Another tweak for the Griffin Beacon

I've talked about Griffin Beacon before. It's a great way to control your to television and PVR from your iPhone or android device. But as we discussed it does have a few issues. We talked about a result the battery consumption issue but the one remaining pains in the butt is that the device will go to sleep if it is been without Bluetooth communication to your device for over an hour.

So if you come back from having left the house safer groceries and doctors appointment or something. The device is off and there's no way to wake it up without touching it. And sometimes, my helper leaves before I realized the place has been turned off. Needless to say, without the function of your arms or a stable ability to walk this is a problem.

So it occurred to me that after the move I had an extra controller for my Vera home automation which was no longer being used. So I thought, why not plug my hacked Griffin Beacon into the control switch? This way, using my iPhone I simply have to cycle the power to the beginning. When the power comes back on, the BK wakes up in searches for my phone. Automatically connecting.

BOOM! Problem solved.

The downside to this is that the typical Vera visual switch runs about $40-$50. So it might not be the best solution to run out and buy one. But in my case, it was no longer being used so this worked out perfectly :-)

Sadly however, it would seem the grifin beacon has been discontinued.

Looks like Siri Proxy Is Dead & Bit of an Update

So where have I been?

There's been quite a bit of chaos going around recently. For a couple reasons, in no particular order:

The family has been heavily wrapped up with moving house as I'm not able to navigate stairs safely anymore. As always, moving house is always stressful and annoying. But what is really unfair about it, all the work is falling on the shoulders of my wife.

Discovered a nice apartment that would work for us and be rather accessible right from the start. Nonetheless, we will be sad to be leaving this home and neighborhood. We love it, and our neighbors.

Please join me when I say "I hate moving"

I lost a considerable amount of use of arms hands since our last post. Making everything, difficult. This is necessitated an increase in volume of people coming through the house to help me out, leaving a very limited amount of time to get to the computer. When I do, those two or three hours are often taken up with correspondence, reading or World of Warcraft hearthstone…

Ah crap... more wasted time with watercraft

It's nice that I found a video game I can play again, but damn you World of Warcraft! I thought I was free of your corruptive influence. Damn you back to the depths of hell!

The lack of use of my hands has also greatly limiting my creative problem solving for day--to-day issues as I can't really use any of the solutions anyway. This means I'm going back to more work in front of the computer, which has been slow for the above-mentioned reasons ;-)

On the flip side, my rehab facility has given me access to a Windows surface tablet with a Tobii eye tracker. That has been quite interesting and we are laying the groundwork for when I will need one.

The death of siri proxy

About a month ago at WWDC Apple announced the release of IOS 8 and at about the same time appears to have patched their guzzoni service on which Siri proxy
relied. My Siri proxy stopped working, I tried on and off for about three weeks to get back up and running with no luck. It's dead.

Such a shame, it was awesome while it lasted. However, IOS8 is promising to open up the SDK for Siri with home kit so that may be used for various home automation's solutions.
(Crosses fingers)

So I upgraded my phone to IOS7 and started to look at alternatives.

Obviously, there is nothing as good out there right now but I needed a way to verbally, remotely lock and unlock my door. The easiest solution was to use my always on raspberry pi to check my Gmail account for messages from a specific center with the specific catchphrases.

With a bit of research I managed to write a Ruby script. I Chose Ruby because of the convenience of regex matching and the familiarity I got writing scripts for my Siri proxy.

The script is not fancy at all. But it does get the job done. It works with the following logic.

1. Every 30 seconds checked my Gmail account
2. is there an unread message from a specific e-mail address
3. if yes, does this message contained trigger phrases?
4. If yes, do specified action.

If you like to give it a try, you can find the Ruby script here my Gmail checker

You will however have to install the Gmail gem http://rubygems.org/gems/ruby-gmail

The way this script is presently written, it runs just fine on raspberry pi. but not on Windows. However, it should not take much to get it running on the Windows machine. I just did not figure out the syntax to send the string to Wget.exe on Windows. For your convenience, I included it in the zip.

