Dragon's Eye News

I have been suitably chastized by Jean and while Susan and I drink Jack and cokes here's what we did with Dwayne and Margie today.

This has been a seriously dance-filled day.

It started out with a workshop led by Padraig McEneany on the Antrim Square Set followed by the Aherlow Set, trailed by the Tory Island Set and part of the Sliabh gCua set. The first one is a very short, but very fun set that the people back home can look forward to learning soon.

At some point during the workshop someone out in the crowd had a senior moment as observed by Padraig but Susan said it sounded like someone had had a senior movement. We were both glad it turned out not to be the latter.

Between the workshops we wandered around a bit, took pictures of the taffy house and the Sea Witch Festival.

After a quick slice of pizza it was back to the afternoon workshop to finish out the sets.

We had time for Susan to run about town while I slept and then met Margie and Dwayne for dinner and then back to dancing!

I don't know how many sets we danced. Most of them because it seemed that most were ones we had done before or they were sets we'd learned that day. We both love it when someone calls a set because even with an unfamilar one we can figure most things out on the fly by listening to what's coming up.

We closed the evening by dragging our very tired legs upstairs and soothing them with some Jack and Coke.

Here's the last dancing picture for the day.

Once we'd sort of settled in back at the room, with the sound of the breakers on the beach, we were wandering through the TV channels looking for something that was worth watching. One does have to be careful about flipping through TV channels late at night though. You're likely to hear "What's the secret to moisturizing your hair?" click "Cleaning your nose."

Ewwwww.

On that note... Goodnight.

Technorati : Cape May, Irish, Music, Rehoboth, dance, set
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It's relatively early in the morning given that we went to bed about 1am. I'm sure many other people stayed up later but we were done.

After a snack of pop-tarts which is a bit of a story in itself, we collapsed and woke up to this:

It doesn't look all that different from yesterday's picture but it's a wet windy morning. Perfect for staying inside and dancing all day.

First up is breakfast followed by a workshop with Padraig and Roisin followed by another workshop with Padraig and Roisin!

Oh, and a bite to eat in between.

Technorati : Cape May, Irish, Music, Rehoboth, dance, set
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Wow.

I'll say it again.

Wow.

More details later but for now, rest.

I'll leave you with this though.

Technorati : Cape May, Irish, Music, Rehoboth, dance, set
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The on-board software is finally (no, really) ready to be wired up in the lab and I expect to do that tomorrow sometime.

The prototype controller is shown below with LEDs in place of connections to the relay board. I'll likely leave those in as I'm wiring the two together so that I can clearly see that both ends are working. The lit LED below is a temporary status light that shows me the software on the Arduino is running.

The resistors are all 10K pull down resistors for input from the several switches that I've got on my workbench for turning laser and shutter power on/off. The 10K pot serves as a stand-in for the light sensor that sits above the table and is used to verify that the shutter opened as expected. Two voltage regulators provide 9v and 5v for various applications. I'll be expanding their circuits soon to add diode protection and capacitor smoothing. An external board has TIP20's for controlling the 1W LED status lights out in the hallway. At the moment they just blink or are steady-on but with the Arduino I can make them fade and add sound back back to the experience with an external piezo speaker. I miss having an R2D2 in the hallway like I did with the Lego RCX controller I started out with.

I've got one digital and one analog pin open so sometime soon I expect I'll be expanding the system with more monitoring and someday with a touch screen or something similar.

The Arduino software is capable of driving the lab all by itself but since it doesn't have a UI, I still need to use the PC to provide an easy to use input interface.

I've updated the HoloController software with an Arduino driver that simply sends port commands like the K8000 driver did and otherwise still controls the lab and exposures. Soon I'll modify the PC software so the Arduino handles all the work which means the interface will move to an all-serial command set that can be more easily ported to other languages. The protocols are all written and tested now.

Woot! for Arduino!

A view of the table is available over here.

Technorati : arduino, automation, hologram, holography, lab
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I was in the general area so I stopped by the St. Charles Oktober Fest.

As a customer recently put it. "It didn't suck."

Unfortunately there wasn't much German music and less dancing.

I'll have to get my dancing fix tomorrow night though as the tent was full of "sitters."

Technorati : German, beer, silly
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Now that I've posted about something annoying, here's something pleasant. Phoenix Sky Harbor airport has free wifi now. I'm sure it didn't the last time I was here.

Thanks guys.

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