First add all libraries you use for graphics rendering. Lately I’m familiar with LibGDX for doing graphics in Java so i will be adding its jar files into my project then i will include them in Java Build Path -> Libraries. Anyway i will not go into detail in this part because everybody has their choice of graphics library.

Now, let’s show Eclipse where is our Kinect wrappers and native libraries.
In Eclipse:
1- Click Projects -> Java Build Path -> Libraries
2- Click Add External JARs add select org.OpenNI.jar which is located in “C:Program FilesOpenNISamplesBinRelease”
3- Click Arrow button near Jar file we have just added to expand menu.
4- Double-Click on Native library location and select Jar path which is “C:Program FilesOpenNISamplesBinRelease”

At this stage, we are done with implementing the wrapper. But we need some sample code to test it , right?

Earlier this summer, I started a project to develop a framework to ease kinect assisted development. In git repo of that project I also shared a simplified code for adding skeleton and hand tracking.

Download : http://github.com/ayildirim/bolt

After downloading project
1- Import kinect1 folder as a Java project into eclipse.
2- Click Projects -> Java Build Path -> Projects for your own project (not for the one we just imported)
3- Click Add and select kinect1 which we just imported.

Now, we are done with libraries and classes for basic data acquisition.
You can even run UserTrackerApplication located in kinect1 project to do some skeleton tracking.

Why did we add kinect1 into our own project if it could have worked alone?
We added it into our own project to use its UserTracker class because it does everything needed to be done for tracking

How I use it in my projects?
In following part of the article I will be referring Create and Render methods, These are both LibGDX methods but all graphic libraries methods similar to these ones.
Create : is called before scene or window loaded.
Render : is called every frame to render scene or window.

1- Initate each object and variable of UserTracker class in Create method just like it is done in the Main method of UserTrackerApplication.java
2- In Render method I call updateDepth and repaint methods of UserTracker class so it checks for user movements and show them in its own window.

You can check out a kinect assisted game I develop as a contractor earlier this semester.
Kinect Assisted Interactive Ad Stand : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CORwDsC60as
Me testing the game before : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9qrwM2yoEI

Thank you very much for reading

Most time consuming part of kinect-assisted development is just the beginning, where you
have to setup kinect libraries and java wrapper. The rest is plain simple, API is just great. You dont need to code a single line of computer vision stuff, all that is taken care of for you in the background. API features gesture & pose detection and access to 3D coordinate for each joint. API I am talking about is OpenNI, which i chose instead of OpenKinect, because it has a Java Wrapper. But if you are going to use another language i’d recommend OpenKinect. Because OpenKinect also supports motor control.

So let’s start by downloading required drivers & files.

If your have a 64 bit computer, download & use 64 bit alternatives of each file.
1 – 32 Bit JAVA
http://www.openni.org/Downloads/OpenNIModules.aspx :
2 – OpenNI Binaries ->; Unstable ->; … for Windows x86 ( 32 Bit )
3 – OpenNI Compliant Middleware Binaries ->; Unstable ->; … for Windows x86
4 – OpenNI Compliant Hardware Binaries ->; Unstable ->; … for Windows x86
5 – Sensor Kinect
6- Kinect XML

Installation Steps :
1 – Install OpenNI Binaries (OpenNi-win32…exe) ( 2# file )
2 – Install OpenNI MiddleWare (Nite-win32…exe) ( 3# file )
3 – Install OpenNI HardWare (Sensor..exe) ( 4# file)
4 – Install Sensor Kinect yüklenir. ( 5# file )
5 – Replace XML Files : ( 6# file )
Files inside KinectXMLs
OpenNI/Data ->; Program FilesOpenNIData
NITE/Data ->; Program FilesPrimeSenseNITEData
6 – Install Java. (1# )
7 – Restart your computer.

In this part, we have succesfully installed kinect & OpenNI drivers. You can test whether it’s correctly installed or not by running samples under Program FilesOpenNISamples.

On next part, we will be talking about adding wrapper into eclipse and build an example project.

Thanks for reading

Both software & hardware design is very primitive so far but I am totally sure it is not far that we have fully functioning smart watches on our wrists that we can hack, modify & re-design for our every need.

Imagine having your computer, smartphone and your tablet on your wrist, SmartWatch is more than that because it packs all that computing power into an wristwatch form that you can actually wear in daily life. It is a dream waiting to become reality. Let’s make it!

Do not hesitate to contact me!

So that’s the idea, let’s get into some technical specs.,
On current design i have following components:

Nokia 3310 LCD
Bluesmirf GOLD ( any serial communicating bluetooth module will do )
Arduino Mini Pro
3.7v Battery 2700 mah

On the earlier watch i had an 6610 LCD but its power consumption was a little high, so I switched to monochrome Nokia 3310 LCD which is also easier to solder.

