Jay's Technical Talk » Projects

DragonCon 2010 Mysterio Pictures

Jay — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:07:21 +0000

In the Parade, I was wearing the plastic “safety” globe. Visibility out of it was about 2%. I basically followed a succession of brightly colored costumes (Storm’s white hair, wonder woman’s bright red cape, Zoo Hercules’ gold reflective bandoleer, etc).

Parade closeup by Amber Croxall

The photos below show the glass sphere which I wore in more static settings indoors and for photo-shoots.
Thanks to Chris, Becky and the photographers named in the captions for sending me photos from Saturday!

Photo outside by Tim Trepagnier

Mysterio (far right) standing with the Vulture and many other Marvel comics characters, photo by Dustin Fisher

Most photographers would take a snap or two and move on. Professional photographers would take a few pictures, and then start trying to take pictures without their flash appearing in the reflection (bouncing off of the ceiling, holding flash behind screens, separating from their camera by long wires, etc). Then give up on that, and just shoot photos of other people’s costumes as seen reflected in the globe. Women would also use the reflection to check their hair and makeup. [One in-character zombie was scared away by their own reflection.]

Backflip wifi tether with Ubuntu Linux

Jay — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:59:55 +0000

After gaining root access on my Motorola Backflip phone, I was (eventually) able to get wifi tethering working using the Barnacle application (version 0.5.1).

In Barnacle, I have “skip wpa_supplicant” checked, the channel set to six (6), and DHCP set up to use the OpenDNS DNS server (208.67.222.222) although the DNS server option may not be needed. (I had to also manually specify the DNS server IP on my client anyways.)

I had to pull some tricks on the client side (Ubuntu Linux) to make everything work. Specifically, setting MTU size to 1250 and setting up my own DNS name server IP.
The script I use to make this all work with ad-hoc networking on Ubuntu is as follows:
sudo service network-manager stop sudo rm /etc/resolv.conf sleep 1 sudo ifconfig eth1 down ifconfig eth1 mtu 1250 sudo iwconfig eth1 mode ad-hoc sudo iwconfig eth1 essid barnacle sudo iwconfig eth1 channel 6 sudo ifconfig eth1 up sleep 2 sudo dhclient eth1 sudo /bin/sh -c 'echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222" >> /etc/resolv.conf'

Mysterio Strobe Effects

Jay — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:13:39 +0000

I soldered together my Ramsy Electronics LEDS1 LED strobe light kit today. The plan is to make the “eye” motif brooches (on the cloak’s shoulders) flash blue light.

The LEDS1 kit comes with a 9 LED board, but I also bought a 20 LED add-on board. By cutting this 20 LED add-on board in half, I got two equally sized boards for the “eyes”. The final product is a bit underpowered (it does not over-drive the LEDs, and allows you to turn the “flashing” duty cycle up to 100%), but hopefully behind some frosted/etched plastic it will give a good effect.

Here is the pattern I’m going to etch/cut out of clear plastic:

Mysterio Business Cards

Jay — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:51:30 +0000

I’m in the process of making a business card to hand out at Dragon Con for Mysterio. I found the images at DragonHero.com but am having trouble contacting the site owner. (If anybody has an updated email address for dragonhero1@cox.net please let me know, it’s bouncing undeliverable.)

Mysterio Costume Update

Jay — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:51:00 +0000

I have been working on the cloth portions of my costume, as well as purchasing an alternate (plastic) globe from a reader comment. Above are two photos of the jumpsuit, boot covers, bracers, gloves, cape, and sphere (glass and plastic) being worn together. The first picture is the plastic globe (harder to see out of, safer, more gray than silver) and the second picture is the glass sphere (very reflective, easier to see out of, made of glass).

PBS Wishing – Android App to find out if a book is popular!

Jay — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:44:20 +0000

I have developed an application for Android Phones (OS version 1.5 or higher) that allows you to enter an ISBN from a book (or scan the barcode if your phone has a camera) and find out how many people are wishing for the book on PaperbackSwap.com. If a lot of people are wishing for a book, it’s a good indication that the book is popular, which may mean it is worth reading. (Or at least, if you decide you don’t like it, it will be easy to get a book credit for it on paperbackswap.com.)

You can find it easily in the Android Market by searching for “Summet”, (or “PaperBackSwap”). Alternatively, if you already have a QR barcode scanner on your phone, you can take a picture of this QR code to go directly to it in the market:

Wifi Tether on the HTC Aria

Jay — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:25:50 +0000

One of the best ways to allow other devices to use your phone’s data plan to get on the internet (a process called tethering) is to have your phone become a little wifi hotspot. Then, any wifi device can get internet access via your phone. To do this with the HTC Aria, follow these steps:

Root the phone using Unrevoked
Install the latest version of android-wifi-tether (I tested 2.0.5-pre4) found here: http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/downloads/list. You may have to use the Android SDK or Sideload-Wonder-Machine to install the software.
Find the proper firmware (fw_bcm4329_ap.bin located in the /system/etc/firmware directory of a HTC Evo 4g system-dump) and rename it to fw_bcm4329.bin. Place this file in your android.tether directory on your SD card. The directions I followed were here:http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/wiki/Setup_HTC_Desire_Incredible
A few links I found were:
http://www.htcevoforum.net/f2/htc-evo-system-dump-18/
http://rs922.rapidshare.com/files/389762848/system.rar

If things don’t work out, check the android-wifi-tether log to make sure it has found and is loading the firmware file.
I have confirmed that this procedure works for unencrypted wifi tethering on my HTC Aria to a Ubuntu laptop. You can control access via MAC address filtering, but keep in mind that anybody with a wifi card can see all of your network traffic (and MAC address spoofing is trivial.)

