Happy New Year, 2008

This image was created by my brother, Amrit Derhgawen (he's a character animator) :)

I wish all of my readers, be they regulars or new ones, a wonderful New Year with lots of whatever they like. May the year 2008 be in every aspect a better year than 2007.

Have fun! See you in 2008!

Best Wishes,
Ashish

Possibility of misuse?

Here's a comment I received on my Cell Phone Controlled Door Latch post the other day:

Anonymous said:

Nice....wonder how many innocent people died because
you posted these easy
to follow directions for any Islamic Extremist to
build a command IED on your
site. You are obviously a very intelligent
person with either, no common sense
or no sense of
responsibility.

I appreciate his/her concerns, and they are valid to some extent. To be honest, I was aware that my "easy to follow directions" could be followed for doing much more than just opening a door. Then why did I write about it? Well, like a coin, everything has two sides - one is the good side, and the other is the not so good side. There is already tons of information on the Internet on making bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Does this mean that the Internet should be shut-down..and people should stop sharing ideas with each other? I don't think so. If we stop sharing ideas to stop terrorists from misusing them, no one will be able to make good use of them either. Besides, this is what terrorists want..they want to create an atmosphere of insecurity, mistrust and terror. If we stop sharing our ideas to keep them from getting into the wrong hands, they will succeed in their mission. Moreoever, there are several scientists and engineers who work for these extremist groups. I'm sure that building a simple DTMF decoder wouldn't be difficult for them.

So relax, and be happy. My little door opener cannot worsen the already dire situation of our planet, let alone killing innocent people. :)

- Ashish

Object Tracking using Camera and Lasers

Hey folks! Here's a little something I built about a month ago, but couldn't get enough time from college to write about it. Well, it's an object tracking camera panner which tracks any object moving in close range. Unlike my previous method for object tracking, this technique will track almost any moving object, irrespective of its color, using two lasers for edge detection. Depending on which laser is focused on the object, the computer decides which direction to drive. I came up with this idea after watching a video on SoR (Society of Robots) of a sumo robot, called Stampy. Stampy uses a single IR rangefinder for edge detection. Watch the video below:



I used lasers instead of IR rangefinders. My initial plan was to use a single laser..but then it occurred to me that I would have to shake the laser left/right continuously for tracking the trailing edge of an object. So, I decided to go with two lasers instead of one. :)

Well, I guess I've finally put my computer controlled stepper motor to some use. I might be using this object tracking technique in my future projects as it's working very nicely. If you're interested in controlling stepper motors with your computer, read my new article on Coding4Fun. Enjoy! :)

I type a LOT...

...and I type fast. That's why you can't see most of the alphabets on my keyboard. Like most of you reading this, I can touch type. People who believe in two-finger-poke typing, always complain how difficult it is to use my computer.

You can learn a lot about letter frequencies by studying my keyboard. If you look closely, you'll notice that "P", "V", "G", "Z", "X", "V", "W", "Q" and "B" are the least commonly used letters. I compared my observations against the letter frequency chart on Wikipedia to check if my observations were correct..but I realized that "J" and "K" were also very rarely used. However, on my keyboard, these two letters have been wiped off completely! Why?? Well, the answer is simple..my index finger and middle finger rest on those keys when I'm not typing.

If you click on the picture below, you'll notice some more startling facts:


I guess I use the Enter, Backspace and Delete keys a lot too. It also seems that I use the right Shift key more than the left one. Humm..I wonder if everyone does that.

Well, it all comes down to this...I should buy a new keyboard.

UPDATE: I did some experiments today to check which Shift key I use more often. Here are the results:

Activity	Left Shift Key	Right Shift Key
Writing E-mails	54.3%	45.6%
Programming (C#)	66.6%	33.3%

When I'm writing e-mails, I use both of the Shift keys. However, I use the left one more while writing code. The right shift key on my keyboard is slightly smaller than the left one..and I'm pretty sure this is the reason why its entire surface has been wiped clean by my pinky.