I’m in Japan on vacation. Shutterfly site setup…
GregginJapan Shuttefly 2009
Last year’s Japan trip:
GregginJapan Shuttefly 2008
20100222-Update:
I found a site with some resources of people that have hacked their Spykee’s already.
Check it out here.
So I was browsing the web last weekend while hanging out with some friends, and came across something spectacular. On woot.com (A site I check daily) there was a deal for the “Spykee Robot”. A Wifi-enabled robot that you can control from a PC. It has a webcam for a “head” and you can control it from their software locally on your wifi, or over the public internet. Plus it has an auto-docking feature to dock to it’s charging bay if it is parked or within 2 yards of it. It sparked my interest because it was geared as a “security” robot. So I could leave this at my place and have it email me pictures if there was any movement, or if I left my lights on/iron plugged in/etc. My friend Mike also wanted one, so I placed the order that day for 2.
Friday evening I received both boxes in the mail via FedEx (undamaged too!) and decided to build them first thing Saturday morning. I brough the new purchase over to my friend’s house and we began the build.
I’m not going to review the features or anything, there are plenty of other sites that have done that already. But not many with good pictures on the build or videos. Also, the demo videos are hilarious.
Manufacturer Site:
SpykeeWorld
Good site for tech specs:
Hacked Gadgets – Spykee-meccano-Robot
Here is the box:
Packaging:
Supposedly over 200 parts that you can use:
Instructions were decent…until you got to the base assembly. Which is why I went and tore it all down a few times in the time-lapse and just built from my imagination.
Overall it was pretty fun. The purpose of the post was to introduce people to it (I got it for $99 off of Woot.com), but it is pretty sweet. My plans are to write a web interface for it so you can publish the webcam to your webpage and queue people up to control it for a specified duration. Should be interesting.
If you need help with the point-to-point, Wifi-configuration, or questions, I can help. Leave a Comment.
Techno Deck Rave – Freak the Neighbor’s (Dog) Out:
First Person POV from another Robot ..box push:
A picture taken from my Robot to Mike’s:
The Final Build Pics of the Customized Designs:
Mike’s
Mine:
Time Lapse of the build (With a DJ G-regg Mix):
So now when I travel on business, I can see what’s going on with my place. 
Cheers
-Gregg
http://code.google.com/p/trustbuilder-linux-bash
Trustbuilder is a simple bash script that runs on one host, and automates the very common and tedious process of exchanging encryption keys with another host. This is often done for linux and unix servers to allow scripts to login to a remote servers using ssh authentication, without requiring a user to enter a password. I.E., this sets up unattended server-to-server authentication for you. There is no error handling in this script, and this type of key exchange may be considered an insecure practice by some institutions. Use at your own risk.
Enjoy
-GRW
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Summary:
Safe1405 is a bash script that will backup the popular Asterisk directories and place them in a tar.gz file. The script can be used in 1 of 2 modes.
The first mode is interactive, with a menu to choose:
After the file is created, it will prompt to upload to a remote FTP server.
The second mode is silent, and is best suited for automated execution via cron or at.
Just enable the UNATTENDED and PUT_FTP variables by setting them to “1″. You can directly edit the paths to each directory if yours are non-standard.
