Nathan – Page 7 – From the disheveled desk of Nathan Bak

My New Toy (Part 1)

Today my new toy arrived. It’s an ESP8266 IOT WiFi Module.

ESP8622

Specifically I selected the “Elecrow ESP8266 IOT Board WiFi Module with Built in USB and Battery Charging” out of the many ESP8266 variants because of the following features:

Onboard USB (I find it easier than FTDI)
NOT breadboard friendly (Pins sticking up not down)
In stock and eligible for Prime shipping

To start with, I just wanted to verify that I could run some code on it. Here’s what I did:

Installed the Arduino IDE from https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software. I used the latest available (1.6.9).
Configured the Arduino IDE to support ESP8266 boards:
1. Opened up the preferences and added http://arduino.esp8266.com/versions/2.3.0/package_esp8266com_index.json to the “Additional Boards Manager URLs”.
2. Opened the “Boards Manager”, found the “esp8266” listing, and clicked the “Install” button (using the latest 2.3.0 version).
3. Since there wasn’t a specific Electrow entry, I selected “Generic ESP8266 Module” for the board type.

Wrote some code. Here is my very simple sketch to slowly count and send the number via serial:

int count = 0;
 void setup() {
 Serial.begin(9600);
 }
 void loop() {
 Serial.println(count++);
 delay(1000);
 }

Ran the code. I uploaded it to the module, opened the serial terminal, and saw that it was counting as designed.

Of course it took a bit of kicking and swearing to do that. Here are a few of the things that I did before everything worked:

Ran the Arduino IDE as root
The upload speed is 115200, but the terminal speed is 9600 baud
Change the reset method to “nodemcu”.
Sometimes (but not always) hold the flash button and than hit the reset button before I could successfully upload my sketch.
Switch USB cords (the first is a cheap, old cord that in recent years has only been used for charging devices).
Check the port whenever I plugged in the module (it sometimes switched between /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 just to spite me).

There’s nothing exciting about my counting program, but by getting it running I confirmed that I can 1) Connect to the module 2) Upload code to it and 3) Run the code. Now that I can do that, I can see what else I can make my new toy do . . .

Dangerous Field for Alexa

The nostalgia of coding and playing Dangerous Field on the calculator inspired me to revive the series with an all new version of the game. This latest incarnation is implemented as an Alexa Skill for the Amazon Echo. Although the interface is completely different, I think that it has a certain charm due to the simpleness and silliness.

From a technical perspective, there are two parts: the voice interface and the game implementation. Amazon makes the voice “Interaction Model” fairly easy to configure–it least for this simple scenario. The Intent Schema basically defines a way for users to specify how to move (direction and with an optional movement type) as well as indicate that they want to play and support some basic Amazon intents.

{
  "intents": [
    {
      "intent": "move",
      "slots": [
        {
          "name": "direction",
          "type": "DIRECTION"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "movewithstyle",
      "slots": [
        {
          "name": "movementtype",
          "type": "MOVEMENT_TYPE"
        },
                {
          "name": "direction",
          "type": "DIRECTION"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "intent": "playGame"
    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.NoIntent"
    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.YesIntent"
    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.HelpIntent"
    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.StopIntent"
    },
    {
      "intent": "AMAZON.CancelIntent"
    }
  ]
}

I added two custom slot types to let users specify which direction to go and which movement type to use.

DIRECTION 	NORTH | SOUTH | EAST | WEST 	
MOVEMENT_TYPE 	hop | skip | jump | leap | walk | run | gallop

With that in place, it was easy to provide a handful of sample utterances.

playGame to play
playGame to play game
playGame play
playGame play game
movewithstyle {movementtype} {direction}
move move {direction}
move go {direction}
move travel {direction}
move {direction}

And that is all there is to defining the user interface to parse what the user is doing. Amazon’s magic converts what the user says into JSON which is passed to the actual game implementation.

I wrote the game portion as a Lambda Function using Java. I installed the AWS Toolkit into Eclipse and found that made it a lot easier to write code on my computer and then push it up to the cloud.

So, here’s how a basic game goes:

Me:    Alexa, start Dangerous Field.
Alexa: You are standing in a field.  What do you want to do?
Me:    Go east.
Alexa: With a jiffy jog you jump joyfully to the east.
You are standing in a field.  What do you want to do?
Me:    Leap south.
Alexa: South you leap like a lascivious leprechaun launched over the rainbow.  You fall into a hole.  You die.  
You are standing in a field.  What do you want to do?  You failed to escape from the Dangerous Field.

Anyway, click the picture below to go to the Echo page and enable Dangerous Field.
dangerousFieldSkill

Farmer Giles of Ham

Tolkien Books I have long been familiar with Tolkien’s The Hobbit and also The Lord of the Rings, but remained mostly ignorant of his other works apart from a 1982 print of The Silmarillion which somehow ended up in my collection. This past Mother’s Day my wife received a couple volumes of other Tolkien tales and I noticed in one that among the “other books by the author” it listed The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and was intrigued enough to order it in a volume combined with Farmer Giles of Ham.

When the book arrived, I took a quick peek and immediately selected Farmer Giles of Ham as the next after dinner read aloud book for the family. Upon completion, the family unanimously agreed that it is a terrific tale. I think what made it so great for the entire family is that the writing is very Tolkienish, but it’s an easier read of a fantasy story (perhaps more a fairy tale) as compared to the more well-known stories involving hobbits and elves.

The story certainly contains a sufficient quantity of elements to hold the attention of all ages: An unexpected hero going on a quest, knights, a magic sword, giants, dragons, battles, and a talking dog named Garm. There was also the unconventional inclusion of a blunderbuss. There are no spoilers here, but it can safely be said that the story is both amusing and entertaining.

In true Tolkien fashion, all the key players have clever names; often both a formal “book-Latin” name as well as the common “vulgar” name. Even the the book title is referred on the title page with the lengthier “The Rise and Wonderful Adventures of Farmer Giles, Lord of Tame, Count of Worminghall and King of the Little Kingdom”. These names tend to be more pompous and less serious than what I’ve seen in other works by Tolkien. While the reasoning behind the names is explained when appropriate, the descriptions do not seem to require as many lengthy history lessons or descriptions of lineages as compared with that with which I was previously accustomed.

The writing style is elegant, but also accessible. Tolkien puts words together in clever combinations that not only tell the story, but also contain wit enough to make reading alone pleasurable even were there no plot. I did find the tone less formal than is typical. Also, I think the words used are a little easier–I think I understood all the words and only had trouble pronouncing a few.

While not at the same literary level as The Lord of the Rings, Farmer Giles of Ham is a fun, accessible story. Many people (especially younger readers) stall when reading Tolkien for the first time due to the immensity of Middle Earth and the history and culture that is described between (and occasionally even during) the action scenes. For those who have started and failed or those that want a more gentle introduction, at under 80 pages Farmer Giles of Ham may be just the thing.

A refrigerator that sings

Unlike Talkie Toaster, the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator is a real product and it has some interesting features. The product page lists features such as:

Food Management (knowing what you have)
Family Connection
Entertainment
Apps

It’s not until the “More features to love” section that there is any mention that this contraption can keep food cold. Perhaps that ability was considered obvious, but it’s interesting that the main purpose of the device is the last thing listed even though it does have some innovative cooling functionality such as FlexZone(TM) which lets you use the bottom right section as either a freezer or a fridge and a “Triple Cooling System” (apparently there are three separate evaporators to better maintain temperature and humidity).

I’d take the Family Hub Refrigerator if someone gave it to me, but I’m not going to rush out and buy one for $6,000. I think most people could have equal smart-fridge-satisfaction by purchasing a similarly sized high-end fridge for thousands less and then slapping a Triby on the door. Still, I think it’s worth looking at the “smart” features.

So the fridge doesn’t really sing, but it can stream music from Pandora or TuneIn. From how frequently the Amazon Echo is used to play music during chore time, I concur that it’s nice to be able to easily play music in the kitchen. However, this is a problem already solved in multiple ways and I’m not seeing the benefit of shoving that capacity into a refrigerator. I certainly know of no relationship between music and food cooling. I suppose it is possible that the size of the fridge could be used to improve sound quality (a big woofer in the bottom or using the full width to separate speakers for a better surround sound), but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Something I see useful in some situations in a first world problem sort of way is screen mirroring–it can mirror your TV so that when you run in from the other room to grab a snack you don’t miss what’s going on in your show.

The Family Hub includes a clock, calendar, photo display, and notes–all features that are on BakBoard and are nice, but the only benefit I see putting it on the fridge is that it provides screen real estate in a convenient location. The screen can show weather information and some of the pictures suggest displaying the “word of the day” and “on this day in history” factoids. There’s a “Family Bulletin Board” display and a “Morning Brief” as well.

What’s more interesting are the food related features integrated with the Family Hub. Since a refrigerator is for food, I think making a smarter refrigerator should improve that relationship with food.

Putting cameras inside and letting you view the contents without opening the door (or even being in the vicinity if using the cell phone app) is a good attempt to make refrigerator a better refrigerator. My refrigerator is always more densely packed than the pristine Family Hub examples, so I’m not sure if it really is practical, but I would prefer it if my kids could look at a screen on the door instead of standing with the door open staring inside for minutes while trying to decide what to eat.

I won’t go into detail about the ability to search recipes or order groceries–I think those are fine and at least related to food, but not exciting. The obvious missing piece is that the Family Hub doesn’t really know what’s in it, so it can’t suggest recipes using ingredients you have, nor can it automatically order something when you are almost out of it. One video I saw mentions the ability to track the age of items in the fridge, but only if you always put the items back in the same spot–there aren’t any smarts to track item movement.

I think the main problem with the Samsung Family Hub is that it’s trying to be the hub of things instead of a thing in the Internet of Things. I want smart solutions for things like food management, but a picture of the inside where I don’t see any ketchup only tells me there is no ketchup in the fridge and doesn’t tell me whether there is any in the pantry or garage. The refrigerator is not the central hub of my home, it is merely one of many things in my home and any truly smart fridge will know its place–no matter how well it can sing.

Dangerous Field

By ML5 at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Common Good using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7042127 Back in the magical decade known as the 90’s I got my first graphing calculator. It was one of the Casio FX-7000 variants–I don’t recall which one exactly, but I do clearly remember that it had 422 bytes of memory to be used by programs. While I wrote some programs to do mathy stuff, most programs were games. I think the first game I wrote for the calculator was a number guessing game where the game would generate a random number and the player would enter guesses and be told it the actual number was higher or lower. There were various other games along the same vein. Then I started coding with a friend and things got “Dangerous”.

My friend Jed had a Casio graphing calculator too. His was newer and fancier and had more memory, but it used the same programming language. One day (I think during French class), he showed me his new game “Dangerous Field”. It was a text adventure game in which the game play went something like this:

DANGEROUS FIELD
U R IN A FIELD
WUT?
> N
U R IN A FIELD
WUT?
> E
U R IN A FIELD
WUT?
> N
U FALL IN HOLE
U DIE
3

Zork it was not. In Dangerous Field you were in a field and could go North, South, East, or West. After a random number of moves, you fell in a hole and died. The “score” was the number of moves made. There was no terrain or scenery apart from the field, there was no possible strategy, and there was no way to win. But it was a start.

We made new versions of Dangerous Field adding various features such as a map stored as an array defining a path the player could potentially follow to escape the field. Other games were added to the Dangerous series including “Dangerous House” and “Dangerous Cave”. Combat was added as well as rudimentary graphics–all within 422 bytes.

In the years since then, I’ve written a lot of code in various programming languages, but never have I been so concise. My next calculator was an HP48G (which I still regularly use and is currently sitting on my disheveled desk) with 32KB of RAM so I had enough room to write whatever I needed. A full computer obviously has tons more space, and even the toy apps I’ve written for a space-constrained smart phone have been measured in megabytes. So now, whenever I think about the constraints surrounding coding, I remember Dangerous Field and all that was crammed into 422 bytes.

