Aneal Khimani http://anealkhimani.com/Blog I'll help you melt your electronics Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:16:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Life doesn’t stop coming at you http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2012/02/25/life-doesnt-stop-coming-at-you/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2012/02/25/life-doesnt-stop-coming-at-you/#comments Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:11:52 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/?p=148 In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t posted a new blog entry here in several months. Please believe that it isn’t because I haven’t had anything interesting happen to me since my last post. Quite the contrary.
I’ve written several interesting applications that I’m pretty proud of. I’ve been killing it at the office and have finally organized my life enough that I appear to outsiders to be an adult.

I’ve written a few times before about the PHP jukebox I was working on. Well that is a reality now. It’s a fairly slick little application. It works pretty similarly to how some of those digital jukeboxes you see at the bar work. There’s a screen that displays several album covers. You click an album cover, you are presented with the tracks on that album. You choose a track and blamo, it adds the track to the current playlist. My version has a few extra bells and whistles too. It tracks all the plays across every album. So you can see which songs/albums/artists are most popular. Also, it constantly tracks what song is currently playing and offers suggestions at what other songs on the jukebox are similar to it (if Metallica is playing it displays “You might also like Guns-N’-Roses). Snazzy.

But of course, I’m never satisfied. I’m already in the planning stages for version 5. Gonna be a complete new build from the ground up. Since HTML 5 has that snazzy new <audio> API, I’m gonna leverage that power and make the browser play the music natively. No longer will I have to piggyback on Winamp for my audio playing capabilities. This iteration of the jukebox will have the ability to access the Youtube API to pull the official music videos of some of the songs in the list and will offer the option of showing the video of the song (letting Youtube control the audio as well).
I’m gonna try to find a good online Lyric database to populate that data for each track in the jukebox as well. So, you could theoretically end all those arguments about exactly what Jimi Hendrix meant when he sang “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”.

I’m also going to split out my albums into their own table in the database this time around. This was a pretty big limitation in my previous version. Also, I’ve added an ‘active’ field to all songs and albums too. That way I can control exactly what songs/albums or combinations of the two are accessible (just in case I throw an “all ages” cookout or something; I can turn off all the 2 Live Crew). I also plan on including some interesting configurations options to control the whole beast. Limiting albums according to genre, adding an ‘attract mode’ which will play random songs at a specified interval if nobody is interacting with it, color schemes, layout schemes, turning on/off features. Should be pretty rich when it’s done. Heck, I might even make a version available online for folks to download when I’m done… We’ll see how much flexibility I decide to add in.

At any rate, it would seem that I’ve contacted a Real Estate agent who has put me in touch with a Mortgage Broker, and the wheels are spinning towards me purchasing a house later on this year. The broker says it’s just a matter of finding a place, making a down payment and signing papers. I’m currently working pretty hard on saving dough to make that down-payment part happen. Should have my goal around the end of the year. I intend on moving downtown (or close to it) so I can be closer to the office. My daily commute is pretty life-sucking.

I’m also going to seriously ramp up looking for freelance IT work. I have skills. People have IT needs. There’s no reason we can’t get those people and me together so they get solutions and I get money. Seems simple enough right?

That’s it for now.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2012/02/25/life-doesnt-stop-coming-at-you/feed/ 0 QR Code and PHP – Quick project http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/05/13/qr-code-and-php-quick-project/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/05/13/qr-code-and-php-quick-project/#comments Sat, 14 May 2011 02:11:55 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=141 Hello all,
I know I haven’t written anything useful here in a few months, but tonight as I was working on one of my big projects (PHP jukebox) I got a flash of inspiration and threw together a really quick and dirty little trick that many of you can duplicate in just a couple minutes.

Every day the line between what your TV does and your PC does is blurring. TV’s today are shipping with Netflix apps embedded, and your PC is no doubt packed with movies, music and other such media. Many of us however still have a pretty expansive DVD collection. I was thinking that I wanted a quick and easy way to watch any of my DVDs on my PC without having to take the disc outta the case, march it over to my PC, open the disc tray, launch etc. Even better, I wanted a way for ANYONE who comes over to my place to be able to do this. The answer? QR codes!

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you haven’t seen anything like this:

QR Code

This is a QR Code. It’s basically a fancy bar-code that can holds lots more interesting data than just a UPC code. If you’ve got a smartphone, odds are you have some sort of QR reader already installed, or can grab one from the app store your phone is tied to. These codes are easy to generate too. There are several places on the web that will do it for you (even Google Charts will).

