Feeds reading online & offline - Best solution

Hi,

this is a short message to inform you that I finally identified the best combination of mobile apps for managing and reading RSS feeds. It is Flipboard + Pocket: the first is the well known high quality RSS/Facebook/Twitter reader, while the second enables to organize your "read later" articles (even for offline viewing). Pocket (formerly known as "Read It Later") can be easily integrated in your browser, within Flipboard and in several other ways, you can even send links via email...

Let me know if you are aware of other ince combinations!

NXTuino reaches v1.0

I've been away for a loong while, but I came back on my original project to enable Arduino communicate with Lego NXT. The first version (v0.1 - see my previous post) tested the functionality to control in a binary manner Lego NXT Intelligent Brick from Arduino using serial communication.
Now, I'm proud to announce that I made one step forward towards a remotely controllable Lego NXT robot! Tonight, I could send a binary command (turn light on/off) from the Internet to the NXT Brick through a web browser. The idea is simple, based on the fact that it is easy to integrate a simple web server on Arduino using the Ethernet Shield. Therefore, current setup is: I send a command from a browser requesting a virtual page (in the form: IP address+ flag "/NXT0") to the Arduino webserver, which in turn parses the data and issues the command through serial communication to the Lego NXT. The NXT Brick "sees" this command like if it'd come from a sensor reading, and reacts according to my program. That's it: NXTuino v1.0 enables to send a binary command to NXT!
I still need to polish the code a little bit, but I'll post it soon on this blog.

Come back soon for additional news (I'd like to define a simple protocol for sending more complex commands, and I need to find a workaround to "read" from the NXT brick), and feel free to send comments/suggestions...

Arduino GMail notifier

Just run the Arduino GMail notifier developed by Grant Gibson. Great hack! and a good example on how to interface a PC with Arduino using Python. Loved it, even tough there are small glitches in the code that I fixed. Will keep this in mind whenever I'll find some nice sort-of-alarm-clock to hack!

Back to Arduino...

After a loong time, I'm back - recovering some experiments I had in my mind. Today I just tested the Ping))) ultrasonic ranging module with Arduino, plotting the output on the Mac using Processing. It took me some time to parse the serial data stream (and still it is not completely stable), but it worked. I'll be back with a stable version soon...