Le Petit Prince–read it more than once

Some books are worth reading more than once. One book with a lot of reread value is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and there are five copies in my home. Although all are the same story, each book is different and makes me remember different things.

Little Prince The first book is a 45 year old Le Petit Prince in the original French. I believe I stole it from my parents’ home and it most likely was previously claimed by my mother or sister. I remember as a kid reading an English translation (which my parents probably still have along with another French copy) and enjoying the story while marveling that my parents and sister could read it. Later when I was studying French I read portions of the text and experienced the story in new ways because I was forced to slow down (and often read it aloud).

小王子 was purchased for me by a good friend on a trip to China that I didn’t get to take. My Chinese is lousy and I can only pick out words here and there, but since it has English on the left page and Chinese on right, I can read the English and appear like I’m capable in Chinese. This book reminds me of what I gave up and what I gained by not going on the trip.

The English copy of The Little Prince was a gift from my sister-in-law and it was accompanied by doll in the picture above. It’s a different translation from the one I grew up on (suggesting another book for my library) and so provides the opportunity to see the familiar tale in another way. Because of the doll, the book was often packed separately from other books as we moved several times. Being separate, I remember various times pausing from my packing or unpacking and reading various snippets.

In general, I don’t like shopping in stores, but I do like bookstores and also enjoy Japanese stores so browsing in Japanese bookstores is particularly fun. I purchased 星の王子さま on a trip to Tokyo with the family in 2008. When I peek at the book, I remember that trip, my other times in Japan, and the many hours I spent reading Japanese novels and stories in grad school.

Finally there is Il Piccolo Principe which I purchased as a Valentine’s Day gift for my wife this year. It doesn’t remind me of any trip to Italy, but rather makes me think about my wife. It makes me think about what she gave up and what she gained in joining me on an adventure. Along with the book, I also gave her a wooden card with a favorite quote (in the English translation I knew as a child) laser engraved on it.

foxCard

If you haven’t read The Little Prince, I recommend it. If you have read it, it doesn’t take long to read it again and it usually seems better than you remembered it. You definitely want to read it more than once.

What’s a Triby?

When I saw the word “Triby”, my mind jumped to a classic Star Trek episode and I imaged Captain Kirk and a bunch of fuzzy things. A quick search revealed that those are “Tribbles” and that the Triby is very different, but the similarity in name grabbed my attention enough that I put forth to answer the question, “What’s a Triby?”

Last month I commented (perhaps bemoaned?) that all the fancy gadgets aren’t very family friendly. Apparently Triby is a new product which is all about “Connecting you with the music and people you love”. I find it interesting that music is listed before people, but it does seem to be a step in the right direction.

The core of Triby is the Alexa Voice Service. This means that it is a lot like the Alexa on the Amazon Echo. However, it doesn’t seem to support everything Alexa has to offer such as some music services (Spotify and Pandora) and home automation solutions (WeMo and Phillips Hue). Even without those, the core Alexa functionality and numerous skills available (such as Nanny State) provide many features useful to a family.

There is also some “internet calling” capability in Triby. This allows for hands-free calling. It appears as though it is configured so that calls can only be made to/from specified contacts–this suggests that a kid could easily call Grandma but there wouldn’t be concern of telemarketers calling.

Triby goes beyond voice communication with a small display and a few buttons. By default, the screen appears to have a clock, the day/date, weather information. Some pictures show the Triby displaying information about what music is playing, or displaying virtual sticky notes sent from the phone app. The buttons are shortcuts to call people or play specific stations and do other tasks like answer a call (but presumably those things can be done with voice as well).

To me the Triby looks like a toy radio for children. It has a magnet on the back so that it can be attached to a fridge. The buttons are also have a toy-ish appearance. The screen is a small e-ink display–probably to reduce power consumption (the battery lasts about two days on a charge). The neatest physical aspect of the Triby is the mechanical flag that pops out of the side when a new message is received.

