In my second little project today, I modified the circuit I built for the Flash etch-a-sketch, by adding another potentiometer and 3 LEDs, each of which represents the voltage of each pot (using pulse-width modulation to ‘dim’ the LED).
Each pot is responsible for either the pitch, yaw, or roll of a cube in PV3D.
Simple stuff that’s been done before! I think I need to think of something a bit more interesting now 
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Well, I had nothing much better to do today, so after sorting out my previous problems with Arduino and Flash, I thought i’d connect 2 potentiometers to the Arduino board, and make….. Yezzer-sketch!
Here’s the on-screen result:
The very simple circuit:
Video:
I need to get some better potentiometers, these are pretty rubbish.
Yey for making … stuff!
Over the last year, i’ve heard a lot about Arduino, so I was quite gutted when I missed out on both the Arduino talk at BarcampBrighton2, and also on the Arduino session a few days later at FlashBrighton!
Nevertheless, I had to get an Arduino board and start experimenting. Jo had a few Arduino boards, so kindly dropped one round for me.
For me, the most interesting aspect is using the Arduino in conjunction with Flash, sending and recieiving data betwen the two. I realy like the twitter > flash > arduino > LCD display that Mario made. I found it quite inspirational.
Getting Flash and the Arduino talking is initially very, very easy. It takes no time at all to initially write your first “hello world” app - in this case a blinking LED. After that, I turned my attention to reading the output of a potentiometer, and display that in Flash. Again, this is very easy, espically when people have done it already, and you can copy and paste their code! Thanks Beltran, Brett, and Aral for sharing your code!
In no time I had a potentiometer controlling the brightness of an LED, and the Arduino writing the data to the serial port, which Flash was trace()ing to the output window.
Nothing’s that easy though, right? Indeed. I’m expecting values between 0 and 1023, and specifically in this instance, around 1023. This is what I got:
15:37:53:104 = 102
15:37:53:135 = 3
15:37:54:104 = 1023
15:37:55:119 = 1023
15:37:56:135 = 1023
15:37:57:119 = 102
15:37:57:135 = 3
15:37:58:119 = 1023
15:37:59:135 = 1023
15:38:0:151 = 1023
15:38:1:135 = 10
15:38:1:151 = 23
15:38:2:151 = 1023
How strange. As you can see, occasionally the output is split over more than one line. It also does the same on my laptop.
After a lot of hair-pulling, I’ve made a couple of examples, which you can test if you wish. You’ll need to change the port to the one serproxy (or equivalent) is set up to use.
Arduino code:
[code]
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop()
{
Serial.println(”hello”);
delay(100);
}
[/code]
Actionscript 3 code:
[code]
import flash.events.*;
import flash.net.Socket;
trace(”__AS3 Example__”);
var socket:Socket = new Socket(”localhost”,5335);
socket.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.SOCKET_DATA, socketDataHandler);
function socketDataHandler(event:ProgressEvent):void {
var now = new Date();
trace(now.getHours()+”:”+now.getMinutes()+”:”+now.getSeconds()+”:”+now.getMilliseconds()+” = “+socket.readUTFBytes(socket.bytesAvailable));
}
[/code]
Actionscript 2 code:
[code]
trace(”__AS2 Example__”);
var socket:XMLSocket = new XMLSocket();
socket.connect(”localhost”,5335);
socket.onData = function (data) {
var now = new Date();
trace(now.getHours()+”:”+now.getMinutes()+”:”+now.getSeconds()+”:”+now.getMilliseconds()+” = “+data);
}
[/code]
AS3 Output:
12:10:43:140 = hello
12:10:43:234 = hel
12:10:43:250 = lo12:10:43:359 = hello
12:10:43:453 = h
12:10:43:453 = ello12:10:43:562 = hello
AS2 Output:
12:11:25:406 = hello
12:11:25:515 = hello
12:11:25:625 = hello
12:11:25:718 = hello
12:11:25:812 = hello
12:11:25:921 = hello
AS3 has odd output, and AS2 has the expected output. It’s almost as if ProgressEvent.SOCKET_DATA is called too frequently?
I’ve looked at this, which may be a similar problem. Here’s my post on the Arduino forum which I wrote as I experienced the problem.
In the end I found AS3Glue, which “is an ActionScript 3 library that enables communication between Flash/Flex/AIR applications and Arduino boards”. This changes the way in which AS3 and the Arduino communicate, and fortunately solves the problem described above.
If you use AS3glue, you’ll also need to use the Arduino Firmata firmware. The firmware page also briefly mentions:
It turns out that the USB-serial drivers are optimized for fast bulk data transfer, and those optimizations actually wreak havoc with the timing of the messages over the USB-serial.
Perhaps that’s the problem i’ve experienced? If I can, i’d like to find out exactly what’s going on, but for now, as3glue will suffice 
If you can, please have a test and let me know if you get the same output!
I’ve been insanely busy at work recently, working on a huge Flash game for Channel 4. I’ve kept schtum about it all, with only a few hints to what’s been going on to the outside world.
