Blackboard, anybody?

Does anybody know anybody who works or worked on distributed blackboard communications architectures?

I have a real-time, high-data-rate, distributed multi-agent system that needs a stable communications infrastructure. I have a strong hunch that a BB would fit the bill... but I don't want to re-invent the wheel, and it seems that my Google and literature searches focus on the wrong keywords.

So I am looking for a solution, preferable an open-source toolkit, that implements such a blackboard.
Any idea, anybody?

Hobby, Work, and the Value of Colleagues

It is important to have your work be your hobby... and maybe your hobby be your work.
This is the case with my task here. I enjoy it.

And although programming is just a small part of it, it is very enjoyable, too. Even though I have to admit that I learned more about programming and learned more from my (ex-)colleagues while I was at UBT. Honestly, my programming skills (no matter how limited) have grown tremendously while working with some of my old labmates.

First and foremost Techno and Dabbelju, I really appreciate all the little and also the bigger things that I learned from you. They still help me every day in programming, debugging, and profiling.

(As I have said a long time ago, I brought my T_Matrix<T,homo> class with me, and I use it proudly ;-). Over the last week, I spent way too much time working with it, and I learned a lot about programming, C++, and my own old faults during that time. And while I whittled away at some old bugs and shortcomings, its performance just today increased from 2fps through 4fps and 6fps all the way to 23fps.
When this happened I called it a day.)

RedGreenBlue Announcement

Diversifying the offerings portfolio of the PJS Internet presence, the author is proud to announce the launch of a new blog, with content exclusively concerned with energy and environment issues (E2I), and targeting an audience of thought leaders who demand prime information on new emerging trends in the E2I sector.

RedGreenBlue will offer a supreme selection - only marginally culled from the original free flow of ideas - of environmentally relevant visions, paradigms, and information specifically tailored for the real-time needs of the efficient trend-setting jet-set defining what is today's elite, tomorrow's leaders.

Starting with an attentively selected crop of authors (PJS), the mind-changing views of RedGreenBlue will shape the way tomorrow might look when it comes to energy, environment, and information about both.

Any ideas, comments, and rants about the future of RedGreenBlue and our own planet are highly welcome. You're encouraged to join into the frenzy of changing the E2I world by becoming a reader of RedGreenBlue!

OverTime 1.0

Finally, the OverTime project is finished. At least finished enough to be presentable in full.





The leftmost is chiming, the rightmost is ticking, they get 3V mains power, and are fixed on a heavy-duty surgical steel bar.

Palm Zombies

A year ago (or so I reckon), I acquired what can only be called a graveyard full of old Palm handhelds. One Palm III, two Palm IIIe, and two IBM Workpads. They are the building blocks of a completely overkill-sized wall clock, the minimum configuration of which (HH-MM) can be seen here.





They click for seconds (only the one in the possible SS configuration, or S2), chime for hours (only the HH one, or H2), and can sychronize time via IR.
Now I'm waiting for a batch of sockets, plugs, and an adapter before mounting them on the wall.

Soldering

Today, from around 11:02 to 11:21 a.m., I successfully managed to dig out some long-presumed-lost abilities: I can still do some minor soldering work.

After giving up to create a good-looking knot in the extremely long cable of the hands-free stereo set of my Nokia phone, the decision fell to shorten them. I cut them, then used my teeth, some tongs as weight, and an oversized soldering iron to do some intricate trial-and-error.

Well, it still works. It's still stereo, MW can hear me, and the cable between microphone and ear buds is about 1m shorter. The botlab work desk has some more dark spots on the surface now.

The Bot Which Spawned A Bachelor Thesis

Well. This bot model didn't actually spawn a bachelor thesis in itself, but it ignited the desire for a bachelor thesis which is aiming at solving a problem which occurred to us mainly because of this model.
After having worked with the real thing for years (a Jahrfünft as it is called in a somewhat awkward German mainly used by Luxembourgeois EU citizens), it was playing with this model for 10 minutes which showed us (me) that there is a kinematic phenomenon we never thought about.

Alas! A paper showing up on the horizon!

Spyderbot 1.1

The chakachaka Spyderbot has evolved a little, in full compliance with Karl Popper's philosophy of Critical Rationalism. The constant hum of criticism concerning its stability has - indirectly - equipped it with a self-stabilizing frame and a longer wheelbase, or more precisely legbase.
This has its pros and cons as well, but different ones.

The newer Spyderbot 1.1:

spyderbot_1.1.03.avi

Aggressive-looking though it may be, it gets hooked up pretty badly sometimes, too:

spyderbot_1.1.04.avi

And a fight between the older Spyderbot and the Forces of Nature:

spyderbot.03.avi

Spyderbot

Undeterred by my colleagues' measly criticisms concerning the uselessness of this artifact, I present a lame copy of a remote-controlled walking robot I remember having seen in some conference proceedings - the Spyderbot.

This lame name can be safely attributed to the original name of the underlying LEGO construction kit series Spybotics, which comprises a central controller with integrated motors, remote-control capabilities, zero intelligence and zero programmability.


spyderbot.01.avi
spyderbot.02.avi

PS: The original idea for the MiniWhegs was devised by the Biologically Inspired Robotics Lab at Case Western Reserve University.

El Condor Pasa

Sometimes, beauty springs up in the most unexpected places.
And sometimes, something unexpected sprouts, from shells opening... like antennae.

The Light Sabre

I got myself a cool thing today, ordered via Techno. It is...

a Light Sabre!
Or something similar, at least.