Baby monitor

While preparing to be a father for the first time, I have found most baby products to be more expensive than would otherwise be desirable, given its ephemeral usefulness. Considering the full blown economical crisis that we face today, spending copious ammounts of money in things that soon become useless, seems a little too light headed and perhaps irresponsible.

AMIRO - more enhancements.

After a few months of posting abstinence here are some fresh new things to show this summer. The android application has been dramatically improved with new features and better visual layout. Additionally a portable video screen have been build, in this case sporting a 4.3" tft panel, a 1.2 GHz analog video receiver (originally used in a fixed manner), a LiPo battery, and a custom made battery voltage warning circuit (yes, LiPo batteries are particularly susceptible to damage under deep discharge situations).

Controlling Amiro (the name I have baptized the car) from an Android phone (HTC Desire)

While the Java PC application is useful for testing and controlling the robotic car while sitting in a chair, for on the field fun a more practical solution had to adopted. So using a popular platform that Android is, I decided to port the (Java Swing) application I already had, to run on any Android phone with a accelerometers and a Wifi connection. As the car behaves like an access point, all it is necessary is to associate the phone to it, and run the application.

Just about as fun as it is to drive it, coding the client in Android was quick an fun experience.
The interface had to contain just the essential elements. While the target hardware has abundant resolution (480x800), like in any mobile platform, screen real estate is always a concern. As such I had to economize on the components to be displayed. The result was a relatively simple UI: