In late 2018 I attended an IoT training session in Microsoft here in Dublin. They gave us all a “DevKit” which can be used to experiment with IoT in conjunction with Microsoft Azure. The device was jointly developed by MXCHIP and Microsoft.

The device is like an Arduino except that it is packed with sensors and also has:

• A small (4×16) OLED screen
• A headphone socket
• An Infrared emitter
• Built-in Wi-Fi.

Here’s a diagram showing the various components:

And here is a picture of my device:

Because this device has so much built-in capability, I always intended to develop something for it.

And in my next post I will describe my first project.

I got my first computer in the 1970s (an Apple ][) and my second in the 1980s (an Atari 800).

I always had an interest in getting my computer to interface with hardware devices but I never really did anything about it.

In 2011 I came across the Arduino platform and I finally had a chance to use a device which straddled the gap between software and hardware. I bought a book called “Arduino Cookbook” and I learned all about “sketches” (software) and “shields” (hardware).

Later that year I bought the “ARDX arduino experimentation kit“.

To be honest, I spent a lot more time reading the book than I did playing with the kit!

In July 2012 I did bring both on a holiday to Kenmare and I managed to create a fairly interesting light display with 8 LEDs.

Included below is a video from that time showing how it worked.

I planned to add a potentiometer to be able to control the speed of the sequences but I don’t think I ever got that working.

I mentioned in my old blog that I have a Casio Wave Ceptor watch and that I love it.

I love the way it always has the right time.

The only reservation I had about my old watch was that it only had room for a four character digital display.

So you could not see hours, minutes and seconds at the same time (what’s the point of a watch which is accurate to a traction of a second all the time if you cannot see the seconds!)

Similarly you could not see the date and time at the same time.

So for Christmas I got the perfect watch. It is digital and it shows all of the above at the same time (plus am/pm and the day of the week!)

The watch is a Casio Wave Ceptor G-Shock. The specific model number is GW-M5610.

For me it had to be a Wave Ceptor so that it would always have the right time.

Originally G-Shock watches were designed to achieve “Triple 10” :10-meter free-fall endurance, 10-bar water resistance and a 10-year battery life.

My watch is actually water resistant to 20 bar, and (because it has solar power) the battery should last much longer than 10 years.

Casio now talk about 7 elements: electric shock resistance, gravity resistance, low temperature resistance, vibration resistance, water resistance, shock resistance and toughness.

So as well as being robust, waterproof, radio-controlled, and solar powered, my watch also has a backlight and (because it can detect its orientation and the lighting conditions) the backlight comes on automatically in low light when you tilt the watch to look at it!

The watch is genius! So I now have a Casio that’s dressy, and another one that’s incredibly functional. Here’s a photo:

A company called “Boston Dynamics” has built a very impressive robot called “Atlas” and has made the following video to demonstrate some of its capabilities:

Then some genius came along and added a new soundtrack to make this completely hilarious video. Funniest thing I have seen in ages. Enjoy!

In my last post, I mentioned a small mistake made by Apple/Steve Jobs.

Here is a much bigger one, and one which has never been rectified properly.

The reason I don’t have an iPhone, and don’t ever plan to but one, is that it is too “closed”.

I have an Android phone and I can program it using “MIT App Inventor“. This simple tool (which I teach kids in CoderDojo) allows you to create apps, to transfer them to an Android phone, to debug them interactively, and to create apps which can be uploaded to the Google Store.

App Inventor is not available for iOS because Apple (and I believe this to be a Steve Job legacy) doesn’t want people developing code any way but the “right” way. And the right way involves Xcode, Objective-C or Swift, a Mac, possibly other tools, and registering as (and paying to be) an iOS Developer. And for the longest time they didn’t want you to do any kind of coding on an iPhone/iPad (this restriction has been eased more recently with things like Codea, ScratchJr, Pyonkee and “Swift Playgrounds“).

I mentioned this restriction previously in my old blog when I spoke about “Cargo-Bot“.

So until this is addressed, I’ll be sticking with Android.

Here is another (very small) mistake which Jobs made: He thought a mouse should have one button (so as not to confuse users, apparently). He did not want users to have to “right click”.

So Lisa, IIGS, Mac, etc. all came out with a single button.

To me, this was just wrong.

Over time, Windows mice had two or three buttons and maybe a “wheel”. This obviously gives the user more power.

And then he endorsed the idea of a mouse with no buttons! This article claims that this came about through a misunderstanding.

I guess the problem was addressed eventuality with the multi-touch “magic mouse”. But I don’t know for sure as I have never used one.

Here is a picture of original Macintosh mice: