RAD revivial - would appreciate your thoughts/comments/opinions
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Matthew Williams
Jun 30, 2011, 10:40:22 AM6/30/11
to Ruby Arduino Development
Hey everyone,
Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
2008/10/17/introducing-barduino-the-ruby-powered-bar-monkey/,
https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino) which was a RAD project to
dispense drinks and it was controlled by a Ruby DSL I wrote for
defining drinks that was appropriately called the Barduino tender
(https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino-tender).
Shortly thereafter, Greg (@atduskgreg), the author of RAD got in touch
as he was doing a presentation on RAD at RubyConf '08 and was gracious
enough to invite me to demo the Barduino at his talk. I think we
ended up serving 20+ screwdrivers during the Q&A session and it was
quite the hit. See the talk here if you haven't, Greg gave one of the
best talks of the conference I think: http://rubyconf2008.confreaks.com/ruby-arduino-development.html
Greg has been tremendously busy, for those who don't know, he's
currently writing a book for O'Reilly on hacking the Microsoft Kinect
as he's been doing some pretty amazing projects over at ITP, you can
see what he's been up to here: http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/
Because of all of his commitments, he doesn't have much time to
contribute back to RAD but still has a lot of faith in the project.
He has since brought me on as a contributor to the project and I'm
looking for thought/comments/opinions from the RAD community on where
you think you'd like this project to go. Greg will continue to
contribute where he can and will have say in where some things will
go. Here are some thoughts of mine that I think would be a good
start...
- Out of the box compatibility with the official boards, it should
"just work": We should be able to compile the most basic "blink"
sketch and have it work on Uno and go back as far as we can for
maximum board compatibility. I only have two boards, so this is where
the community will help. We could also be keeping track of this in
the Wiki in some sort of matrix. This will eliminate much of the
noise we see in the board here regarding first time users who run into
problems.
- Not as urgent, but look at getting RAD on Ruby 1.9. Greg mentioned
that RubyToC might be an issue and we might be able to work with the
Seattle.rb guys for assistance.
- Any additional cleanup/refactoring that might make sense.
- Start building out requirements for a test framework.
- Simulator?
I see there's a lot forks out there. If you think you have something
worth while to bring back to the mainline, don't hesitate to issue a
pull request (patches, documentation, fixes for the README). I'll get
right on it. Also, please submit any issues you may have.
With the Arduino community growing so rapidly, I think we can really
give this project the jump start it needs to make RAD a great
alternative solution for the hardware hackers out there.
Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
2008/10/17/introducing-barduino-the-ruby-powered-bar-monkey/,
https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino) which was a RAD project to
dispense drinks and it was controlled by a Ruby DSL I wrote for
defining drinks that was appropriately called the Barduino tender
(https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino-tender).
Shortly thereafter, Greg (@atduskgreg), the author of RAD got in touch
as he was doing a presentation on RAD at RubyConf '08 and was gracious
enough to invite me to demo the Barduino at his talk. I think we
ended up serving 20+ screwdrivers during the Q&A session and it was
quite the hit. See the talk here if you haven't, Greg gave one of the
best talks of the conference I think: http://rubyconf2008.confreaks.com/ruby-arduino-development.html
Greg has been tremendously busy, for those who don't know, he's
currently writing a book for O'Reilly on hacking the Microsoft Kinect
as he's been doing some pretty amazing projects over at ITP, you can
see what he's been up to here: http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/
Because of all of his commitments, he doesn't have much time to
contribute back to RAD but still has a lot of faith in the project.
He has since brought me on as a contributor to the project and I'm
looking for thought/comments/opinions from the RAD community on where
you think you'd like this project to go. Greg will continue to
contribute where he can and will have say in where some things will
go. Here are some thoughts of mine that I think would be a good
start...
- Out of the box compatibility with the official boards, it should
"just work": We should be able to compile the most basic "blink"
sketch and have it work on Uno and go back as far as we can for
maximum board compatibility. I only have two boards, so this is where
the community will help. We could also be keeping track of this in
the Wiki in some sort of matrix. This will eliminate much of the
noise we see in the board here regarding first time users who run into
problems.
- Not as urgent, but look at getting RAD on Ruby 1.9. Greg mentioned
that RubyToC might be an issue and we might be able to work with the
Seattle.rb guys for assistance.
- Any additional cleanup/refactoring that might make sense.
- Start building out requirements for a test framework.
- Simulator?
I see there's a lot forks out there. If you think you have something
worth while to bring back to the mainline, don't hesitate to issue a
pull request (patches, documentation, fixes for the README). I'll get
right on it. Also, please submit any issues you may have.
With the Arduino community growing so rapidly, I think we can really
give this project the jump start it needs to make RAD a great
alternative solution for the hardware hackers out there.
Andrew Kalek
Jul 1, 2011, 11:30:38 AM7/1/11
to Ruby Arduino Development
That's great to hear!
I've tried using RAD a few years ago but was unsuccessful. Haven't
played with it in a while, but I definitely look forward to seeing
what you guys will do with it.
Good luck!
Andrew
On Jun 30, 10:40 am, Matthew Williams <matthew.d.willi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
I've tried using RAD a few years ago but was unsuccessful. Haven't
played with it in a while, but I definitely look forward to seeing
what you guys will do with it.
Good luck!
Andrew
On Jun 30, 10:40 am, Matthew Williams <matthew.d.willi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
> was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
> basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
> and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
> putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
> 2008/10/17/introducing-barduino-the-ruby-powered-bar-monkey/,https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino) which was a RAD project to
>
> Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
> was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
> basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
> and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
> putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
Christof Spies
Jul 1, 2011, 11:54:14 AM7/1/11
to ruby-arduino...@googlegroups.com
Hey all,
i'm christof and working on a big code clean up of RAD.
