Proto Cog Culture

Another update

Administrator — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:43:52 +0000

The Bad News first(That way you have something good to look forward to)
My small pinball machine I was working on, the hack one. Failed in concept. It’s going to cost me more money than anticipated to finish it.
I lost my camera somewhere so it’s going to be a while before I post another photo of stuff I mindlessly purchase (Yay?)
I’m still swamped with projects, so another rebuild of this site is far off.

Now.. The Good News
My mother bought me a home sized pinball machine. I’m debating on hacking it up or not. My mother knew this and that’s why she bought it for me. It’s a Zizzle Pinball so… no one is going to miss it.
I’ve purchased that Screw Driver I always wanted. So.. I can finally finish taking apart the junk I found on the street and save the parts that I wanted. So at least my apartment is going to be cleaner.
Hopefully and fingers crossed. I’m going to put up a router(The tool not the network device) this weekend. That plus my Saw & screw Driver set are going to make for awesome projects!

Guff

Administrator — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:05:12 +0000

Oooh I got a new book!

Administrator — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:47:40 +0000

I told you, “I am going to get back in to reading”.

I got board so I built this…

Administrator — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:44:58 +0000

… get it!?

I had over 1,000 dollars worth of table top games.

Administrator — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:36:30 +0000

At one point in my life I had a whole bunch of table top games. I had all kinds of them such as Dungeons and Dragons, Gurps, Hero System, Rifts, and a lot more. Funny enough I didn’t pack them away properly and we had a pretty light fire in the basement from the heater. Of course when the heater went out it got really cold and a pipe broke. All of that has been long since fixed, since these incidents happened over 10 years ago.

I went down in the basement today to get my Hero System rule books, and that’s when I noticed…

this…

Unfortunately when the heater wen it took my half books with it. All of the campaigns that my brother and I had written, all the rule books for almost every table top role playing game that we had. All gone. So… I’m starting over fresh. This is going to be a fresh start for me if I want to start playing these again.

Two more steps backwards

Administrator — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:04:27 +0000

So this is a quick entry. Last night I managed to break two relays that I thought were going to work in my pinball machine. So I’m researching a better method for working the flippers.

Got a new package.

Administrator — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:47:52 +0000

In the end… all of this does link together towards one major project I am working on. But, in the mean time I have to catch up on my reading.

Now this of course is probably the first non-audio fiction book I will “read” in about 2 years. The last being Stephen King’s Gunslinger. I will let everyone know what I think in the long run via . I caught Nick Valentino on twitter and decided I was going to give his book a chance. I’m currently only 13 pages in since I have a shorter commute to work than before, but I’m in to it so far and that’s saying a lot(Took me almost the entire first and second chapter to get in to The Gunslinger)

Keyboard LEDs

Administrator — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:58:13 +0000

While I was trying to figure something else out code wise , my mind began to wander. I started thinking about a cheap man’s pinball machine. Now this has been an off again on again project of mine for the past few months. But yesterday I thought about how many 3.5 SBCs that I have and what I could do with them. Originally I wanted to take one throw it inside of a desktop pinball machine and have some crazy serial connections going back and forth to control everything. I then found that the SBCs are over kill.

So, yesterday the idea popped in my head again, but more for haha sake, I wanted to see if I could make the LEDS on a keyboard flash using C#. And in doing this I could use the current that would come from the LEDS to power a relay and turn on the Solenoids/Flippers. Just a concept. Nothing really extreme or solid, just a simple proof of concept(I’ve been in to those a lot recently.)

So I coded it out as a Console Window application using 1 C# file and the command line to compile it. (That way I couldn’t lazy my way out and use help files.) Here’s what I have.

using System; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Runtime.InteropServices;


namespace popsknot.griz.keyFlasher

{

    public class keyFlasher

    {
        [DllImport("user32.dll")]

        static extern ushort GetKeyState(short nVirtKey);
        [DllImport("user32.dll")]

        static extern void keybd_event(byte bVk, byte bScan, uint dwFlags, int dwExtraInfo);
        public const ushort keyDownBit = 0x80;
        const int KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY = 0x1;

        const int KEYEVENTF_KEYUP = 0x2;
        private static int counter = 10;

        private static bool rFlipper = false;

        private static bool lFlipper = false;
        public static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            if (Control.IsKeyLocked(Keys.Scroll))

            {

                keybd_event(0x91, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                keybd_event(0x91, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);
            }
            if (Control.IsKeyLocked(Keys.NumLock))

            {

                keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);
            }
             while (counter !=0)

            {

                if (IsKeyPressed(Keys.Escape))

                {

                    counter = 0;

                }
                 //Right Flipper

                if ((System.Windows.Forms.Control.ModifierKeys & Keys.Control) == Keys.Control)

                {

                    if (!rFlipper)

                    {

                        Console.WriteLine("Trigger Right Flipper" + 0x90);

                        keybd_event(0x91, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                        keybd_event(0x91, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

                        rFlipper = true;

                    }

                }

                else

                {

                    if (rFlipper == true)

                    {

                        keybd_event(0x91,0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                        keybd_event(0x91, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

                        rFlipper = false;

                    }

                }
                 //Left Flipper
                if ((System.Windows.Forms.Control.ModifierKeys & Keys.Alt) == Keys.Alt)

                {

                    if (!lFlipper)

                    {

                        Console.WriteLine("Trigger Left Flipper" + 0x90);

                        keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                        keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

                        lFlipper = true;

                    }

                }

                else

                {

                    if (lFlipper == true)

                    {

                        keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, 0);

                        keybd_event(0x90, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

                        lFlipper = false;

                    }

                }

             }

        }

public static bool IsKeyPressed(Keys key) { return ((GetKeyState((short)key) & keyDownBit) == keyDownBit); } } }

Also keep in mind that I did about 2 minutes of testing on this on my development machine. That means that there is a chance I may be doing something wrong and it could cause damage to something. So, use at your own risk.

Another day another project

Administrator — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:34:09 +0000

So here I am, I’ve been looking at what I worked on in 2009 and it’s lack of appearances in the toybox. And keep asking myself, “why do I keep neglecting the toybox?”The answer to that is still. I don’t know. I have two things from 2010 that I just… Ah well I’ll talk about them some other time.

First video test

Administrator — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:04:55 +0000

Ok… I know that it’s quiet and all. I couldn’t think of anything clever to say. I’ve uploaded video of the networking demo I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. Yes, it’s a remake of the Combat game I was working on a few years ago. This time I’m trying to make it network based.

It’s very difficult to show networking on two laptops when your physical space is limited by a small cluttered apartment. So I’m quite proud of myself and my first real time networking application.
Another thing you may notice is that the player jumps and pops in to place. This is myself trying to pick up where networking lag some times happens. It’s amazing how fast things tend to be off in something that requires fast button pushing. I’m going to have to stop right here with this project because I’m not sure if the real-time speed required of a tank game is going to work.

I think my next Actionscript 3 and Networking project will be something turn based or slower placed. I’m still trying to refine my skills to make a decent speed application.