Bret Lanius

Stepper Motors

2011-10-04T16:12:00.000-05:00

So I finally had a little time to work on my stepper projects.

I'm using the Arduino Nano and an Easydriver 4.2 stepper driver.

Thanks for reading
-Bret

Arduino Flex sensor to Stepper motor

2011-01-12T10:14:00.002-05:00

I spent my Amazon gift cards on Arduino stuff.
I've really wanted to experiment with making stuff and so far I'm mostly playing with the examples and adding an LCD for display. The parallel LCD requires too many pins so I'm looking at the serial adapters on Sparkfun.com then it only requires two wires, but since the Arduino Uno only has one serial port it could be a problem for a couple of projects I have in mind, I guess the Mega is what I'd need then as it has 4 serial ports and like 51 pins.

I have a few real projects I could see building.

Thanks for reading
-Bret

Overlooked flash thingys

2010-11-25T08:49:00.004-05:00

I was poking around and came across some of the flash things I've done using Koolmoves and realized that they don't get seen much with the exception of the fortune cookie applet that plays on the "chumby" so I thought I post a few here

I got this idea from a book on basic programming and adapted it. It takes a list of common sayings and splits them in half then randomly puts them back together giving interesting variations on the originals.

Here is a video poker game that Again I adapted some of the poker logic from a book on Basic progamming

This fortune cookie thing was redone to fit on the Chumby internet device, You may get "undefined" as a fortune until I can figure out why the crossdomain policy is not working for blogger.

Thanks for reading
-Bret

Great Motion Control Shoot in Miami

2010-11-23T18:57:00.000-05:00

Recently completed a motion control shoot for Ulta in Miami.

I've been operating the Motion Control rig from Commander Inc. for 4 years now and continue to be amazed at how I must learn something new each and every job. This one was no exception.

We were tasked with four setups in one day inside an actual store. Three of the shots are what we call "Mimic" shots, which is where the dolly is pushed by the dolly grip the head is operated by the operator (DP) and the focus is done live by the 1st AC. This is actually one of the areas that the Modula rig is really great as it's small enough to be pushed on the dolly, the one issue I had was that in the past I'd not had good experience with doing the focus via Mimic as I had mixed information on how to make the standard controller that is provided by MMRC work and there are a couple of gotchas that I had to learn about. For example if the AC continues to move the hand wheel after the shot has stopped even just a little I must reset the Zero before we can do another take or do the repeat pass or the scale could be off. There are also several settings in the focus axis that must be changed.

Well the shots consisted of building what we called the reference pass/performance live with all elements in place and the rig "learning" the mimic. We would run this over and over until the director was happy with the basic timing and performance, I would then save the move (actually saved every take just in case). Then we would begin to shoot the various plates starting with a background plate, and on a few we were able to include some of the people that were to be "popped in " as part of the background plate. Then we started moving shelving and things to place greenscreen in and begin shooting the various layers of Master performance of the main talent, the plates of the "pop in" people one at a time. Getting the performance nuances just right is what really took the most time, but I have to say our Miami crew was really great and I've never had some much quality help in setting up the rig and laying the track.

I'll update this as soon as I can with Images and Video

We must be out of our minds

2010-11-23T18:54:00.033-05:00

I probably need to have my head examined my wife and I just bought a house in south Florida at auction. Well we haven't exactly bought it yet, we won the auction and now we have to get this renovation loan completed not to mention digging up the down payment. Documenting my income has been a major hassle.

Then the real fun begins getting it all fixed. It's a renovation loan so we have to get bids from contractors on the major repairs which include roof, AC and a lot of drywall that is moldy, plus mold removal .

Then we can start on the other stuff like the rest of the walls, actual renovation like gutting a bathroom, replacing toilets and floors.

Well that went well

2010-05-05T19:51:00.001-05:00

I recently had cause to come by my blog and laughed at my post about blogging from my phone... Well it's still true but as you can see not nearly as useful as you would think. My life is so jammed packed with must do that of late I find very little time for the wanna dos.

I cannot complain as a freelancer working 50-60 hours a week some weeks is a good thing and the only way I can hope to make up for all the 0 hour weeks.

So here at least a couple of photos from a week long shoot for a series called "My Manny" over at TBS.COM

blogging from my phone

2010-02-28T21:57:00.002-05:00

Found a new app for my android phone that will let me blog from my phone. pretty nice

Productive week

2010-02-11T22:01:00.003-05:00

Well I've had a good week with Flash stuff. Not only did I get that CD-ROM project done. I put together a custom video player setup using XML data for a site coming online next week called http://Cleverstories.com.
I've had a WeatherBug application sitting idle for a while due to flash player's new security policies for cross domain loading of content. In the past as long as the host site had a policy file all was good, Well I got WeatherBug to add one but then I got new error and had to read up on Flash Policy files and since I was using an image loader class from http://calypso88.com I either had to modify his code or write my own loader. So first I figured I try to modify his and that fixed it. So now here it is.
http://bretlanius.com/flash/lab/weatherbug/weatherbug2.html

Ok that is still not all, I was working on something a week ago and the idea of using fullscreen on the web was discussed but the inablility to input text was an issue. I had seen a tutorial on doing a on screen keyboard but I had trouble following it. So I thought the SimpleTable component included withKM7 might make it fairly easy, and turns out it did. This approach may not have been the best way to go but it works and for allowing a user to input say a name and email address it will suffice.

You can see it at http://bretlanius.com/flash/km7stuff/keyboardtest.html now this I did as an actual component so that all I have to do is this in KM:

import com.bretlanius.ui.*;
import flash.stage.*;
import gs.*;

var k:keyboard=new keyboard();
k.visible=false;
addChild(k);
k.x=-200;
k.y=30;
txt1.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN,tready);
txt2.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN,tready);
btn1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, fullScreen);
//stage.focus = txt1;

function fullScreen(event:MouseEvent):void {

stage.displayState=StageDisplayState.FULL_SCREEN;
}

function tready(e:FocusEvent){
TweenLite.to(k, 1, {autoAlpha:1,x:e.currentTarget.x-k.width, y:e.currentTarget.y});
k.setSrc(e.currentTarget);

}

Here is the source for the keyboard.

package com.bretlanius.ui
{
   import flash.display.Sprite;
   import flash.events.MouseEvent;
   import flash.text.TextField;
   import flash.text.TextFormat;
   import km.display.*;
   import km.components.*;
   import km.skins.*;

   /**
   * ...
   * @author Bret Lanius
   */
   public class keyboard extends Sprite
   {
       var _txt:TextField;
       var rows:Array = new Array;
       var shift:Boolean;
       var table:SimpleTable;

       function keyboard() {
           shift = false;
           rows[0] = Array('1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '0');
           rows[1] = Array('q', 'w', 'e', 'r', 't', 'y', 'u', 'i', 'o', 'p');
           rows[2] = Array('a', 's', 'd', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l', ';');
           rows[3] = Array('z', 'x', 'v', 'c','b', 'n', 'm', '.', '/','DEL');
           rows[4] = Array('Sft', '\\','@','.com', 'Space',', ',' - ','_',' !','
           rows[5]= Array('~', '`', '#', '$','%', '^', '&', '*', '(',')');
           table = new SimpleTable();
           table.onCellCreate = fn;

           table.setSize(500, 200,rows[0].length,rows.length);

           table.cellPadding = 2;
            table.update();

            addChild(table);
           table.cell(4, 4).span(2, 1);
           table.update();
       }
       private function fn(cell:SimpleTableCell):void {

           cell.content = new LabelButton();
           //var fmt:TextFormat = new TextFormat;
           //fmt.bold = true;
           //cell.content.label.text.setTextFormat(fmt);

           cell.content.label.text =rows[cell.row][cell.col];
           cell.vars.value =rows[cell.row][cell.col];
           ScriptedSkin.applyTo(cell.content);
           cell.content.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, bClicked);
       }
       private function bClicked(e:MouseEvent) {

           switch (e.currentTarget.parent.vars.value) {

               case 'Space':
                   _txt.text += " ";
                   break;
               case '
                   _txt.text = _txt.text = _txt.text.substr(0, _txt.text.length - 1);
                   break;
               case 'Sft':

                   shift = !shift;
                   if (shift) {
                       e.currentTarget.label.text = "SHFT";
                       upperKeys(true);
                   }else {

                       e.currentTarget.label.text = "Sft";
                       upperKeys(false);
                   }

                   break;
               case 'Alt':
                   break;
               case 'DEL':
                   break;
               case " ":
                   break;
               default:
                   if (shift) {