That's One Fine Coat

One of the ongoing problems I've been continually trying to address is that of comfort. With the extension of atrophy in my arms, which are essentially skin and bones these days. I'm finding that propping my elbows on pretty much anything can get rather uncomfortable rather quickly. Including my wheelchair.

I looked up all sorts of elbow pad options in the past, these tend to be rather tight fitting around the arm making them happy and not terribly comfortable to wear. Not to mention hot. The gel filled elbow pads were particularly bad for heat. Not to mention they were rather heavy. I will admit, they worked rather well.

Velcro insert pockets
on the elbows!

The other day while rotating around the Internet doing some window shopping for a light coat to replace the one I have I stumbled across the tac.u Coat from propper. It's basically a military style field jacket. But what is interesting about it is it has Velcro insert pockets on the elbows. Allowing you to insert elbow pads, or in my case a thin sheet of high density foam. The foam is very lightweight and being only half an inch thick makes it rather flexible. This is just enough padding to add an extra layer of comfort and take the sharp edges off of whatever I'm putting my elbow on.

The jacket is available in all sorts of other military colors/camouflage and is quite reasonably priced at US$40. Myself I chose the black one, but I do have to admit. The subdued urban camo is pretty cool.They are easy enough to find on Amazon.com, eBay and various tactical websites. I ordered mine from ACU.com which seem to offer the best shipping rate Canada.

On a side note, one of the fun things about the Coat is and has all sorts of Velcro patches on the shoulders which are intended for military badges and insignia. However, we've taken a bunch of Velcro tape and stuck it to some fun things/toys from my Four year old boy to Stick to me. Including the back of my iPhone. He finds it rather hilarious to watch YouTube while it stuck to my shoulder.

As limiting as I am in the way I can interact with him, got to find ways to be creative. And this that means looking a little silly, so be it! ;-)

All in all, so far I quite like the jacket. I should point out however the slaves are quite baggy. I ordered a large, which usually works out quite well for me. However in this case it turned out to be rather loosefitting around the chest. I probably could've done with the medium. But it does make for very good spring jacket.

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I would also like to just take a second to send a big thank you to Albert Wojciechowski for his contribution to this site :-)

Status report

You've probably noticed that I've not been posting much recently… My apologies for that, I do have a backlog of topics I want to get around to posting, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to do so.

I seem to be crossing a number of tipping points which is making things much more difficult for me. In particular, my balances rather severely affected. I can still walk, but am prone to falling. This is probably the biggest reason I've not been posting much, as I spend my days on the ground floor and my computer is in the basement. Stairs are scary!

The bandage they gave me
was a bit oversized.

I don't have much use of my arms and hands at all anymore which I'm going to say is probably the biggest reason why my balance is shot. No arms, no balance. As a matter of fact, I took quite the fall the other night. I was standing behind my son while he was brushing his teeth for bed. For some reason for right knee buckled and I fell backwards clipping the edge of the toilet with my right eyebrow. Leaving quite the boxers scar About 1/2 inch long. My four-year-old was very good about it and just asked why I had a hole and was leaking. Got lucky on that one though. Another inch or two towards the toilet seat and it could've been much worse. Ending up with more than just a "sexy scar" for the ladies.

My speech is just starting to be affected, just enough to start messing with my voice recognition. I'm also finding I'm speaking more softly, mumbling and having to repeat myself more. Fortunately my voice bank is all ready to go. Hopefully I won't need it for quite some time.

Steve Gleason Super Bowl ad for eye tracking
with Microsoft surface

Between these two issues, I'm starting to seriously consider alternative computer options For you zero, constant access. I've been monitoring Tobi eye tracking for some time, which is the solution I think I will go. They have a nice package for sale with the Windows Surface2 & Eyetracker for about $3000. Expensive, but the prices came way down from where It was.

