The Geeky Nerdy Project Page

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

One amazing, unforeseen side effect of being part of this wonderful and diverse community has been meeting and getting to know some really interesting people.  Folks who have some really interesting knowledge and hobbies almost as geeky as some of my own.

Whether it be electronics, 3D printing, repairing and restoring machinery, building scale models or whatever - I've put together this post as a place to share with us - a bit of a geeky show and tell...

Don't be shy - showcase your talents:

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

To get the ball rolling (or wheels rolling), here's a little electronics project I've been playing with just now, 90% finished as far as I'm planning to take it:

During lockdown I decided to educate myself on something I'd heard about but never really looked into - Arduino.  More on that below.

Also during lockdown I've still been cycling outdoors a bit, but have invested in a decent indoor turbo trainer for my bike. It's a smart trainer which means it connects to my laptop to change the resistance it applies whilst I cycle, simulating cycling up and down hills.  The 'hills' are of course imaginary, a part of an imaginary world created by a 'game' called Zwift which creates a whole virtual world for thousands of people to all cycle round in.  Like all of these programs there are a lot of functions which have dedicated keys on the laptop, or combinations of keys to undertake - which can be a bit awkward when on the bike cycling away.

So this mini project is a USB keyboard type device to replicate a subset of the most commonly used keys which I can clip in a convenient place on my handlebars.

It's centred around an Arduino microprocessor board - in this case an Arduino Micro.  They cost typically GBP10-20 and are a complete computer with USB interface and multiple digital and analogue pins which can be used as inputs or outputs.  I've used 12 of these pins as inputs, each connected to a push button.  The knob thing is a rotary encoder, a sort or rotating switch that gives a pulse for each 'click' as it's turned. It uses another two inputs and by looking at which of the two inputs changes state first I can decide if it's been rotated forwards or backwards.

Programming is done using by connecting the module to a computer by USB and using an online editor.  A lot of more significant functions (like driving LCD displays, controlling sensor devices or in this case simulating a USB keyboard) are done using ready made libraries.  The rest of functionality is written in a high level language which will be familiar to anyone who's dabbled in Basic, Pascal, C etc.  Once programmed, the Arduino retains that program in non volatile memory so it can be used as an entirely stand alone device - possibilities are endless. 

So my program (or sketch) as they're called looks at each of the switches in turn, to see if any of them have changed state since the last time around the loop, and if so whether they have gone 'HIGH' meaning pressed.  If so the program simulates a key being pressed, specific to that particular button - so the top four are the arrow keys, others for 'M', 'G', 'space', 'F10', 'esc' which all have their own functions in Zwift.  If I decide I want to change them in the future I just tweak the sketch in the Arduino editor.

The rotary encoder is just two separate switches, where as the shaft is rotated each switch goes closed and open 30 times per revolution (with a gentle tactile click as the shaft turns). The two switches are slightly staggered so in a clockwise direction 'A' will always make before 'B' and vice versa for anticlockwise.  My sketch looks for switch A having gone high and if B is low then I count a clockwise step (increasing my count) and if B is high when A goes high then I know it's anticlockwise, so decrease my count.  Then if count has changed from last time around the loop I press a key 1, 2, 3 ... 8, 9, 0 which tells Zwift to switch to a different viewing screen.

So there you have it....    my case of inventing a problem to be solved by a bit of Arduino hardware and software.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by gldenwetgoose

[Paulypeeps 4,984]

Cool!

[CON2H4 580]

I once made the backspace button on my keyboard type "backspace " instead of deleting characters. If anybody is interested.

In all seriousness though, I've been designing keyboard layouts, it's been fun.

[Alfresco 11,000]

Looks very neat @gldenwetgoose.  Much better than balancing the laptop on the front of the bike, you've learned a few things and you can fell that you've achieved something new.

Now all you have to do is see if there is a market out there for it.  I suspect there may well be.

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

Quick follow up on my previous little Zwift Keypad photos....    Amazing what difference a laser printer and a sticky label can make isn't it...

[Sophie 23,031]

I have been working on a little facial recognition image sorter. At the moment it takes a bunch of photos and groups them into individual folders of who it thinks are the same person. The idea being I could just dump my entire picture collection and it would sort it by actress!

Here I have a folder containing 13 photos, of two women.  It could be twenty women, it doesn't matter.

After running the program it has successfully sorted them into two individual folders! The first folder is missing a photo due to the software not recognising a face because her hand covers it.

[likesToLick 9,768]

16 minutes ago, Sophie said:

After running the program it has successfully sorted them into two individual folders! The first folder is missing a photo due to the software not recognising a face because her hand covers it.

That is very, very impressive.  The forum needs a new response icon to signify "great achievement."

Is it your own recognition algorithm,  or sourced from elsewhere?

[Sophie 23,031]

9 hours ago, likesToLick said:

That is very, very impressive.  The forum needs a new response icon to signify "great achievement."

Is it your own recognition algorithm,  or sourced from elsewhere?

Thank you!

The heavy lifting is being done by the face_recognition python library and I am using a HOG model because CNN slows my computer to a crawl. Yay for no graphics card processing!

[Kupar 12,357]

Nowhere near as impressive as the previous posts, and not really geeky, but I am pleased with my optical refractometer that arrived today. It means I can now reasonably accurately measure the alcohol content of the wine and cider I make, rather than having to estimate it from the specific gravity (SG), read by hydrometer, of the starting liquid before fermentation, and assuming it ferments to dry.

With the refractometer I don’t need to know the starting SG, but the SG of the finished product is still needed to correct the refractometer ABV value for residual sugars.

The accuracy is about +/- 0.5% ABV – which is quite a high margin of error for a cider of perhaps 5 or 6% ABV, but better for my wines which I’m guessing are typically around 10-13% ABV.

A small pleasure, I know, but I’ll now be able to label my crab-apple and blackberry wine with an ABV so people can know it’s quite strong before discovering this when they try to stand up after drinking a few glasses. This year's strawberry wine is 10% ABV, if anyone's interested. And delicious.

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

Don't put yourself down @Kupar - nobody said anything about technology based geekiness, your branch of wizardry is more than suitable material here.   I say wizardry, of course the miracle of turning water into wine (and back to a form of water again) is quite magical.

Nice gadget too.

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

Time for a techie update - a technique that anyone with Photoshop can have a go at.  It may well be possible with other photo editing packages too.

I'll admit it isn't my own invention, but it is too cool not to share...

 

- First, open a panoramic photo in the desktop computer version of Photoshop.   Ideally it should be a full 360 degree image, but most phones only do three-quarter panormaics. Just whatever you have.

 

- Click  Image > Image Size. Then make sure you click to unlink the Width and Height dimensions.

- Change the height to be the same as the width.  (or if the height is >3000pixels you can instead reduce the width to the same value).

 

- Click   Image > Image Rotation and rotate the image 180 deg.

- Now the magic happens...   Click  Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates...    Make sure the tick box is on 'Rectangular to Polar' and click OK.

 

 

All being well you should have something like these....

(The first image was too dark because of the sun confusing the auto exposure.  The second image wasn't a complete 360deg pano. But still cool in my humble opinion...)

 

[Kupar 12,357]

15 minutes ago, gldenwetgoose said:

Time for a techie update - a technique that anyone with Photoshop can have a go at.  It may well be possible with other photo editing packages too.

I'll admit it isn't my own invention, but it is too cool not to share...

 

- First, open a panoramic photo in the desktop computer version of Photoshop.   Ideally it should be a full 360 degree image, but most phones only do three-quarter panormaics. Just whatever you have.

 

- Click  Image > Image Size. Then make sure you click to unlink the Width and Height dimensions.

- Change the height to be the same as the width.  (or if the height is >3000pixels you can instead reduce the width to the same value).

 

- Click   Image > Image Rotation and rotate the image 180 deg.

- Now the magic happens...   Click  Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates...    Make sure the tick box is on 'Rectangular to Polar' and click OK.

 

 

All being well you should have something like these....

(The first image was too dark because of the sun confusing the auto exposure.  The second image wasn't a complete 360deg pano. But still cool in my humble opinion...)

 

Cool! I'll give that I try 🙂

[Kupar 12,357]

1 hour ago, p1ssputz said:

I started building out a fretboard visualization tool because most of the ones I found online were lacking some feature that I needed (generally centered around six-string bass tuning). I built it to support most conceivable stringed instruments using the western twelve-tone scale,

Sounds impressive!

[Alfresco 11,000]

2 hours ago, gldenwetgoose said:

Time for a techie update - a technique that anyone with Photoshop can have a go at.  It may well be possible with other photo editing packages too.

I'll admit it isn't my own invention, but it is too cool not to share...

 

- First, open a panoramic photo in the desktop computer version of Photoshop.   Ideally it should be a full 360 degree image, but most phones only do three-quarter panormaics. Just whatever you have.