Make it running with the current arduino software and die big main os
(windos, mac and linux) are the main tasks.
I love coding Arduino in the easy ruby way. Would be cool getting some
support.
https://github.com/seips-net/rad
Christof
Matthew Williams
Jul 1, 2011, 11:57:02 AM7/1/11
to Ruby Arduino Development
Excellent! I'll take a look at your repo. Between your repo and one
JD brought to my attention, we might be able to quickly RAD up speed
and on Ruby 1.9.
Thanks for the efforts and don't hesitate to send over any pull
requests and I'll make sure everything makes it into the main repo.
-Matt
@mwilliams
On Jul 1, 11:54 am, Christof Spies <christof.sp...@seips.net> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> i'm christof and working on a big code clean up of RAD.
> Make it running with the current arduino software and die big main os
> (windos, mac and linux) are the main tasks.
>
> I love coding Arduino in the easy ruby way. Would be cool getting some
> support.https://github.com/seips-net/rad
JD brought to my attention, we might be able to quickly RAD up speed
and on Ruby 1.9.
Thanks for the efforts and don't hesitate to send over any pull
requests and I'll make sure everything makes it into the main repo.
-Matt
@mwilliams
On Jul 1, 11:54 am, Christof Spies <christof.sp...@seips.net> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> i'm christof and working on a big code clean up of RAD.
> Make it running with the current arduino software and die big main os
> (windos, mac and linux) are the main tasks.
>
> I love coding Arduino in the easy ruby way. Would be cool getting some
Max
Jul 1, 2011, 12:28:03 PM7/1/11
to Ruby Arduino Development
That's great news! I was at RubyConf '08 and was able to experience
the Barduino first-hand. A few months ago when I needed to write a
simple embedded system, I figured RAD was ideal, but was really
disappointed that it didn't seem to work at all and had barely been
worked on since your talk.
For me the most important thing would be getting it to work on the
Arduino UNO board. Let me know if you need a hand testing it as I've
got a couple of those. Ensuring that at least the Arduino libraries
(like LiquidCrystal and Serial) work out of the box is also pretty
important. I'm sure that's all on your list anyway but I wanted to add
my $0.02.
- m a x
On Jun 30, 9:40 am, Matthew Williams <matthew.d.willi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
the Barduino first-hand. A few months ago when I needed to write a
simple embedded system, I figured RAD was ideal, but was really
disappointed that it didn't seem to work at all and had barely been
worked on since your talk.
For me the most important thing would be getting it to work on the
Arduino UNO board. Let me know if you need a hand testing it as I've
got a couple of those. Ensuring that at least the Arduino libraries
(like LiquidCrystal and Serial) work out of the box is also pretty
important. I'm sure that's all on your list anyway but I wanted to add
my $0.02.
- m a x
On Jun 30, 9:40 am, Matthew Williams <matthew.d.willi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
> was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
> basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
> and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
> putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
> 2008/10/17/introducing-barduino-the-ruby-powered-bar-monkey/,https://github.com/mwilliams/barduino) which was a RAD project to
>
> Quick background on myself. My name's Matt, I stumbled upon RAD as I
> was preparing to give a talk at the Orlando Ruby Users Group (which is
> basically Envy Labs now :)). I was a large advocate of the Arduino
> and when I stumbled upon RAD, I had to give it a shot and I ended up
> putting together the "Barduino" (http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/
Matthew Williams
Jul 1, 2011, 12:53:16 PM7/1/11
to Ruby Arduino Development
Max,
Awesome! I hope you grabbed a drink at the talk!
My first goal with RAD is that anyone should be able to simply "gem
install rad", create a project, and build the "hello world" blinking
LED example and push it to their board. This should work on the Uno,
Duemilanove, and Diecimila w/ATmega 328/168 as I anticipate many
people discovering the project will be using those boards. I only
have a Duemilanove at the moment (I have one of the early boards, but
lent it away to a friend, I can get it back for some testing), so
someone able to test with an Uno would be great!
So priority #1 - painless out of the box experience with any board
produced in the past 6-12 months.
-MW
Awesome! I hope you grabbed a drink at the talk!
My first goal with RAD is that anyone should be able to simply "gem
install rad", create a project, and build the "hello world" blinking
LED example and push it to their board. This should work on the Uno,
Duemilanove, and Diecimila w/ATmega 328/168 as I anticipate many
people discovering the project will be using those boards. I only
have a Duemilanove at the moment (I have one of the early boards, but
lent it away to a friend, I can get it back for some testing), so
someone able to test with an Uno would be great!
So priority #1 - painless out of the box experience with any board
produced in the past 6-12 months.
-MW
Martin Evans
Jul 1, 2011, 2:17:38 PM7/1/11
to ruby-arduino...@googlegroups.com
Yes I'm definitely interested in helping I spoke about RAD at The Scottish Ruby Conference in Edinburgh last year.
Regards
Martin
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Martin Evans
Jul 1, 2011, 2:18:24 PM7/1/11
to ruby-arduino...@googlegroups.com
I've got a UNO and a variety of shields
Martin
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Ron Evans
Jul 1, 2011, 9:01:48 PM7/1/11
to ruby-arduino...@googlegroups.com
I'm in, cause flying_robot needs an update or few.
There once was a fantasy I had about RAD 2.0... I found the gist:
Regards,
Ron
Max
Jul 1, 2011, 9:38:59 PM7/1/11
to ruby-arduino...@googlegroups.com
Forgot to mention I also have one of the newer ethernet shields (with the MicroSD card built-in). Like I said I got into Arduino fairly recently. I'd be more than happy to lend these both to the cause.
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