                           _txt.text += e.currentTarget.parent.vars.value.toUpperCase();

                           //shift = false;

                   }else{
                   _txt.text += e.currentTarget.parent.vars.value;
                   }

           }


       }

       private function upperKeys(toggle) {

           for (var i = 0; i < table.colCount; i++){
                   for (var x = 0; x < table.rowCount;x++ ){
                       if (toggle) {
                           table.cell(i, x).content.label.text = table.cell(i, x).content.label.text.toUpperCase();
                       }else {
                           table.cell(i, x).content.label.text = table.cell(i, x).content.label.text.toLowerCase();
                       }
           }
           }
       }
       public function setSrc(t:TextField) {
           _txt = t;

       }


   }

}

I'd be interested in seeing any ideas on how to improve this component.

Build a simple website using Koolmoves

2010-02-07T07:52:00.000-05:00

A couple of users on the Koolmoves support forum over at Flashkit.com asked for a tutorial on building a website with Koolmoves.

There a a number of ways to go about this as Koolmoves offerspretty much full Actionscript 3.0 coding.

What I'll show is a very simple example of using clipart buttons that are included in KM7 and the Contentpane component from the GUI and just a very few lines of code.
You can get alot fancier and animate things around etc but to get started lets see how to just do a basic loading of two swf files as content.
I'm not showing building the loaded clips so first make those and save them as 1.swf and 2.swf, you can even just load a text file by changing the type number in the contentPane.addContent2 function. See the KM docs for the numbers and types of content you can load.

See the tutorial here(best fullscreen)

Learning to use Koolmoves with SWF Studio

2010-02-06T08:24:00.004-05:00

I recently was asked to make a video Kiosk for a international Equipment manufacturer, Koolmoves makes it so easy to build the player I took the job even though it was a rush job. You see the company that called is one I usually do film and video work with and had actually recently completed a shoot for this same manufacturer.

They had planned to use DVD for their trade show, but they wanted it to be touch screen with large buttons.

Well After modifying one of the included Skins for the Mediaplayer I completed this pretty quick. It worked well and since it was a once use and controled conditions the limitations of this type of projector file where not a big deal.

Well they must have liked it as I was then ask to create a DVD-ROM to show videos and open PDF and WORD files, open Website and play MP3 files. This one was to be shipped to dealers around the country so the issues with a simple projector were not ok, SO I sought out a solution that would make this all work.

Based on Chris Seahorn's experience with SWF Studio I decided to give it a try.

For starters the trial is FULLY FUNCTIONAL which let me work all they way to client approval of the first demo without having to prepay for the program. The exes that it creates just expire one day after first run.

Well getting the a basic flash program to work in SWF Studio is easy, I did have a couple of issues that mostly turned out to be me not understanding some things.
My first attempt used a Listbox and a Mediaplayer and when I ran them in SWF Studio they were empty...

Well it wasn't until Chris looked at my KM code did he point out that when your swf file is in the exe it doesn't know where to find the video files so you have two choices.

Embed the assest by just dropping them into the files panel of SWF Studio
Use ssGlobals.ssStartDir variable available in SWF Studio ( I totally missed this in my haste)

I made my thumbnails movieclip buttons and added the file names like this
vpanel.mc3.file=ssGlobals.ssStartDir+"/video/2600_Walkaround_Web.mov";
So ssGlobals.ssStartDir resolves to the directory that the EXE is running from and I have the videos in a subfolder /video/.

and then I create the playlist in my onclick handler

function playVideo(e:MouseEvent):void{
trace("cicked");
trace(e.currentTarget);
var pl:String=new String;
 pl='<playlist pause="false"><item label=""><video src="'+e.currentTarget.src+'"/></item></playlist>';
 trace(pl);
 mp1.setXMLPlaylist(pl);
}

And Voila it worked.

