Smart Poi

Smart Poi Android app now available for testing

Just a quick update, I have uploaded a demo version of my Android app for anyone who is curious to play with:

http://circusscientist.com/SmartPoiDemoAndroid.zip

There are two .apk files included in the zip file (4mb). In order for the app to work correctly you need to install and run “Smart Poi Setup.apk” – it creates the necessary folders inside the “Pictures” directory on your device. You may need to run this twice, depending on your Android version (file access permissions may only work the second time) – just check if WirelessSmartPoi and WirlessSmartPoi72px folders have pics inside or the main app will not work correctly.  Smart Poi Setup.apk can then be uninstalled.

The second “Smart Poi Demo.apk” is a test app to show the capabilities of the poi. This version of the app is for anyone demonstration purposes only, the UDP send is disabled and visualization enabled. In other words it does everything but send signals to the poi. This is because my app slows down function if no poi is connected, trying to send to nowhere. You may need to be connected to WiFi for this to work, I haven’t checked if that check is still in place.

Smart Poi Demo app menu

The Timeline option won’t work on this demo unfortunately as it requires a zip file created by the Timeline creator desktop program which isn’t quite ready for sharing. To see what the other options are meant to do on the poi check out my post here:

https://www.circusscientist.com/2018/09/12/smart-poi-android-streaming-app-control-demo-video/

Anyway, have a look and let me know what you think! So far tested working on Android KitKat through to Nougat. Please note all images need to be rotated 90 degrees to the right for the app to work correctly. One day I will fix this..

I will be uploading the full app to the Play Store once the Poi Arduino code is ready for sharing. The ultimate goal is of course to enable anyone to make a set of affordable Wireless Streaming Smart Poi of their own, and hopefully find some programmers interested enough to contribute to the development of this project.

Animated Poi Spinning

So I am working on an online animated poi spinning web app to impress clients. You can check it out here: https://circusscientist.com/numetro-demo/

Some images from one of my poi spinning gigs, animated to show how they look on the poi. I am hoping to be able to make this into a service for other poi spinners, so they too can showcase their work. All images copyright Nu Metro Cinemas, adapted for poi by my talented wife, Amanda Hastings.

 

Smart Poi Android streaming app control demo video

This is a bit old now, I have integrated all the functionality shown here into one large app since, however the video does give a good idea of the functionality.

When spun in this video, the poi look choppy due to the low frame rate. Please take my word for it, they look a lot better in real life. I have a better looking video of both sizes of poi being spun here:

https://www.circusscientist.com/2018/03/29/embedded-video-is-easy/

K8 One Button Remote with Arduino Nano

This is a post for K8 juggling equipment owners who are also into electronics. If you haven’t already read it, here is here is why I made my own K8 IR remote.

If you don’t do electronics, but own K8’s, try the animated demo! (instructions below).

K8 One Button Remote

The circuit is quite simple. A 9v battery powers the Nano via Vin pin. A transistor receives output from the Nano, and this triggers a large current in the 3 connected infrared LED’s. The reason for the transistor is to maximize the signal, output of Arduino is only 5v but we need more for better signal range. You may notice that there is no resistor on the LED’s. IR pulses are extremely short ON/OFF pulses and so are not likely to blow up the LED’s in this implementation. I did have one connected previously but the range suffered.

I made a fun web program to demonstrate the functionality, you can see it here:

K8RemoteDemo

The demo works best on PC but you can see it on a mobile.

How to use it: click on some of the remote buttons, then press the big grey square at the bottom right to start (scroll down/across if you can’t see it). Press the bottom right square again to cycle through the saved patterns.

Refresh the page if you want to try again. Some of the buttons are not implemented yet (eg. Demo)
My favorite is probably fade, followed by no. 5 which is my favorite K8 pattern anyway.

 

This transmitter (at least with the IR LED’s I have) is more powerful than the K8 remote I received from them.

The code I will post in another article, however it is really simple, while the button is being pressed, the saved signal is sent, once per second (not more – one of my K8 balls has stopped receiving I believe due to too many signals sent*)

Stop pressing the button and the remote is off (saving battery of course) and next time the signal will be a different one, depending on the program.

 

*I am not a K8 engineer but their equipment stores the last pattern in memory. I believe that a piece of EEProm memory is overwritten each time the signal is received, so take care to not send too many signals, or your equipment may stop working. On Arduino chips EEProm memory is rated for 100 000 rewrites, obviously this is a minimum but evidently I exceeded this in some experiments.

POV poi image to circle

* please note this program no longer works, the script is not running anymore. I may look at this again one day.

What does this do? Visualize poi image as it is spinning around, software turns rectangular image into circular representation of poi image arc.

Select and upload your poi image (best results with 72px image) – only one at a time at the moment for testing. Currently only .jpg format supported.

wait for rotation

If page says “oops that page can’t be reached”, refresh after a couple of seconds – this is alpha version so not perfect.

Upload files

This program is optimized for visualizing SmartPoi (72px version) - the worlds first wireless streaming poi. See circusscientist.com for more details.