Sunday, May 18, 2008

Keep on rollin' - thanks for writing in!

There are so many people out there to thank for support - I had no idea people would be so creative and helpful in their comments and solutions. Here's a summary of questions I got over the last few weeks. Keep them coming, and I'll keep trying to do my best (some of them are harder than others, mind you).


Can I compile on the Mac as well as Windows with Arduino.exe?
Now you can, thanks to all the help I got from Chris and Mike and even guys who sent in suggestions and debugging error messages. Now it works, and you can read more here.


Can I get a Mac OS X version of TSImageUploader.zip, the image uploading utility?
Yes absolutely, as soon as Mike (cough cough getonit) finishes writing it! All the code is open source, and the routines should be universal serial, so the translation to *nix OS's shouldn't be impossible. Let me know if you want to help...


Does the TouchShield work with the bluetooth Arduino version?
Well, I don't know why it wouldn't, but I've never tested it. In fact, (sadly), I don't even own a bluetooth one yet.... hmmm. Anyone else out there have a different experience? Let me know if you can test it.


Where can I get the TouchShield's screen hardware commands?
Right over here... (warning PDF alert): http://www.liquidware.org/uploads/idea74/SSD1339_1.7.pdf


What is the most fragile part of the TouchShield, so I don't break it when I put it on my vibration-mounted remote controlled robot?
The connector ribbon from the shield to the OLED screen. And good luck with that robot, sir! I can't wait to see what it looks like :)


What happened to your shipping costs? Why were they so high last month, and now like half as much?
Because liquidware is not a big company (and I don't want it to be one because that means using big words and being in meetings all day, which means less time just making stuff), Paypal doesn't give discounted shipping rates unless you break like $1M in monthly shipping sales. I was about $5 short last month :-), so I called them and convinced them to bend their policy a little. In reality, I decided to offer USPS for shipping, since one of my friends works at USPS, and drives by Chris' house every night to pick up packages for shipping the next day. We save $40 on all international shipping that way!


How can I access power on the battery shield? How do I make sure I don't plug into the wrong port?
Simple! Just flip the board over, and you'll see I printed out the markings on the back of the board, in order. Same thing with the touchshield. I hate spec sheets more than anyone in the world, and I like to tinker with stuff in realtime (physical computing?). So I think all parts should be self-labeled and self-explanatory. The only thing I couldn't fit on the TouchShield is the rest of the software API (but I definitely tried).

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