTV. I determine that the brightness should be a commercial via how long and how bright the screen is (very suspect code here) at this moment. And if it is a commercial then I use iRed and an irTrans blaster to turn down the volume. Now I wait until either the brightness gets darker (movie is back on) with a check every 30 seconds or a preset time passes and then turn the volume back up. I print to the screen in LC to let me know what show and time it is and that we think it is a commercial. I flash some LEDs and buzz a piezo to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star (since I can take the lack of noise now that the TV volume is down). Then the volume comes back up and we wait again. If I quickly change the channel up and then back down then I can also see that the TV was muted on my iPhone using eyeTV's iPhone app.

Well, since my code thinks most flashes are commercials and I have very bad timing issues on both the reading of serial data and with my logic code in LC the Tv goes up really LOUD and after a bit it goes down really low then up really LOUD and then down really low. That is why I call this Madness V4.2

But hey the next project is the fully autonomous lawnmower with remote control options via the iPhone, network, ethernet shield and motor shield which will serve double duty as an ice fishing shanty mover and GPS ice fishing spot locator.


-- Tom McGrath III
http://lazyriver.on-rev.com
3mcgrath at comcast.net