So this got me going (I won't bore you with all the drama of how we ended up changing everything and hiring an art director for the graphics and the pain of sorting that out)

Now my next big issue was loading the pdf files.
If the end user has Acrobat Reader it was pretty straight forward, and this is what I did initially.
I just made a button for each PDF and used the SWF Studio command ssShell.Invoke and it worked great. So I sent a demo to the client and they couldn't open the pdf's, Turns out that if you have the Full Acrobat program it doesn't like being called from another program. So how to get around this.
Once again SWF Studio had all the tools I needed, It required a good deal of help from the Northcode folks to get me past my misunderstanding but the tools are there.

Here's what I did:

I got a copy of a program called SumatraPDF that is a free pdf viewer that can be distributed unlike better known readers like Foxit.

So I put SumatraPDF in a folder called /other/ and then I to determine if the user has Reader, Fortuantly I have one computer with Acrobat and one with just reader.
So SWF Studio has a method call ssCore.Shell.getDefaultApplication that will report what application is
installed to handle an extension. So I check for what the system will use to open PDF files.

I coded this

var userReader:Boolean=false;

var hasReader=ssCore.Shell.getDefaultApplication({extension:"pdf"});

   if (hasReader.success)
   {
      trace(hasReader.result);
      trace(hasReader.result.search("AcroRd32.exe"));
      if (hasReader.result.search("AcroRd32.exe")<0)
      {
         trace("not AcroRd32.exe");
         useReader=false;
      }else{
         trace ("has AcroRd32.exe");
         useReader=true;
      }
   }else{
         useReader=false;
   }

This worked great So I can now use ssShell.invoke if useReader is true and SumatraPDF is false. Or so I thought.

Turns out that SumatraPDF didn't understand the long file names so for c://my documents/disk/pdf/Intro Letter.pdf it tried to open c://my and documents/disk/pdf/Intro and letter.pdf and needless to say this was not good. Well fortunately there is another command called getShortPath that will convert the long path to the old dos type file path.

I did stuggle a little with this as It wasn't clear to me that while flash allows forward slashes for paths Windows really uses backslashes and the getShortPath pass the path directly to the OS and required backslashes.

The resultant code was:
function openPDF(e:MouseEvent):void{

    filename=e.currentTarget.label.text;
    trace (filename);
    if (useReader){
    trace("using Reader");
        ssCore.Shell.invoke({path:"startDir://pdf/"+filename});
   }else{
           trace("using Sumatra");
           var shortpath=ssCore.Shell.getShortPath({path:ssGlobals.ssStartDir+"\\pdf\\"+filename});
           trace ("success "+shortpath.success);
           trace ("error "+shortpath.Error.Description);
           trace ("result "+shortpath.result);
           ssCore.Shell.execute({path:"startDir://other//SumatraPDF.exe",arguments:shortpath.result});
   }

}

Success! With TweenMax for sliding panels in and out. it all worked great. Thanks Northcode.
In the end the client was happy, I just wish I'd had more time to plan this whole thing from the start, I would have been able to give them more, like they wanted to allow setting the wallpaper and I wanted to offer a screensaver (which SWF Studio makes easily).

Postscript:
I never did get the listbox to worked when added via the GUI but scripted works just fine, so this is a minor issue.

New template

2009-10-09T07:37:00.001-05:00

The program I have for making Joomla templates now supports Blogger! So I tried it out and made a template for my blog.

If you want a custom template for your blogger site let me know.

Motion Control

2009-10-04T21:01:00.002-05:00

Just a quick peek at the motion control camera system that I run.

I really enjoy working with this thing. It's very portable and allows for some really cool visual effects

Understanding Keyframes in Koolmoves

2009-09-25T13:47:00.002-05:00

This is an older Video using a slightly older version of Koolmoves but the question comes up often and the way KM treats Keyframes has not changed.

Seattle WA

2009-09-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

Just got back from a shoot with Bark-Bark for USA in Seattle. I really liked that city. Unlike Atlanta, there is a thriving in town community with restaurants and bars. The first day we were shooting was glorious day in the low 70's with a slight breeze and mixed shunshine, They tell me that is not so common there. In any case we had a good shoot and on that first day I think we got some really nice B-roll footageat a place called Golden Gardens and Discovery Beach.