I’d love to have a chance to play with a Triby, but I don’t see myself forking at $200 for one (or even the current $169 sale price on Amazon). I think Triby has good intentions, but I’m not seeing a WOW! factor. I wouldn’t be surprised if soon there is a new and improved Triby available that is flashier. For now my family will continue using our BakBoard and Echo combination, but I’m glad that companies are starting to produce family-friendly tech products.

Can I have screen time?

Screens provide “cheap” entertainment. By “cheap” I’m not referring to the cost in terms of money, but rather effort to participate. It’s much easier to turn on the TV and vegetate than to go on a hike and easier to hop on social media than call up a friend and go see a movie. Because of the ease, screens are often the go-to entertainment choice.

In my home, the kids tend to frequently want screen time not only in lieu of entertainment that requires effort, but often instead of performing other, more important tasks. So, when a kid expresses a desire to a parental unit for permission to utilize a screen, the parent typically ascertains things such as:

Status of homework
Status of chores
Completion of daily instrument practice
State of personal space (room clean, bed made, etc.)
If any sanctions are in place prohibiting screen use

Even though the kids are familiar with the criteria, usually there are multiple requests made before the kid has completed everything necessary to be allowed screen time. Each of the rejections could be deemed as a negative parent/child interaction. I decided to offload this monotonous task and created Nanny State.

Nanny State is a Alexa Skill for the Amazon Echo. Basically, a kid says “Alexa, ask Nanny State if I can have screen time.” The kid then must respond to a few yes/no questions covering the items in the list above. If the kid provides an unsatisfactory answer, the response is “No screen for you.” If all answers are as they should be, the kid is instructed to confirm with a parent.

For fun, I submitted Nanny State to Amazon. This morning I received an e-mail stating that “Your Alexa skill Nanny State is now live!”. This means that anyone who owns an Echo can go to the Alexa App or http://echo.amazon.com/#skills and enable Nanny State (or click on the image and it will take you there).

Less social networking, more familial interaction

It seems to me that as technology drops in price and becomes ubiquitous that it tends to focus on the individual and neglect the family unit. I don’t see this as a deliberate attack on families, but I do see opportunities for innovation an effort in improving technology to make things easier for families.

A phone number used to be associated with a location–dialing a personal phone number would cause the phone to ring in a home. Today, more people are cutting the land line and only using cell phones and this sometimes makes effective communication more difficult because there is no way to contact anyone in the family, only a particular individual. This is particularly difficult for my kids who want to call friends–the younger ones don’t have cell phones yet, but when both parents work, calling cells simply doesn’t work.

Another example is the calendar. Traditionally there would be a calendar on the wall or refrigerator that would be used to track activities for the family as a whole as well as individual family members. Electronic calendaring systems have been around for quite some time now, but still paper calendars seem the norm for families.

It was the calendar that got me started making BakBoard, and it seems many other people have had similar ideas. Just today I learned about the wall mounted information display created by Tom Scott which has a calendar, weather information, and (my favorite) a countdown timer to help get the kids out the door to catch the bus. There’s also the Wall Mounted Calendar and Notification Center which doesn’t have the bus timer, but does have some buttons to change the calendar view and to refresh the web page. Additionally there is a simple Raspberry Pi Wall Mounted Google Calendar.

BakBoard is an attempt to try to make a gadget designed for consumption by the family rather than an individual. It remains in a known, central location and displays information for the entire household. However, I think the technology involved is primitive when compared to many services out there tailored to the individual.

I think the Amazon Echo is going in the right direction a device for a family rather than the individual and it is considerably more sophisticated than BakBoard. Boy #2 uses it to listen to music while washing the dishes. Boy #1 uses it to remind him when it’s time to go to school. Boy #3 likes the corny jokes it tells and also adds random items to the shopping list. The girl child can ask it how to spell words. The caveat is that everything happens on my account. It is possible to switch between accounts (both my wife and I have accounts but the kids don’t), but it seems cumbersome. Also, many of the integrations are user specific.

There is a lot of room for improvement in making technology look at the family rather than the individual. From what I’ve seen, the biggest complications are finding a good way to balance privacy and security. Other issues include treating the family as a unit while still recognizing that the family is made up of individuals. Since I don’t dislike my family, this is an area which I want to further explore.