Projects
I enjoy tackling interesting projects and here are a few that I've made some limited attempt to document. As many of these were carried out purely for fun, code quality and documentation may vary enormously. You have been warned.
Plottie Reverse engineering a Silhouette Portrait plotter/cutter
Plottie is an open source (and cross platform) tool for cutting and plotting SVG graphics using Silhouette plotters and cutters.
Secret Sharing Pads
Secret sharing pads are a simple, computer-free way to securely share passwords with trusted friends and family for use in emergencies.
Word Clockie A 3D printed word clock for my wife.
Word clockie is a (yet another) word clock made as a first aniversary gift to my wonderful wife, Ann-Marie. It is a spiritual successor to Clockie, a count-down clock I made when we were living far appart when we had just started going out. Instead of counting down to our next meeting, Word Clockie counts up the time since we got married.
SpiNNer Super-Computer Wiring Guide Generator
One of the challenges of building larger versions of the SpiNNaker super computer is physically connecting the 3600 wires that join the 1200 circuit boards together. SpiNNer contains a library designed for modelling different ways of positioning the circuit boards in space in order to minimise the length of the wires required to manageable levels. A script is also provided which creates illustrated wiring guides using LaTeX.
N3: No-Nonsense Navigation Hand-Held GPS Receiver
N3 (No-Nonsense Navigation) is a handheld GPS receiver, but without all the nonsense. A toggle switch turns the device on (and off) and as soon as it has a fix, the current position is displayed on the screen. While switched on, N3 also automatically logs your journey to an SD card so you can look at it later. It can run for about 10-12 hours on a pair of AA batteries which can be changed in the middle of nowhere if neccessary.
Webcam Heart-Rate Monitor
When the heart beats, blood is pumped around the body causing a momentary change in skin colour. This is not visible to the human-eye but counter surprisingly is visible to a cheap webcam. Using simple signal processing techniques, the frequency at which the colour of the skin changes, and thus the heart-rate can be extracted and monitored completely non-invasive.
Makebed 3D Printer Controller
Makebed is a system comprising of a set of 3D printer control electronics and the firmware that runs on them developed as part of my 3rd Year Project while at the University of Manchester for my undergraduate Computer Science degree. The project provided improvements over the Makerbot's ageing original electronics and added features such as network connectivity and improved motor control.
Yet Another Level Up A FVWM-Based Window Manager
YALU is a configuration for the powerful FVWM window manager that provides a number of neat features, fully graphical configuration (and also fully text-based configuration if you preffer), reasonable performance and less torture than its predecessor: AnotherLevelUp.
Stumpy A 50-Line STUMP CPU Emulator
A small (50 line) STUMP CPU emulator written in Python along with a quick-and-dirty example "test-bench" program for running STUMP binaries.
Livegate SVG Logic Circuit Simulator
Livegate was an attempt animating one my ridiculous zero-abstraction gate-level drawings of a processor by adding a Javascript to the original SVG. In particular, development of logic circuits is possible entirely from within Inkscape.
SHET Home Automation
SHET House Event Tunneling was a major home-automation project undertaken by myself alongside my house mates during the 2nd and 3rd years of undergrad. During those years we built a surprisingly comprehensive home automation system connecting to everything from the washing machine and lights to the house IRC channel.
Thermduino Arduino-Powered Thermostat Timer Addon
Thermduino is a simple Arduino + Python project which I hacked together in a few days to set a rotary thermostat based on time and date.
Perentie A Simple Microcontroller Debug Monitor
Perentie is a simple, graphical CPU monitor and debugger supporting a range of architectures. It was designed during a summer of work done for the
Gollywhomper A SpiNNaker Interconnect Simulation
A simulator of the SpiNNaker million-core super computer being built at the University of Manchester. This simulator was built as part of the COMP6062b Future Multicore Systems course and investigates the effects of the newly developed circuit board to circuit board connections currently being added to SpiNNaker.