StuffAndyMakes
Fitness Tracker "Tester" (& Pokemon Incubator?)

Starting the next generation Fitbit Cheat-O-Matic, but changing the name, switching to proper high-end bearings, and make a sturdier base and cam follower mechanism. Should be slick if everything fits nicely and plays nicely.

Fitness Tracker "Tester" (& Pokemon Incubator?)

OS X

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OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 Causes SSL Errors with Git and Bitbucket

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OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 Causes SSL Errors with Git and Bitbucket

I use git to protect myself from myself. When I write code for AVR, Arduino, iOS, OS X or even the web, I stick it in a git repository on bitbucket.org (it's free to have many private repos, so check it out) (thank you, Atlassian!). At the meltmedia office, we use the gitflow process of source code management to manage our projects and it works wonderfully. So, between home and the office, I use both github and bitbucket. Source code management ("SCM") is s-m-r-t smart and easy as pie (assuming making pies is indeed easy) with git. If I mangle the source code in my project, I can roll it back to a working state. If I want to try something out that will require major fiddling with the code in a project, I branch and fiddle. If it works, I merge it back in. If the experiment fails, I dump the branch like it never happened.

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A Maker Review on Bluetooth Smart Beacons (or Apple iBeacons)

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A Maker Review on Bluetooth Smart Beacons (or Apple iBeacons)

Lately, but not for very long (as of the writing of this article), there has been a bit of buzzy-buzzy around Apple's iBeacon technology. It's a mixture of software and hardware that allows iOS devices to receive one-way broadcasts from little Bluetooth "beacon" devices. It was touted to be the big "NFC killer" (NFC = Near Field Communications). I would add an asterisk to that statement: It's an NFC killer as far as retail and point-of-purchase, but probably not as far as supply chain (container tracking), security (door fobs, badges) and other non-retail uses. Edit: Apple does now include NFC on the iPhone 6 and 6+ and utilizes NFC in their Apple Pay system.

I didn't think much about the technology at first. "NFC killer" seemed like a pretty bold statement. How can you beat the simplicity of just touching your phone to a thingie at the point-of-purchase ("PoP")? It's basically "tap-to-buy." However, after some thought and discussions with business development peeps at the office, the possibilities beyond PoP started to become obvious. I started to realize just how flippin' cool this unassuming technology really was. Lemme 'splain...