The script can be directly downloaded here: Safe1405 Download Link
Code:
#!/bin/bash
# Safe1405
# Author: Gregg Hansen - www.thiscoolsite.com
# Safely tar and gzip Asterisk files
# Version 1.0 20090427
#-Backs up all important Asterisk files - Tar/Gz
#-Choose the file name, or Date by default
#-GUI-like. Able to be silent for cron, or interactive
#EDIT the below ABSOLUTE paths to match your directory structure:
VAR_LIB="/var/lib/asterisk"
ETC_AST="/etc/asterisk"
VM="/var/spool/asterisk/voicemail"
MON="/var/spool/asterisk/monitor"
#Date Var
FILEDATE="$(date +%Y%m%d)"
#Your ServerName
#Filename is FILEDATE-SERVERNAME.tar.gz
SERVERNAME="Chicago-Ast01"
#Enable unattended mode/Remote FTP put (useful for Cron):
# Backup of /etc/asterisk ONLY (default)
# 1 = On, 0 = Off
UNATTENDED="0"
PUT_FTP="0"
#FTP Credentials
FTP_IP="127.0.0.1"
FTP_USER="admin"
FTP_PASS="secret"
###--START CODE---###
### Interactive Mode Functions ###
prompt()
{
cat <<EOF
Safe1405 Backup
1) Everything
2) /etc/asterisk
3) Voicemail
4) Recordings
5) Sounds
Q) Quit
EOF
echo -n "Prompt> "
read INPUT
case $INPUT in
1) everything;;
2) etc-ast;;
3) vm;;
4) recordings;;
5) sounds;;
q) exit;;
Q) exit;;
esac
}
everything()
{
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-FULL.tar.gz"
tar cfvz $FILENAME $ETC_AST $VM $MON $VAR_LIB
ftpprompt
}
etc-ast()
{
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-ETC_AST.tar.gz"
tar cfvz $FILENAME $ETC_AST
ftpprompt
}
vm()
{
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-VM.tar.gz"
tar cfvz $FILENAME $VM
ftpprompt
}
recordings()
{
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-REC.tar.gz"
tar cfvz $FILENAME $MON
ftpprompt
}
sounds()
{
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-SOUNDS.tar.gz"
tar cfvz $FILENAME $VAR_LIB
ftpprompt
}
ftpprompt()
{
echo -en "Upload $FILENAME to FTP? (y or n) "
read INPUT
if [ "$INPUT" == "y" ]; then
quietftp
fi
}
### Unattended Mode Functions ###
silent()
{
tar cfvz $FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-ETC-AST.tar.gz $ETC_AST ##Uncomment##$VM #$MON #$VAR_LIB
FILENAME="$FILEDATE-$SERVERNAME-ETC-AST.tar.gz"
}
quietftp()
{
ftp -ivn <<EOF
open $FTP_IP
user $FTP_USER $FTP_PASS
binary
put $FILENAME
bye
EOF
}
#### Start Program Flow ###
clear
#Unattended Function Call(s)
if [ "$UNATTENDED" == "1" ]; then
silent
if [ "$PUT_FTP" == "1" ]; then
quietftp
exit
fi
exit
fi
#Interactive Function Calls
prompt
exit
###–END CODE—###
Leave a comment if you have questions/suggestions or would like help setting up the script.
-Gregg
Summary:
“QuickKey” is an application I created with AutoIt to take text from the clipboard and save it to a hot-key combo. I needed it to do repetitive form filling. It’s written to be lean, quick and dirty. Here are the usage instructions:
Source Code:
See IMPORTANT NOTES section below… there’s currently a catch with rebooting….
If you find a fix for the reboot issue, please leave a comment (that will email me)..
Special thanks to Victor Costan http://blog.costan.us
Step 1 – Get your linux on the HD
-Power On / Insert Linux Install Disk With Kernel 2.6.26 or higher / Power Off
-Power On / Wait 4 Seconds / Hold “c” key to boot from DVD drive
-I couldn’t get linux to work after deleting the EFI partition, so don’t.
-Get to your distro’s partitioning utility and delete the main MAC partition
-After deleting the big partition, create your linux partitions
-If you delete the EFI partition on accident, the Leopard install will fix it
-Direct the installer to put GRUB on the first sector of your /boot partition
-Install whatever other options you want and let installer run
-Remove Linux Install Disk / Insert MAC OSX Install Disk / Reboot
Step 2 – Tell MAC‘s Open Firmware What To Do
-Power On / Wait 4 Seconds / Hold “c” key to boot from DVD drive
-Get to “Terminal” under “Utilities” on MAC Installation Setup
-Type the following command to determine how your /boot partition was identified
diskutil list
-Type the following command to set that partition as bootable (mine was disk0s2)
bless –device /dev/disk0s2 –setboot –legacy –verbose
IMPORTANT NOTES
-After these steps, linux will boots fine but when trying to reload it will hangs (more likely the shutdown process hangs). It appears to require a hard reset at this time…bummer.
-Earlier Kernels (Such as 2.6.18 in Centos 5.2 and lower) may install successfully but do not properly load drivers for all the hardware once installed.
WINDOWS KEYBOARD NOTES
Hold “c” key to boot from DVD drive
Hold “F12″ key to eject the DVD drive
Hold “ALT” to emulate the option key (not used in this procedure)
SOURCES
Debian Success Documented here (by Thomas Glanzmann): http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0903.1/01828.html
Discussion and bless command from Veiho in Ubuntuforums : http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-493393.html
Status on reload problem being worked by ubuntu developers: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux