Yes, I’ve once again rearranged (and in some cases, rewritten) the entire Keyglove codebase. It was totally worth it, for reasons I will outline in a moment. Before I do, I want to get to some housekeeping stuff.
I came across this gem of a Kickstarter project today, and I had to back it out of solidarity, shared interest, and an appreciation for historical innovation.
The last seven months have been somewhat of an unplanned hiatus from the Keyglove project. As I mentioned in my last Kickstarter project update as well as a bit later in a post on my personal blog, my position at Bluegiga has been taking virtually all of my time. There is a lot more travel, and some odd hours due to the global nature of the business and the kind of support I need to do. This has been getting better over time though—the odd hours part, anyway—and I am absolutely determined to get back into working on the project, for a few reasons.
Read more →
I’ve been back from Maker Faire NYC 2011 for about three weeks now, so it’s really past time for me to write a blog post about the experience. I’ve got five other topics I’d like to write posts about too, but I like to keep things at least roughly in chronological order, so this one comes first.
Some of you may already know that I did write a pretty detailed summary of the event as a Kickstarter Project Update, and you’re more than welcome to read that if you haven’t already. The audience for Kickstarter updates is mostly different from the main project website audience, so there’s always a bit of a struggle on my part about whether to post something in only one place, or whether to duplicate it, or whether to say different things about the same topic on each site. That last option is what I usually end up doing.
Read more →
After my original post about the WT12 breakout board I was working on a while back, I thought I should really follow that up with some info on what’s happened with that adventure. In short, it’s been a great success! The PCB revisions that I made proved to work very well, and I now have two great boards available for purchase through InMojo, as well as an Eagle library if you want to make your own.
Read more →
It’s been over a month since I’ve posted any news updates specifically to the Keyglove project website, though I have been busy working on the project as well as posting updates to a few other places, including the @keyglove Twitter account, the Facebook page, and Kickstarter project updates.
Read more →
Sorry for the flurry of updates all at once, but I have one more for you all: Michael Cheich over at Open Hardware Junkies recorded a Skype interview with me about the Keyglove project back towards the end of March, and he just got it posted in the last couple of days. If you’re interested in some audio about the design and motivation of the Keyglove, head over and listen! (Note that it was recorded before I got the Keyglove up on Kickstarter, and before the recent hardware and software developments.)
Read more →
Keyglove #05 – Prototype C Touchscreen Demo from Jeff Rowberg on Vimeo.
I’m still waiting on the WT12 breakout boards to arrive—both from BatchPCB and the custom one I created (more on that later)—and all of the activity over at the Keyglove Kickstarter page and Engadget article has been tremendously exciting. But in the mean time, I’ve got a short video up to demonstrate the behavior of the current prototype when used with capacitive touch screens.
Read more →
Update 4/18/2011: you can read about the custom WT12 breakout board I designed here. The short version is that the board was almost good enough, but I’ve got a revision ordered and that one should be perfect. It will be available to others shortly.
Update 6/24/2011: the WT12 breakout boards I designed are now available on InMojo here (full, $50) and here (UART only, $40) for cheaper than you can get WT12 breakout boards anywhere else as of the time of this update. You can also download my Bluegiga Eagle library here. You may also be interested in the follow-up blog post about this.
So, after all of my experiments with BCM2042-based Bluetooth modules and the uncertainty and sparse documentation surrounding them, I decided to give Bluegiga’s WT12 module a try. I have to say, the more I learn and experiment, the more I like it. This one single module supports pretty much every Bluetooth profile ever, easily hot-switchable via a simple command. Their customer support is excellent. Their documentation, firmware, schematics, and all other development resources are readily available for free. Their modules are available for purchase cheaply in small quantities (e.g. one at a time for $27 from SemiconductorStore.com). You can control the complete behavior of the module using their capable iWRAP firmware and well-documented commands sent over the UART interface. It’s perfect.
Read more →
Check it out! I got the first five sensors working:
Keyglove #01 – First Working Sensors from Jeff Rowberg on Vimeo.
So exciting!