Display difference problem, will be solved on next release by developing a DisplayManager for handling different display drivers.

Github Repo. Branches
Arduino Branch: https://github.com/ayildirim/SmartWatch/tree/arduino
Android Client Branch: https://github.com/ayildirim/SmartWatch/tree/android
You can find individual projects for each android client & arduino under their own branches.

TODO List:
Electronics :
Power consumption optimization
Design PCB
Low Level MCU : 
Display Manager
Better Window Management
OTA Update via Bluetooth
High Level MCU :
Notification Center
Instant Notification Pop-up
Android Client :
Facebook Alerts
Call & SMS Alerts
eMail Alerts
Other :
Homepage for SmartWatch Initiative
Tutorial for Making of the Watch

HackerNews Entry : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4657615

So far we have talked about Windows 8… Lets talk about Android-x86. Because its development is non-profit and voluntary , i wont be commenting harshly. First of all i have to share my appreciation for their work on porting android to x86 devices.

Last week i updated to ICS-x86 amd brazos RC1 build. Even though it improved a lot , there are still some issues.
Here is a list of problems i have encountered:

• Screen flickers
• Accelerometer & Auto-rotation doesnt work
• Audio driver crashes and causes a disturbing audible noise , you cant stop by plugging headphone.

Other than these problems android runs pretty smooth with last release. But there is something i should notify you , you cant play any of those 3D fancy graphical games NFS Shift , GTA3 etc. , %99 of 3D games and apps doesnt work on android-x86 due to fact that those apps and games were compiled with ARM binary libraries. And when you discard those from market you are pretty much left with crappy apps , notetaking , todo , soundboard apps etc. pretty much like chrome webstore. So even though you install android-x86 i’m pretty sure you will stick with Windows.

thanks for reading

For this reason , i made a decision that i wont do electronics & physical computing as profession every in my life. So i can still have something techy to do and dont care about profits etc. There was one other reason that led me to this decision. It is that i think i have been too generalist and i should scale down my expertise & interest area and become more specialist so i can be more productive. I turned this reasoning into a key prenciple in life. Now i think twice when i switch from working on one technology to other. For example i have been working on PHP & Javascript for over 2 years now. I developed a very complicated web application implementing many features of both php and javascript. I learnt a lot… there is a lot more to learn but i feel my learning curve has become more steep and i become very productive in web app. development. But now i have a very big interest in android app. development… and i am still considering if i’m breaking the rule i mentioned earlier about being generalist versus specialist. But considering my earlier span of interest , i have improved a lot in this manner. I have narrowed down my professional interests a lot.
And besides all this, there is balancing problem between your work & your education. I’m studying Computer Engineering in University of Sakarya. I had very bad marks last term. The truth is i didnt attend most of the classes regularly, i was really busy with personal & freelance works. I came to realize something that doing programming bussiness wont help you much in CS exams. Because what they teach & ask is not much about what you use in real-life programming. They ask you about bigO notations of sorting algorithms , ricatti equations , karnaugh maps etc. I hate impractical information. So i’m wondering should i slow down working on personal & freelance projects.

My intention in writing this article is not only to express myself but also to get your suggestions.I’m sure there are others who had this hobby to career transition. If you know a book , an article or something that you think might be helpful , please comment.

that’s all for now, thanks for reading…

Before reading rest of the article please check out the GlassLayer Web App. itself

Hi everybody,
Finally , i finished this web application i've been working for over a year. So i thought it would be a good idea to share my experiences and announce the application here on my blog. Application name has changed a few times along the way but final name is GlassLayer. I've made this web application for Glass Art Projects company located in LA. What they offer is that they give a kit of glasses , you glue those glasses on to a base glass as you like , it's as simple as that and you get to design your very own plate. This was the traditional procedure but now with this new web application you get to design your own plate faster & cheaper.

How it is faster?

In the traditional design process:
You buy the kit , it is shipped to you
You glue your own design , ship it back to company
Company makes the plate , ships it back to you
It took 3 shipments to get you to design your own plate.
But now with the web application we eliminate 2 shipments , you only design the plate and get it shipped to you.

How it is cheaper?

You know in the traditional design you get to buy a kit , but as you design you realize you dont use all of the pieces and some glass pieces gets broken which causes lots of piece waste. By using web application you only pay for the pieces you used.

Features ( End User )

• Hold down CTRL key to select more than one piece.
• Use Remove , Rotate , Layer buttons to control selected pieces.
• Drag & Drop pieces onto plate from piece inventory.
• Undo and Redo when you need to back in design process.
• Use Plate Material button to change plate base color.
• Change Color Palette to access more colors.
• Switch to Transparent tab to access transparent pieces.
• Make sure to register & login before designing if you are thinking about saving or buying your design.
• Use accordion menu in inventory to access different types of pieces.

Technical Part of the Article for Devs.:

First of all , i have to say that i truly appreciate Dimitry Baranovsky's RaphaelJS library and thanks a lot to JQuery developers. RaphaelJS is a great library for 2D Canvas operations and it even supports IE7... It handles all the cross-browser compatibility issues in 2D graphics. And one can not ignore the power & acceleration ClassyJS added to development of the application.
This project has been my biggest and most time-consuming project so far. I can not express how much this project added to me in terms of experience.Until the end of 5th month of development i have been developing using functional coding discipline. The more the project grow , the messier code has become. And it became impossible to work on it.So i decided to switch to object oriented approach , i researched some of the OOP approaches in javascript and i found ClassyJS library. ClassyJS library is inspired by the OOP approach of Python programming language and as i had years of experience with python in the past , it seemed best choice for me. It took a month to re-code everything in OOP but after i switched OOP , the development got very fast and a lot less confusing.Now it's about 3000 lines of javascript code but still looks simple , thanks to OOP & ClassyJS.

Features ( Technical ) :

• Single & Grouped Piece Selection
• Single & Grouped Movement,Rotation,Layering,Removal
• Infinite Undo & Redo
• Replay Design Process
• Save & Load Designs
• Piece Bundles

As i switched to object oriented javascript i learned some new tricks in javascript that i’ve never needed or used before.One of them was closures.I dont think i’m yet an expert on javascript or its closures but i want to share my experiences with it. I perceive closures as parameterized callback functions that you can pass arguments into the function.

So when it becomes useful you ask?
It becomes very useful when you are using Jquery & OOP javascript together. Let me give you an example:

Content 1
Content 2
Content 3

This will not work as expected because second “this” pointer becomes current $(‘li’) element.
So how you gonna handle it?
You can fix it by editing it to:

$(this).html(obj.counter);

But wait that’s against OOP approach to assume object name is always going to be “obj”.I wish it was just that , but it will also make it impossible to declare and use more than one instance of that class in one document which can be solved by using seperate documents and showing them in one page within iframe elements.But dont you think it is quite unprofessional?

So that’s where we use Javascript Closures.By using a closure we can pass object pointer keyword “this” into “each()” function of JQuery.
for working example click : http://jsfiddle.net/C7yen/

Content 1
Content 2
Content 3

PS:
Some of the JQuery functions such as “.bind()” allows you to pass arguments.In those cases you dont need closures.But those functions are very few , maybe its only “.bind()” function , because it’s only one i know.

;
Content 1
Content 2
Content 3

So… What Social Network 2.0 should be?
This is going to be my humble idea, there might be some errors on technical level that i didnt know about , but i can not know those without sharing right So please let me know you reviews after you read.

Two Friends on Two Different Servers:
Database :
friends
FriendName ,ListenKey,  EventTriggerURL , TriggerKey …… columns.
personal
…. …, …, .. EventListenURL
When a friendship request is accepted :
Your server will send your friend’s server a person-specific ListenKey and EventListenURL.
And your server will retrieve EventTriggerURL and TriggerKey from your friend.

EventListenURL : for server to check if

• there is something you are tagged is posted etc.
• PM received.

EventTriggerURL : to trigger

• “You are tagged in my post” alert on your friends server.
• PM sent.

How exactly the Servers going to work?

• There will be registered & certified Social Media Server.
• Each social media server will have its own adware policies to provide free service.
• There will be Social Media Servers with no Adverts. but instead with a monthly cost.
• There will be a specific meta tag stating that it is profile page.
• Server softwares will need to be a little different from the usual HTTP servers we use.Server software will check user input to make sure there is no malicious code etc. before triggering other servers.

We are going to search friends on Google:
Each person will set
I would like to be found by:
My Name
Where i live
My Age
etc.
Afterwards these infos. you choosed to be found will be public and will be indexed by Search Engines like Google.Who knows maybe Google would develop a new search tab called “People”
So most of the interconnected communication will be based on triggers except chatting.I think to make it work faster chat communication must be based on TCP connection between servers.

Regards
Ahmet
This idea is mostly theoretic and not fully thought and i might add or edit as i notice mistakes or musts in an interconnected social network system.

By the way :
I first thought of this a month ago and later on i discovered some people already working on this.But i wanted to share my thoughts anyway.

I was at Google Chrome DevFest today, it was great in a lot of way , it has been very educating and entertaining in the same time. We’ve been introduced to some of the amazing – yet beta – features of chrome browser. I’ve got to admit that if this features goes mainstream and gets support by more browsers , It is going to change the way we think of the web. The Web might become a whole lot better intuitive & fun experience with this upcoming features. Not only it will change the user experience , but also it will create new possibilities for developers. As an enthusiast Web App. developer , all i can say is that we have to spread the modern browser usage , we’ve got to get more users to upgrade their browsers to one of the modern browsers.It will not only ease the development process but also it will enrich the materials we use to develop web apps and im sure that this will accelerate the innovation in web.