 

- Click  Image > Image Size. Then make sure you click to unlink the Width and Height dimensions.

- Change the height to be the same as the width.  (or if the height is >3000pixels you can instead reduce the width to the same value).

 

- Click   Image > Image Rotation and rotate the image 180 deg.

- Now the magic happens...   Click  Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates...    Make sure the tick box is on 'Rectangular to Polar' and click OK.

 

 

All being well you should have something like these....

(The first image was too dark because of the sun confusing the auto exposure.  The second image wasn't a complete 360deg pano. But still cool in my humble opinion...)

 

Love that.   I don't have Photoshop, but I do have Affininity Photo.  I'll see whether I can get it to work in there.

[Alfresco 11,000]

1 hour ago, p1ssputz said:

Nice thread. I guess I'll chime in.

Two of my main interests are music and learning languages. I'm a little better with music than I am with languages, although they're both honestly a lifelong thing. Near the beginning of the quarantine, I'd resolve to practice music every day, and I did for a while; I wanted to work on listening (I have perfect pitch, but I feel like it's been slipping in the past few years) and so I built an online tool for me to practice identifying notes and chords using HTML5 and Javascript with HTML5 audio. I never put it up anywhere - it was just a project I'd run locally - but it had a customizable quiz setting where you could choose the notes you wanted to practice, the chord types and voicings you wanted to practice, how many questions you wanted...and it would score you at the end for statistics purposes.

In the same vein I started building out a fretboard visualization tool because most of the ones I found online were lacking some feature that I needed (generally centered around six-string bass tuning). I built it to support most conceivable stringed instruments using the western twelve-tone scale, and it supports string offsets as well (for things like five-string banjos or upright basses with a low C extension on the headstock). It also supported arbitrary note visualization on the fretboard, meaning any scale/chord combination in all positions.

I haven't really worked on that stuff in a bit (as I do the same type of engineering work in my day job). I started focusing again on my Spanish skills (they're okay, but the could be so much better) and now I've moved on to learning Mandarin, something that's been on my list for a while. It's fun!

Definitely not as cool or nerdy as some of the stuff I'm sure we'll see. (I always wanted to be Geordi LaForge, but I guess in a lot of ways I'm more like Reg Barclay.) Awesome thread, often it's the stuff like this that's really interesting to hear about.

I'm with you on this - I keep saying I'm going to practice piano and also pitch by ear, but I always fall behind.

Your applications sound like they are great ideas. You may even find that there is some kind of market for them.  The Pitch tool sounds like something I would use.

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

28 minutes ago, Alfresco said:

Love that.   I don't have Photoshop, but I do have Affininity Photo.  I'll see whether I can get it to work in there.

Key thing is being able to do the Rectangular to Polar change.  There are some standalone apps too - Theta+ is one.

I worked it out because my drone has an automatic mode to create a sphere panoramic, but when export it just shows as a standard pano.  You can play tunes too creating ellipses, or if you miss out the step to rotate the image you can get a 'stuck down the well' look too. 

[Alfresco 11,000]

I had a go with a panoramic image of Striding Edge in the Lake District:

NB - not one of my photos - I found the original on the internet.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Alfresco
Added the original for comparison

[Kupar 12,357]

5 minutes ago, Alfresco said:

I had a go with a panoramic image of Striding Edge in the Lake District:

NB - not one of my photos - I found the original on the internet.

Looks like a Pacific island!

[Alfresco 11,000]

Here's another one.  The original was very poor resolution, but the effect is still interesting:

 

[Kupar 12,357]

Which cityscape would make the most convincing Death Star I wonder?

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

7 minutes ago, Kupar said:

Which cityscape would make the most convincing Death Star I wonder?

New York?

[Kupar 12,357]

1 minute ago, gldenwetgoose said:

New York?

Excellent!

[Scot_Lover 1,783]

Ooh, i’ll play too. Some outstanding projects here, mine is a little more tame, but just as nerdy.

Raspberry Pi4 8gb running on a 250gb M.2 SSD. This no longer uses an sd card to boot from, runs at less than 30c and functions as a desktop PC. Not bad for something palm-sized.

 

And to add to the nerdiness, this is my current computer ”man cave”

 

[gldenwetgoose 20,242]

Very cool @Scot_Lover - sorts of puts it into perspective seeing the keyboard next to it, like 'The Borrower's' computer lol.

And kudos on your man-cave. I can very nearly touch every wall if I stand in the centre of mine, and think I've got more junk crammed in it.