The coolest thing about Seattle that I saw was the Market, Amazing place full of local food and products. I only wish I had more time to look around, I only had an hour or so to play at the market before heading back to my hotel to leave for the airport

Creating a component

2009-08-23T20:52:00.004-05:00

On Flashkit a while back I showed a simple little clock to demonstrate using the pixelScreen component in Koolmoves. Here I want to use that simple example to create a component from it.

The ability to create custom components is one of the greatest assest in AS3 which Koolmoves now supports.

Here is a video Tutorial to help you get a handle on the concept and methods for creating your own.

Using the Pixel Screen

2009-07-19T08:17:00.008-05:00

The Current version of Koolmoves has an interesting little component called PixelScreen.

The PixelScreen uses a very small numeric font to display very tiny numbers, I'm not sure what the purpose of this was but I thought I'd look it over and try to make something with it.

What I came up with was a simple clock example, which could be a cool use within another movie.

Here's the code:

var ps:PixelScreen = new PixelScreen(50,20);
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onFrame);
function onFrame(e:Event):void {
var now:Date = new Date();
hr=now.getHours();
if (hr<10){
hr="0"+hr;
}
min=now.getMinutes();
if(min<10){
min="0"+min;
}
sec=now.getSeconds();
if (sec<10){
sec="0"+sec;
}
ps.cls;
ps.locate(2,1);
ps.print(hr+":"+min+":"+sec);
}

addChild(ps);

ps.color(0xffffff);

box();

function box(){
for (x=3;x<=45;x++){
ps.pset(x,1);
ps.pset(x,15);
}
for (x=2;x<=15;x++){
ps.pset(3,x);
ps.pset(45,x);
}
}

Now we want to use Enterframe event to update
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onFrame);
Note that we did not add this listener to any object, this is so that the timeline or root movie EnterFrame event is triggered.

Next we just get the current time and format it with leading zeros so that it looks nice.

ps.cls;
ps.locate(2,1);
ps.print(hr+":"+min+":"+sec);
Here we Clear the pixelscreen with cls
Then we print the time.

ps.color(0xffffff);

box();

function box(){
for (x=3;x<=45;x++){
ps.pset(x,1);
ps.pset(x,15);
}
for (x=2;x<=15;x++){
ps.pset(3,x);
ps.pset(45,x);
}

Finally we add it the the display list and draw a box around it.

Introduction to AS3 for Koolmoves users

2009-07-17T21:28:00.003-05:00

I don't use my blog often and no one really reads it but it seemed a good place to post this.

If you've been a little confused with AS3 in the latest release of Koolmoves don't feel alone. I had a terrible time at first doing simple things I was used to doing in KM4-6 in Actionscript 1.

AS3 is "Event" driven, in the simplest terms this means that you "listen" for events and respond to them.

AS3 is more program based and less timeline based and so some major things have changed.
AS3 refers to anything that can be displayed to be a "Display Object" and every component or movieclip is one, they have a hierarchical nature so they "inherit" any properties or methods of their parent object.

For example a button is a subclass of UIComponent which is a subcalss of Sprite

I know that sounds confusing but basically you can Extend or build upon an already existing "class" so Flash provides Sprite class which Koolmoves has built (subclassed) it's UIComponent. This is the basis for most of KM's components. Then the basebutton is built (subclassed) from the UIComponent.

Why does this matter? Well any thing a Sprite can do (properties or methods) the UIComponent can do plus what ever it is programmed to do. And the BaseButton can do everything the UIComponent can do plus whatever is added in the base button class.

You mostly don't need to know all that but it can come in handy and you should at least have a minimal understanding of it.

In AS1 if we say created a text field it would appear on the stage by default.
In AS3 we create a textfield like any other object or class with

var txt1:TextField=new TextField();

the text field is created but not displayed untill we add it to what is called the display list. We do this with addChild()

addChild(txt1);

Now if you go try this in KM you won't see anything because the text is empty so if you are like me and want to cut and paste a snippet to try, use this:

var txt1:TextField=new TextField();
txt1.text="now is the time";
addChild(txt1);

Ok to events. if you want a display object to respond to a mouse event you have to "listen" for it.
Lets use the GUI (Graphical User Interface) to put a button on the stage.

now in the actionscript panel we set a listener and a function to execute when the event is "heard"

lets assume your button is named btn1

btn1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,Clicked);
we are saying here to listen for this object for the mouse event of CLICK and if it happens run the function called "Clicked".
Now we need to create the function

function clicked(e:MouseEvent):void{
txt1.text=e.target.name;
}

Looks wierd right? Lets break it down.
function clicked(e:MouseEvent)
This is how you create a function, the event is passed a an object we will call it "e" and we tell the complier that it's a MouseEvent with :MouseEvent
:void
this just tells the compiler that our function doesn't return anything (some functions do)
txt1.text=e.target.name;

The event object (e) has parameters that we can access one is target this is the object that fired the event, in our case it's btn1. We can access this with e.target some of the things we can get are name, stageX, stageY, and more see the adobe docs online for complete list, and different types of events have different properties.

At first all this seems like we now have to jump through pointless hoops but it really is much better is many ways. For example you can have just one clicked function and it will know what button is clicked in AS1 I've done this but it was complicated and took alot of code.

Also at first it seems really redundant to say
var txt1:TextField=new TextField();

using var lets the compiler know that it's either new or reused variable using the :objectType lets the compiler know what kind of object it is. This is called "Strong typing" it's how real programmers have done for a long time in other languages and lets the compiler be more efficient and compiling the code. Truth be told KM will allow you to leave out some of this and handle it for you, but it's good practice to do and it will be consistent with AS3 from other sources, I've actually used KM code to help a couple of people in the AS3 forum and my code usually works fine in CS4 except when I forget to strong type my variables or use a KM component.

Enought for today...

Bret

2009-03-13T09:42:00.001-05:00

Just found PING.FM lets you update status on multiple social sites at once....

Koolmoves 7 Beta Testing

2009-01-07T21:30:00.002-05:00

The next release of the best value in Flash software is about to be released. I've been beta testing version 7 of Koolmoves http://koolmoves.com and the new AS3 version is awesome, for $50 you would pay that for just some of the included components. Check it out.

Buckwebhost is a bust

2006-07-11T13:35:00.000-05:00

Don't know what happened but I was a content user of buckwebhost but when I needed to transfer my domain to them they no longer responded to emails or support tickets. Lost my domain for a few days and still haven't heard a peep from them. I reccomend you don't use them. I'm switchin to AlwaysWebHosting.

2006-05-08T09:15:00.000-05:00

The Microsoft update to IE is really causing a lot of pain to the WebDevelopment Community.

There just isn't any good solutions out there for all Active content to aviod the "click to Activate" message.

I've implemented one fix that seems to be working ok on the sites I've done, but The owners of Koolmoves are stuggling to find a solution that they can incorporate into the export of Swf from their software, I've been trying to help work the solution. The method I'm using seems to not work in their layout for some reason

2006-01-09T22:27:00.000-05:00

Traveling around the country for Lowe's Corporate shoot.

2005-12-12T17:52:00.000-05:00

The Job I didn't get

The folks at Lockheed missed out. I don't know what they were thinking but When I applied for a job in the video/media dept. I had to be the most qualified applicant. The job description was me to a "T". Oh well their loss eh? So now I've still a freelancer, 06 is going to be a BIG year. Lots of work and much coolness...... P.S. if you need a video-media guy give me a call!!!!

Christmas Play

2005-12-12T15:37:00.000-05:00

Gotta love this time of year.
The kids at our church (Northside Christian Church) put on a musical called "little Christmas Lamb". What a wonderfull presentation, And We even had a visit from Santa.

Discovered Blogger

2005-12-11T23:14:00.000-05:00

Wow, I discovered Picasa by Google today and what a great treat. I was looking for something to make my own index prints when off loading Digital photos to CDs and found Picasa a free photo orginizer from Google. More features than most commercial programs and it's FREE