So.. I guess that was enough with the Future Aspect of the Features we’re going to talk about.Lets get into some detail

Speech Synthesis And Recognition Made Simple with x-webkit-speech and ChromeVox:

Even though, the ChromeVox was introduced as an accessibility solution for disabled users , I think it has lots of prospect for users with no disability.For instance you can be browsing in another tab , and the tab in the background can alert by telling exact situation that is going on on that tab in background.

What about speech recognition? Well… let me explain , with the speech recognition you can basically command the website handsfree.Speech Recognition has been a big difficulty to implement in old days even in desktop apps.But with the upcoming feature that is introduced with the Google Chrome it will only require you to write exactly nothing more than 2 words and a letter “x-webkit-speech”.

<input type=”text” x-webkit-speech=”x-webkit-speech” /> Just like that the text input turns into a speech recognition enable input .

Web will no longer will be dependant to Web

Yea.. I’m aware that’s quite an odd sentence but let me rephrase it.Actually the term is “Offline Web App.”.

This is a great innovation which might eventually take web application development to a next level where it takes the place of desktop softwares and this will accelerate the loading of web apps.Let me explain how… You know in a web app. we have elements that we re-load each time we browse the app. unless it is cached by our browser and stood still the next time we visit.But on an “Offline enabled” Web App. once you visited the App. your browser will store the app. in your local memory and allow you to use and browse the app offline.So as we have stored most of the basic elements of the web app in our local storage , next time we visit that web app. a javascript code can check whether the stored elements are up-to-date or not and if they are up-to-date you might not even need to reload those files which will accelerate page-loading.

All the Max/Msp and PureData Fellows : Get Ready for the Online Audio Creation & Visualization

Creating fancy animations and visualizations online with canvas is no news to us but the new thing is now you can synthesize audio directly on the web with javascript just like you do in PureData and Max/Msp.Think of the possibilities.When audio and graphics is combined the only limit is your imagination

Microphone & Camera support comes to Javascript

When i first that microphone & camera support came to Javascript.First, what came up in my mind was the possibility that you can use microphone input and combine it with the audio synth. feature that i mentioned above and you can build a voice changer application – something like vocoder in FL Studio or the T-Pain Vocoder app. in Iphone  -.

And with the camera support you can build and app that tracks hand gestures and scrolls up & down the page accordingly.

That’s all for now

For more photos from the event please visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mclightning/sets/72157628330070269/

Thanks a lot to Sam Dutton & Paul Kinlan for great presentations.

Thanks a lot to Google Turkiye Team.

Thanks for the gifts Google.

Last week , my delivery – the arduino ethernet shield – from Farnell has arrived. I was totally excited about it but i didnt have much time to play with it last week because i had visa exams.Finally , yesterday i had some time to play with it. I tested some of the example source codes on it and i have to admit that it was dead easy to set up & get to running.There is a plethora of source codes available for the shield , not just source codes but also lots of demonstration videos of what others made with it.This – The Sharing – is one of the reasons i love Arduino Community. A community of makers and enthusiast those help each other . It is a community where imaginations come alive and get in touch with the physical world in a collaboration and im grateful to be part of it

Why I am talking about the community , sharing etc. ?
It’s simple.For An Hobbyist , an electronic circuit is not just some specs but also how much of information , tutorial and examples available…

Anyway…I guess this was enough with the Information Availability for this post , we may talk this in another post

• Requires and Arduino board (not included)
• Operating voltage 5V (supplied from the Arduino Board)
• Ethernet Controller: W5100 with internal 16K buffer
• Connection speed: 10/100Mb
• Connection with Arduino on SPI port

visit ArduinoEthernetShield page for detailed specs.

I had some ideas earlier to solve a problem by using an ethernet shield with arduino.The problem is this: You know most of the times, when we are downloading big files we leave computer on , just to have it continuing downloading.But dont you think it’s a bit power consuming? Leaving a high power consuming device ON , a laptop or desktop especially desktop , just to download a file?? Wouldnt it be easier if we had somewhat less power consuming and small devices to download files.So i thought maybe i can do that with an arduino and an ethernet shield.So i googled a bit and i found out some others thought this too.But answers shows that implementing a file system into arduino is pretty hard not the mention the writing speed.But i havent given up this idea yet, i will research more and share whatever i found with you here

Here are some photos from the Ethernet Shield

It has a Cute Little Box

Cute isn’t it?

Well.. Thank you for creating such an amazing platform

There it is :O

mounted on top of arduino and connected to ethernet jack.
in about 10 minutes connected , coded and uploaded

click here to visit my flickr account for more photos

I recommend choosing Farnell for flawless payment & shipment process.