That being said Tobi has a partnership steel series gaming trying to bring eye tracking mainstream. These are due out this summer,  should drive the price down even further. Going to try to hold on until then…

But! Still rolling!

With everything that's going on, and the balance issues the wife and I have been looking to move. We find a place that should work out for us. I ground floor apartment with elevator access from the garage. This should at least give me more in the way of computer access. Took a long time to find a good apartment that would be good for the family, accessibility and my mental health. But finally found one. We just put our home up for sale.

We both hate to move. We love the neighbors and the neighborhood fortunately however we are only moving a few blocks.

So until the dust settles sometime in July, I don't expect to be able to spend much time in front of the computer. But please, feel free to follow my daily adventures on twitter until then.

Milwaukee battery powered heated jacket.

Jacket heating zones

Back in the fall, my father had his birthday and he's a bit of a wimp with the cold. So we thought that would make a cool gift to try to buy him the Milwaukee battery-powered heated jacket. Especially now that he will be spending more time Montréal and it's a lovely winter climate.

As winter arrives, he loaned it to me to try out for a few weeks as he was going to be away and I needed to go collect my son from daycare in my wheelchair (with the help of an assistant).

Winter has posed to serious issues for me, And sometimes you absolutely need to leave the house to attend appointments or whatever.A

First off is due to the amount of muscular atrophy, I don't have as much muscle mass to keep one. This my core body temperature is at risk of dropping much more quickly.

It would seem winter is getting a bit out of hand here in Montréal

Secondly, and is apparently a fairly common issue for people with ALS is the cold can really exaggerate muscular spasticity. I have found that on occasion, being outside at -15 or less (And this year we've had cold snaps down to -40 before Wind chill!). Even for a very short duration, say transiting the distance from house to car of around 40 or 50 feet can be enough to trigger a rather serious reaction. To give you some idea, on Christmas Day we visited my wife's parents place for dinner. When they left the house around midnight, I had to walk a very short distance to get to our warm vehicle. By the time I made it from the door to my vehicle, the muscles in my jaw tightened to the point that I could no longer hold my mouth. I had to talk soon my teeth. And my legs were stiffening up to that point I could barely walk.

The most annoying about this, is my body starts reacting this way and as though I have hypothermia. But I don't feel cold at all… Once everything warms up, I'm okay.

The jacket works as advertised and has three heating modes. When set for high, the heating zones actually do get quite warm (but comfortably so) for a duration of up to 4 hours. But I'm finding consistently of the less, closer to three.

The jacket is not constructed as a winter jacket. I would say more of a spring or autumn jacket men's for the person that works who is someone physically active in the cold, humid environment. The biggest issue I found using it as a winter jacket is it did not have a sufficiently good windbreaker. Once we got down to about -10°C, the call would go right through the arms and the non-heated areas. He really does require a shell.

Flame on!

We tried removing the lining for my present winter jacket (shell) and using this jacket in its place. While that works quite well, between the weight of this jacket and my winter shell. I found it to be quite heavy, and I was unable to move my arms, and as you know, my arms are suffering from significant atrophy. But with the shell on, want wise it was much more comfortable.

The temperature was controlled by the power button located on the left lapel. We push and hold for 4 seconds to power on, and when ready to go it lights up. Due to the placement of the button, and the difficulty of pushing it, I am unable to actuate it myself. I require assistance. But those light up quite bright, and my four-year-old finds that be pretty cool. :-)

The jacket, complete with the charging unit and one battery retails for about C$200 at Home Depot. I find this to be quite well priced in the jacket is very well made. But unfortunately, because it didn't need to use my shell over top of it I can't justify going to buy one for myself. It doesn't quite suit my needs, as matter of fact it complicates things a bit.

That being said, they do have a hooded jogging suit version which is much lighter and retails for C$150. I think this might suit my needs much better, It should be sufficiently Lite that would fit well in my existing winter jacket with the liner. It should not add as much weight or inflexibility. I plan on trying this out.