I am currently attempting to get WEP-128 bit encryption working perfectly with Ubuntu Linux. (Wifi-Tethering does not currently support WPA encryption.) I have been able to get the phone to export a WEP encrypted wifi signal, but the Ubuntu Network manager has a problem connecting to it. I am able to connect to the WEP encrypted wifi form the phone if I configure the laptop’s wireless interface manually with a script such as the following:
sudo service network-manager stop sleep 1 sudo ifconfig eth1 down sudo iwconfig eth1 mode ad-hoc sudo iwconfig eth1 essid AndroidTether sudo iwconfig eth1 key s:SUPERSECRETKEY sudo ifconfig eth1 up sleep 2 sudo dhclient eth1

Philips SPC 900NC webcam: Linux / ZoneMinder Compatible

Jay — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:38:02 +0000

The Philips 900NC webcam is Linux compatible (Tested with: Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04 & 10.04). Under V4L2 it supports 640×480 at 15fps out of the box. (The webcam’s box claims speeds of up to 90fps, but that is only for smaller resolutions, custom windows drivers, etc. You may be able to get better speed with an optimized Linux driver, but out of the box performance is satisfactory.) It supports ZoneMinder, but only if you set up the exact correct Device Format (NTSC M) and Capture Palette (YUV420).
It has good low-light performance, although it will not work in complete darkness without additional IR illumination.

Mysterio Fog Generator

Jay — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:36:19 +0000

The grand plan for my Mysterio costume is to have a backpack worn fog generator using dry ice. (I’m not sure I’ll have time to get the fog generator or the strobe lights working, as I don’t even have the jumpsuit or boot covers finished yet, but I had the PVC parts so I started work on it.)

The Plan: Have warm water in the pipe–possibly with a loop of plastic tubing wrapped around my torso fed by a pump, which would have the dual effects of keeping my special effects water near body temperature, and cooling me off, which is important in Atlanta in the summer. I’ll have a basket of dry ice inside the tube that can be lowered using string, and a fan blowing air down the top of the pipe. The Dry-Ice Fog will billow out the sides of the T pipes and look really cool emerging from under my cloak. (How I wear the fog generator is not yet part of the plan, but I’m imagining something like a backpack, or suspending it from my cowboy collar.) It will be mostly hidden under my cloak, but since I had the emerald green spray paint left over from my color matching paint buying discovery, I decided it should be color coordinated.

Cost saving measures: I bought $5 worth of PVC parts (a 4″ piece of low pressure tube, a “knock-out” cap to seal the bottom, and a 3″ to 1 1/2″ 4-way adapter. By using the $1 knock out instead of a full 4″ PVC cap I saved several dollars and made the bottom of my fog generator “flat” instead of rounded. As it will not be under any pressure other than the weight of the water and dry ice, it should hold fine. [And if it doesn't, I always have my "Uh oh, I think my water just broke" joke all lined up.]
I also saved money (and bulk) by using a 3″ 4-way adapter, instead of a 4″ one. A 3″ PVC pipe will fit perfectly inside of a 4″ PVC pipe if you rasp off the small protrusions. (The fact that I was informed of this by a “plumber” also shopping in the Home Depot plumbing aisle slightly scares me….but since I’m not actually running pressurized water through it, and it saved me another five dollars, I decided to follow his advice.)

Paint color matching for a costume / Painting the Bracers

Jay — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:53:00 +0000

I drove to Home Depot hoping to find some spray paint to somewhat match the color of my gloves. As it turns out, even with an entire wall of spray paint, the only color selections with a “green” hue are limited to neon green, emerald green (which I bought, as it was closest to what I want, and may be useful in the future) and a leaf green. None of them were quite right, but I also made a discovery about the house paint counter.

Home Depot will sell you “sample” pre-mixed paints in 7.5 oz bottles to “test” a color for $3! If you have a fabric sample, you can scan it with the computer and get a small bottle of paint mixed for you! (Of course, when scanning cloth with a metallic look it may not be perfect….And they only had flat and eggshell finishes, no glossy.) But a custom matched jar of paint for $3 is hard to beat! The picture above shows my bracers after one coat of paint. I’m using a brush because I don’t have an airbrush or a “fill-it-yourself” spray paint can. I’m trying to keep the brush strokes aligned with the laser cut pattern. The pattern is still visible, but the paint hides it somewhat. I may have to fill in the pattern with some darker paint at a later point.