On the 11th Feb, Channel 4 released a preview of Episode 1 to the world, and it’s been picked up by the blogosphere. My favourite moments so far have been seeing my dead body on the front page of Kotaku, and seeing my fat arse on the front page of my favourite site BoingBoing.
To my fellow programming friends, it’s all ActionScript 3, and no, I didn’t do the entire thing by myself 
Be warned, there’s a few bugs in this *preview* release. Oh, and there’s 4 more episodes to come in the very near future.
To show the grandkids, when i’m grey and old:
Team Littleloud rocks!
UPDATE: The Worthing Herald replies! See below..
When I heard a plane had crashed round the corner from my house, I had to go take a look, although I did feel like I was ‘rubbernecking’ 
I took a few photos of the crash site while I was there.
I just had a comment from someone on Flickr saying that the Worthing Herald is using my photo (it’s the last one in the series) and attributing it to a “Jay Kay Kappa”. You can see the original picture above, or see the flickr page here.
Massive co-incidence? They look identical to me, even the individuals postures and the position of the smoke.
If my photo is wrongly attributed, I wonder any of these photos are actually by “Jay Kay Kappa”?
UPDATE: The Worthing Herald replies!
Jon from The Worthing Herald has been in contact with both Nic and myself, to let us know that they received these photographs through press channels, and they then discussed a fee with Jay.
I can’t believe this guy has been going around collecting photos from the public, then passing them off as his own, thereby profiting from someone’s death!
It’s worth noting that I have been offered a fee, which I will donate to a relevant charity, most likely the Royal Air Forces Association
I’d like to thank The Worthing Herald for helping sort this out quickly and fairly, thanks guys!
Littleloud are sending Paul and me to Flashforward in Boston, where we’ve been nominated for the Game award! Yey! Fingers crossed.
Last time we were nominated for an award we won it!
I’ll post a few updates on here while i’m over there, and also i’ll update Twitter
Wonder what good things there are to do in Boston?
UPDATE: The iPod has been returned! See below..
I found an iPod lying on the street on the way to work this morning.
Personally, if I lost my iPod i’d be gutted, so i’ll do what I can to find the rightful owner and return it to them!
If this fails, i’ll either take it to the Police, or ask Apple if they can help.
In all honesty, if I hand it in to the police, I wouldn’t be suprised if it was “accidentally” lost..
So far i’ve posted to a couple of local mailing lists. I’ve checked out lostipods.com but no luck so far.
The most interesting thing is that the iPod has photos on it - what with Brighton having such a close-knit community, i’m sure that if I post a photo from this iPod, someone is going to recognise them, and might be able to help me find who the iPod belongs to!
I’ll print out some sheets of A4 and stick them up near where I found it.
If you recognise the people in the photo, or can give me some info on this, then email me at: foundipodinbrighton{at}googlemail{dot}com
Now just in case you’re thinking of blagging this and claiming it as your own, don’t even think about it! This iPod is peronalised in so many ways, i’ll be asking anyone who says it’s theirs a lot of questions to help identify it as their own!
Ok, here’s the photos:
Recognise them? Get in touch!
[edited to remove one photo as some people thought it was a bit too personal - fair play]
UPDATE: 24 hours later, it’s been returned!
It seems that a post i sent to BNM was seen by a certain Carl Hodler, who happened to see that someone on Facebook had set their status to “…is pining for her lost ipod..” - he then contacted her, she contacted me, and the rest is history!
I met up with Lucy this morning, returned the iPod, and now i’m in the possession of a rather nice bottle of 2003 Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon - thanks Lucy! Oh, and most importantly, good karma!
Edit: Actually Al read it from my post on FlashBrighton, who then sent it round Kerb
Linden Labs are setting up offices in Brighton, and I see Second Life mentioned almost every day by someone, so I thought I might as well see what all the fuss is about.
I did try to give it a go a long time ago, but was put off when I had to put my card number in, so I bailed. However, they’ve cleverly decided to remove that part of the process, so I signed up, downloaded the client, and logged in..
I’ve played a lot of 3D games over the years, but I realise this isn’t a game, so although comparisons are inevitable, they’re not really that valid. Yes the graphics are of Quake 2 standard. Yes there’s lag. No, the whole thing doesn’t feel that refined. But I kinda like it.
I haven’t signed up yet.. but it’s not that expensive, and it might be interesting to give it a go for a while. I really enjoyed building things in second life (lets not ask what i built), and things can be scripted. I had a quick look at the language, and it doesnt seem that bad.
There’s such huge potential in Second Life and it’s inevitable clones, that it would be madness to ignore or dismiss it. I’ll be logging in again soon, so let me know if you’re already there, or thinking of joining!
Well, that’s what Aral says. Personally, I disagree!
He asks:
My reply is here. and while I was writing my reply, I saw this on Aral’s site. How web 2.0…
I am famous, originally uploaded by yezzer.
Twitter is …strange. A while ago I had this printed in the guardian. After checking out the online article I saw they had misspelled my name, so I let them know
I’ve just seen that they’ve changed my name to the correct spelling. Hurrah.