Basically, you can dump a phone number into the QR Code Generator, it’ll spit out a little QR code for you to use. When you scan that code w/ your iPhone, blamo it’ll dial the phone number. You can send a vCard to the QR generator, scan the output, blamo, you’ve added a contact to your phone’s address book.

The bit I used was to encode a URL into the QR Code.

Sooooo…

I grabbed one of the DVDs from my collection (Episode I, Star Wars of course), stuck it in my PC and ripped it to AVI. Then I wrote a small PHP file that lets me launch the file. It looks something like this:

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<?php
if (isset($_GET['itemID'])){
    launchItem($_GET['itemID']);
}

function launchItem($item){
    switch($item) {
        case 0:
            exec("F:\Movies\Star Wars\Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace.avi");
            break;
    }
}

?>

Let’s go over this:
First I check with an if statement if the Super Global $_GET is set. If it is, then I analyze the data that gets passed in (‘itemID’) with a switch statement. There’s only one case to check against in this demo, but you could theoretically write as many as you want. Heck, I’d even go a step further and create a small database to grab the files from there… But I digress…

Keep in mind that you’ll need to have this php file on your web server somewhere for any of this to work. I’ve got a Windows machine and use a WAMP stack for this. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you should already know what this is.

Next step, create a QR code! So I jumped out to Google Charts and generated a URL that points to that PHP file above on my WAMP server on my local network. In my case the URL was:

192.168.1.64/xampp/sandbox/phonelaunch?itemID=0

See the ?itemID=0 bit? That’s where the itemID comes into play with the GET super global in PHP. Anyhoo, PHP tutorials isn’t what this post is about.

Then I printed the code out, taped it to the back of my DVD case and done. Now all I have to do is make sure my phone is connected to the network, scan the code w/ my iPhone and my PC starts the movie, Jar Jar Binks and all.

One could theoretically rip every DVD, CD etc they owned, create a QR code for each and attach it to the case, tweak the PHP above and have your whole media library launchable from your phone. The cool part is when my girlfriend comes over, she can decide what we watch and launch the move from her phone too. No phone side code needed at all! Heck, if you knew my outside IP, you could launch a movie on my machine! Is this slick or what?!

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/05/13/qr-code-and-php-quick-project/feed/ 1 Yea, I haven’t blogged in a minute http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/03/17/yea-i-havent-blogged-in-a-minute/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/03/17/yea-i-havent-blogged-in-a-minute/#comments Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:59:19 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=137 Sorry if you’re hanging on my every word here at my little blog. I really haven’t been moving electrons around lately. Haven’t had much inspiration for working on any projects (coding, building, hacking, nothing). There are a few things on the horizon though that I’m sure none of you are interested in. (Isn’t it cute how I still pretend like anyone reads this blog?!)

I’ve got an arcade cabinet that I traded a few older busted cabinets for. It’s some newish Street Fighter cabinet with a gigantic control panel and an equally gigantic 33″ Arcade Monitor. I’m going to basically gut this machine and build a MAME cabinet out of it.

For those of you who are unaware of what MAME stands for, it’s a “Multi Arcade Machine Emulator”. Basically I’m gonna shove a PC into the body of the cabinet (along with a kicking sound system), load a bazillion classic arcade ROMs onto it, find a tasteful front-end and start rocking the classic arcade machines. Now keep in mind that I’ve been dabbling in the arcade business for several years now and I’ve actually owned Ms Pacman, Galaga, Mortal Kombat etc. This machine however will have literally hundreds of games built into one cabinet.

Not only that, but I’m currently working on building a custom PHP Jukebox software app to let the cabinet double as a jukebox. I know there are several out there, but none that I’ve seen so far are up to my liking. I’ll just write my own, and it’ll rock.

Might have another website client too. Seems a wedding event planner is a friend of a friend and needs a serious web update. Dude, the site is literally covered up in blink tags. Scary!

More later as I find inspiration to write.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2011/03/17/yea-i-havent-blogged-in-a-minute/feed/ 0 Launch any file on your PC via your iPhone (with some PHP help) http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/11/17/launch-any-file-on-your-pc-via-your-iphone-with-some-php-help/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/11/17/launch-any-file-on-your-pc-via-your-iphone-with-some-php-help/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:08:30 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=121 I was reading one of my favorite blogs today and saw a post where some guy was able to rig up some software on his machine that he could launch via his iPhone. I thought this sounded cool to try so I gave it a shot. After a couple hours, I was able to create a custom icon on my iPhone springboard that will launch any file on my machine (executable, mp3, you name it).

