BoB Juggling Festival, and when Juggling meets Phones
This is Jon Peat, British Young Juggler Of The Year 2006, probably one of the most interesting ball jugglers I’ve seen in a long time. He was trying out a new routine on stage at the BoB Juggling Festival this weekend. There are some more photos from the show in this album here.
However, the most productive part of the day for me, was my chat to Tarim about my idea for a telephone based siteswap validator.
The Background:
For those that don’t know, siteswap is a mathematical language for describing juggling patterns. The idea is that you can use a string of numbers to represent the pattern. Each number represents a throw event, with the number determining how many beats later the object is thrown again. Eg a 3 means that the object being thrown at that time, is next thrown 3 beats later.
Some strings of numbers are valid juggling patterns, for example 531 (which is a 3 object pattern) but not all strings are valid. For example, 540 is not a valid siteswap, as the 5 object is next thrown in 5 beats time, but the 4 is next thrown in 4 beats time. This means that they’re both thrown by the same hand at the same time. There’s a collision.
There’s a lot more to siteswap than that, if you’re interested in all the gory details start here with this wikipeida article about siteswap.
It’s handy some times to be able to check if a string of digits is a valid juggling pattern or not, telephone dials have digits, so they can be used as an input device. They also have earpieces, so can be used as an output device.
The Plan:
To build a device which you can plug an old rotary dial phone into, which allows you to do the following.
- Pick up handset
- Listen for a dialing tone
- Dial in the siteswap you want to validate
- Hang up handset
- Wait a few seconds
- The phone will then ring
- When you answer the phone, a recorded message plays telling you if the number you dialed is a valid siteswap or not.
I had a firm idea about how to do all those steps apart from step 7, getting a microcontroler to play speech isn’t trivial. Talking to Tarim though gave me an idea of how to get around that though by using a cheap MP3 player. Result!
I’ve built a circuit which interfaces to the phone line, and can detect hook state and count dial pulses. I can get audio onto the phone line. I know *how* to make the phone ring, but am lacking the components to do so.
In short, I’m *soo* close!
Posted in Experiments, Phones, Photos | 2 Comments »
Robin
Wow. I’m really hitting these massively inspired photographic masterpieces right out of the ballpark aren’t I.
Must… Pull… My… Finger… Out…
I think I might have a go at this weeks photo-challenge though, I’ve even got a couple of ideas brewing, but then again I might have a crack at some people photos this weekend if my houseguests are up for it.
Posted in Photos | Comments Off
Direct Hit
I took loads of photos at lunchtime, I mean almost 150 frames trying to get a shot of a direct hit during a snowball fight. It’s surprisingly hard to get the timing right, and to get the camera to focus on the right place (and not some random snowflake which happens to be between the subject and the lens)
I’ve just been looking through them, and the above is the cleanest shot I’ve got.
You know what though? I shot the whole lot at ISO800 by accident. Gah! How many times have I told myself – “Check your settings *before* you shoot!”
That’s what I get for not going out shooting in over a month.
Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »
Connecting my Opera 206 to a printer
Hurrah!
It’s only taken me 3 days, but I’ve managed to get my Opera 206 to dump its config out of its RS232 port. It’s designed to be connected to a printer, but I don’t have a printer with a serial port handy so I’ve got it hooked up to my computer instead.
Here’s how you hook it all up:
RS232 (9 Pin DSUB)
|
Opera 206 |
| CTS (Pin 8) |
RTS |
| RX (Pin 2) |
TXD |
| GND (Pin 5) |
GND |
Optional: Connect DSR(Pin 6) and DTR(Pin 4) together on the RS232 plug. (Note, this may be needed for printers, but it seems to work OK without)
Why did that take you 3 days?
Although the above makes perfect logical sense, it’s not what the manual says to do. This is a perfect lesson in “when is it appropriate to trust the manual, and when is it appropriate to think the situation through from first principals”
Just for my reference, here’s the current config of my Opera 206, which looks a lot like the default config:
ispms@super:~$ cu -l /dev/ttyS0 -s 4800
Connected.
Ext Line Number Dialled Duration
Hr Min Sec
--------------------------------------
-----------------------------
Extension Assignment
1 2 3 4 5 6
-----------------------------
Day Service | | | | | |
Line 1 X | | | | |
| | | | | |
Day Service | | | | | |
Line 2 X | | | | |
| | | | | |
Night Service | | | | | |
Line 1 X | | | | |
| | | | | |
Night Service | | | | | |
Line 2 X | | | | |
| | | | | |
Outgoing Assignment | | | | | |
Line 1 X X X X X X
| | | | | |
Outgoing Assignment | | | | | |
Line 2 X X X X X X
| | | | | |
Barring | | | | | |
| | | | | |
Data Protection | | | | | |
------------------------------
Line Programming
1 2
------------------------------
MF : X X
Decadic :
------------------------------
------------------------------
PABX :
Trunk : X X
------------------------------
Ext Line Number Dialled Duration
Hr Min Sec
--------------------------------------
Exception Table
---------------
Ext Line Number Dialled Duration
Hr Min Sec
--------------------------------------
~.
Disconnected.
ispms@super:~$
Oh, and don’t worry – there will be photos of the lunchtime snowball fight along in a minute, I just wanted to write this up before I forget what I did.
Posted in Phones | Comments Off