I will assume you know PHP, basic HTML and how to work an iPhone.

Here’s how I got it working:
I’m running a Windows XP machine as my primary PC. I installed a WAMP stack (Apache Web Server, MySQL, PHP) first. I’m not going to get into the details of how to do this, but if you Google XAMPP, you’ll be able to have your very own full fledged web server running on your machine. This is super overkill for this project, but I also do some web development in my spare time so I needed this setup anyhow.
Once I had that running, I wrote a simple PHP script to run an external file on my machine. The code is simple:

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<?php
    exec('C:\\phonelaunch\\mst.m3u');
?>

This bit of PHP code is calling the built-in function exec(). This function takes a string argument that equals the full path to an executable file (in this case, I’m calling a Winamp Playlist; Mystery Science Theater 3000 via Shoutcast to be exact).

You might notice that the path includes double backslashes as opposed to the actual path which only has single backslashes. This is because of the way that PHP interprets slashes. They basically tell PHP to escape the next character in the string, so since our string includes backslashes, we have to include them twice to escape them.

Save this PHP file as anything you like in your WAMP wwwroot folder and launch it in your browser (http://localhost/your/www/root/path/yourfilename.php). Blamo, you should have launched the file that your script pointed to.

Next up is to create a shortcut on your iPhone to launch this PHP script. Keep in mind that you’ll need to have your phone connected via Wifi to the same network that your PC is on. First you’ll need to determine what the inside IP address of your computer is. If you’re running Windows, you can simply launch the command line and type “ipconfig” and hit enter.
This will show you a brief outline of your computers IP configurations (go figure). At any rate, write down your computers IP address. Crank up your iPhone and launch the Safari browser. Type your PC’s IP address into the address bar followed by “:80/your/www/root/path/yourfilename.php”. In my case it looks like this:

192.168.1.68:80/xampp/Sandbox/mstlaunch.php

Basically you’re telling the iPhone browser to look for a file at IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, communicate via port 80, and the file location is YYY/YYY/somefile.php. I’m not going to get into the finer details of ports and http access. I’m assuming you know this stuff.

If you’ve played your cards right, Blamo again! Your PC should launch the file you specified in your script above.

Now, click the little “+” icon at the bottom of your Safari browser and then choose “Add to Home Screen”. The iPhone will prompt you for a name for the new shortcut. Click “Add” when you’re done naming it and Double Blamo! You’ll have an icon on your iPhone springboard that will launch this PHP script on your machine in one key press.

Some other considerations…

I suggest that you add a little header data to the PHP script before you create the shortcut on your iPhone. Adding a page title and a favicon link will greatly enhance your shortcut-making adventures. Add a little bit of code just before your PHP script that goes something to this effect:

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<html>
<head><title>Some Title</title>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="someicon.png">
</head>

If you’ve ever coded HTML you should recognize what’s going on above. We’re simply giving the PHP page a title. Doing so will automatically name the bookmark you save on your iPhone to whatever you put between the title tags.

The link tag is specially suited for your iPhone. It points to an icon file that will become the image icon for the bookmark that exists on your springboard when you create it. Basically it works the same way as a favicon. Just create a 57px X 57px png file, and save it in the same folder as the PHP script. When you create the bookmark on your iPhone, the icon will automatically match this png file. Nifty huh?

Eventually you’re gonna want to be able to have this functionality no matter where you are in the world. This is pretty simple to achieve. All you have to do is access your network router, open port 80 (http port) and forward all traffic on that port to your PC’s IP address (of course you’ll need a static IP on your PC). This way, you can hit the outside IP address and the path to your PHP script and it’ll work via 3G as well (and from anywhere on the internet, using any PC, Mac, Linux etc. machine).

Going forward…

I got me one of them nifty Arduinos. I’ve already interfaced with the real world via PHP and my Arduino (haven’t you read my other posts about the Arduino Webcam?).

I might consider using this same setup to turn on my coffee maker in the morning, turn on/off the lamp on my desk etc… The sky’s the limit!

Hope this helps you make awesome stuff! Hit me up and let me know how you use this.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/11/17/launch-any-file-on-your-pc-via-your-iphone-with-some-php-help/feed/ 0 I need to follow through on some projects http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/10/23/i-need-to-follow-through-on-some-projects/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/10/23/i-need-to-follow-through-on-some-projects/#comments Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:03:21 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=116 Lately my co-workers have been riding me about not following through on any of the projects I start. After giving it some thought, it would seem they are right (now if I can only get them off my back about it, I’d be happier).

I was looking at my electronics work space (which is actually just a card table in the dining area) and it’s practically riddled with electronics of all sorts. Many of the cooler items there haven’t even been opened or used at all. I was probably browsing the web and said “hey cool, RGB LED tape in 1 meter sections!” So I bought some, and it still sits on my work table, unused. Same holds true for the Wii Nunchuck breakout board I bought, and the 433Mhz RF Send/Receive breakout boards I bought.

Why haven’t I played with my cool new toys? I can’t figure out if I’m just in a rut, or I’ve lost interest in physical computing projects or what. I have been working on a client’s website lately, and that has been taking up some of my free time, but not enough to slack in my projects as much as I have. At any rate, I don’t like it and I’m gonna do something about it. Today I’m going to bring my little servos from the PHP Pan/Tilt webcam project back out and build a robotic something from them. I’ll use my Wii Nunchuck breakout board and read the accelerometer data from it (or the joystick position data) and move the little servos around. Heck, I might even strap a BB gun to it and make it a robotic sentry gun. I’ve always wanted to build an autonomous one, maybe this will be a good first step.

By the end of the day, I’ll have the project working, and I’ll post a complete writeup on how I achieved it (pics and all) here. By golly, I’m gonna get off my butt today and code!

More later, hopefully

–Quick update:
Seems I loaned my Wii (and all accessories) to my girlfriend, and she’s not at home. So my project will have to wait until I get that back from her. Shucks.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/10/23/i-need-to-follow-through-on-some-projects/feed/ 0 Hey, we all get busy http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/08/19/hey-we-all-get-busy/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/08/19/hey-we-all-get-busy/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:50:14 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=109 I’ve been wanting to post more often here and I’m kinda disappointed in myself for not having done just that. So here we are. Postin’ and whatnot.

One thing that I’m super excited about is FOOTBALL! Who doesn’t get excited about that? Lamers and Noobs, that’s who! So far the most awesome team in the whole league (Atlanta Falcons, of course) have played one preseason game against the Chiefs and whooped them good. Tonight is the second preseason game against the Pats. I went to the first game and I’ll be in attendance tonight as well. Lucky me!

As far as projects that I’ve been working on go:
I actually went to Home Depot and bought some hardware to make that silly rock tumbler that I told you all I might build. Well I started building it the other day. I have to say that I really need tools. Not wrenches and screwdrivers (I’ve got that stuff), I need drill presses, band saws, lathes, scroll saws, table saws, Router tables, orbital spindle sanders, etc. Basically I need a setup that would whip Norm’s setup on the “New Yankee Workshop”. Seeing as how I don’t have a couple hundred thousand laying around, I’ll have to get by with my crappy tool chest. I honestly believe that there isn’t anything I couldn’t build with wood if I had a workshop like Norm’s.

At any rate, I took a spare part of a sheet of plywood I had in the garage and am turning it into a rock tumbler. I mounted two “L” shaped brackets on the plywood, drilled holes in the brackets and mounted a 1-1/4″ wooden dowel in between the brackets. This allows the dowel to spin like a roller. I had a crappy old 7.4 V cordless drill laying around, so I decided to use it to drive the roller. I removed the battery and wired the motor directly to a 12V DC adapter. I have no idea how long this will last. Voltage is too high, and I feel pretty sure the motor in that drill isn’t rated for continuous operation. In order to tumble a set of rocks correctly, the drill will be required to work (under load) for about a month without stopping. Hmm, now that I look at that statement on paper (screen), I had probably better start thinking about alternatives to my current setup.

I also have (well the roommate has) a bench grinder. Through much research I’ve found that lots of people that are into the whole Lapidary gig turn these things into rock cutting wheels. This intrigues me so I may hack my roommates grinder into a diamond wheeled rock cutting device. That way I can cut custom shapes into the rock before tumbling them. I am thinking of the countless awesome paperweights I could make with such a cutting/tumbling setup. I’m actually sorta excited about this one. I’m imagining a shiny, glistening skull and crossbones granite paperweight in my future.

Haven’t done too many electronics projects lately. I did order a green led matrix from Sure Electronics. I stole some code from the web and got it up and running fairly easily. I have installed that in my cubicle at work so everyone who passes by can know immediately that I’m a nerd.

I’ll give you all a writeup on that project as I find the time.

Later

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/08/19/hey-we-all-get-busy/feed/ 0 Work sucks, but how was your day? http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/13/work-sucks-but-how-was-your-day/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/13/work-sucks-but-how-was-your-day/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:58:17 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=105 Yea, lately I’ve been finding it harder and harder to get motivated at the office. I just sit there and stare at my queue. I know the work isn’t going anywhere (because mostly I’m the only one in the office who does certain tasks), but I just don’t really care lately.

I’ve been doing just the bare minimum for the last couple of months. Now if they would come through and pay a brother what he’s worth, I might consider getting down and dirty again. But man, how long can they jerk me around? I suppose the real question is, how long will I allow them to jerk me around?

I don’t ask for much. Just a competitive salary for the responsibilities that I have. That’s all. Sorry, ranting now.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/13/work-sucks-but-how-was-your-day/feed/ 0 I ain’t got time to code http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/09/i-aint-got-time-to-code/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/09/i-aint-got-time-to-code/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:22:00 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=103 So a friend of mine has hired me to build a website for his motorcycle club. Doing freelance web design can be tough. Mostly because the client rarely has any concrete info for you. They’ll say “maybe we could have a …” or “it might be cool if we …”. You learn to roll w/ the punches in this kind of business. My advice to you all is to build a couple dozen templates in your spare time. Offer each of these templates to your potential clients and let them pick and choose features that they like: “I’ll take header ‘A’ with background ’4′ and font ‘W’. Should cut down on dev time considerably. Just be sure to use CSS to speed things up.

Oh, and if they say we want a store/flash anything, make sure you let them know that it’ll cost a LOT more.

Rant done.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/07/09/i-aint-got-time-to-code/feed/ 0 A tumblin’ we might go http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/06/17/a-tumblin-we-might-go/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/06/17/a-tumblin-we-might-go/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:34:45 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=101 So I’ve been thinking lately that I might build a rock tumbler. What’s that you ask? It’s a little (or sometimes big) device that has a motor, some rollers and a drum that you load up with rocks and silicone oxide grit. The drum spins, tumbling the rocks and shining them up. Seems simple enough.

I’ve already got a few motors laying around (I’ll prolly use the one that’s in the old cordless drill I took apart), and I can pick up some empty paint cans at the local Sherwin Williams for the drums. Now all I need is some rollers and a little elbow grease. The only down side is that it takes weeks and weeks to tumble raw rock into polished beauties. Maybe I’ll use multiple drums to speed things along between grit stages (rough to polish). I’ll keep you posted if I’m not too lazy. Got a busy weekend.

]]> http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/06/17/a-tumblin-we-might-go/feed/ 0 Parallax RFID reader – Arduino goodness http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/05/31/parallaxrfid/ http://anealkhimani.com/Blog/2010/05/31/parallaxrfid/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:57:20 +0000 Aneal http://anealkhimani.com/?p=95 Early this morning (after my first smoke of the day) I hit up one of my favorite electronics/hacking websites hackaday.com. I was reading the new posts and I saw one from a couple days back that said Radio Shack (of all places) had a good price on a Parallax RFID reader. Thinking this was some sort of hoax (since “The Shack” never has good prices). I took a ride out to my local store.

Now I remember a few months ago I saw that same RFID reader in a package with no price on it. I asked the dude at the desk to price check it for me, and it was just as I thought, 50 bucks. Well there was no way I was gonna pay that, so I left it alone.

Well today that same item rang up for $9.97. Yes, ten bucks! Needless to say I bought all of them that they had remaining in stock (and I might even trawl a couple of other close by Shacks to buy them out as well).

Well I got them home and tore into one right away. The device is pretty slick, compact and easy to use and comes with two pre-programmed tags. It has a built in bi-color LED to display the status of the reader (red or green for enabled or disabled). Only four connections too (Vcc or +5 volts, Ground, Serial Out and Enable). The output pins on the reader are males, and they are breadboard compatible (which is how I hooked mine up).

Here’s the pin connections:

Vcc on Reader to +5volts on Arduino
Enable on Reader to digital pin 2 on Arduino
Serial Out on Reader to RX on Arduino
Ground on Reader to Ground on Arduino

Easy as that (though remember, you’ll have to disconnect the RX pin from Arduino when it’s time to upload your sketch, or you’ll get errors and no action).

Well a quick search through the Arduino playground netted me a pretty damn simple sketch that reads the card (if one is close by) and displays the card code in the Serial Monitor. Here’s the link to that tutorial. Had it up and running in less than 10 minutes. Now if I can only figure out what to do with this new technology (well, it’s new to me at least).

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