The Blue Ant

No… not this guy!

A few months back I came a cross the blue ant commute hands free device, which seem to address an issue I've been having with my iPhone. Which is, hands-free answering, and while I've jailbroken my iPhone to allow hands-free control, the one big thing that's missing is the ability to verbally answer a call. Sure, I can activate Siri and place a call. But if someone is calling me, I still have to pick up my phone and physically answer it.

Honestly, I think this is probably the single biggest accessibility feature missing from Apple products. Voice triggering. I really wish they would add it, if they had I very likely would not have jail broken my iPhone.

What caught my attention was that once this devices. With your phone, it acts like any other hands-free device but allows voice activation. I could toggle Siri simply by saying "launch phone control", which is essentially the same function provided by the jailbreak with hands-free control. But if someone were to call me, the blue ant would ring, in the same way as it would a Bluetooth headset but, having integrated with my phonebook it will verbally tell me who's calling and all I have to do is send say "answer".

Needless to say, with failing dexterity this is rather interesting.

I've been using it on and off for couple months and surprisingly I'm not finding it quite as useful as I had hoped. First of all, I'm told that the audio quality for the person I'm talking to is quite good. Better than with other hands-free devices. However there are three things which I find really get in the way of regular usage.

1. Voice to text speech recognition… Not so hot.
   I use this far more frequently than I do for making or answering phone calls.. Updating my status on Facebook, sending text messages or quickly replying to an e-mail. I use voice to text quite a bit. I have found that going through the blue and commute significantly diminishes the recognition accuracy. Which is really quite unfortunate.
2. Another device to carry around…
   For me, the whole point of going to the iPhone and keeping with my was the reduction of things that they needed to have attached to my waist. Providing the maximum amount of functionality for the least amount of stuff. The blue ant commute, would require me to carry around another device. And at this point, verbally being able to answer calls does not add sufficient utility to justify.
3. Cannot verbally hang up

   

   we've all been there

   It's great to be able to answer hands-free, but if you can't have some other means to end the call. You're still required to manually terminated either by manipulating your iPhone or the blue ant itself. This might not sound like that big of a deal, but when you want to get off the phone with the telemarketer or someone who just… Won't… Shut… Up…

The blue ant commute usually retails for around $100 Canadian. I however found it on sale for about $70.

Don't get me wrong, the device does have its usefulness and is I've said, the audio quality for regular phone calls is really quite good. It is small (almost the same dimensions as the iPhone 5), easily portable and is something that can easily be attached to the side wheelchair, your belt and so forth as it's intended to be mounted on the sun visor of your car. I should however point out, I've not used it in the car yet.

So, if you do not want to jailbreak your iPhone (and with IOS 7, you presently can't anyway) this could be a pretty good way to get some hands-free control back. Sure, the Bluetooth range on the blue ant isquite good and I can probably use it throughout my house, but because of the limitations mentioned above, I still prefer to carry around my iPhone. It is presently Velcro to my waist. 

The utility of the blue ant is good, but just not sufficient to completely address my needs for day-to-day use at this point in time. So in conclusion:

Remote PC Start up Tools & Siri proxy

This is a little project that is kept me occupied for some time now, partly to do with a few difficulties in implementation. But the idea is to allow me to remotely start my computer without having to find my way to the basement to do so.

So why would someone want to remotely start the computer? Well I download quite a bit of media which is stored on the hard drive of my desktop and I use media streaming to send this content to one of my gaming consoles so I can watch it in the comfort of my family room which is on the ground floor. My desktop PC is in the basement separated by a flight of stairs with big nasty scary teeth and with mobility issues, I don't always feel like taking the chance. Especially when the lighting conditions are a little dark. For some reason this really messes with my balance, making stairs downright hazardous at times.


I tried a couple different apps, and hit a few speed bumps on the way that were not expected. Here's what I found.

First off, the speed bumps

Every motherboard on your computer nowadays will have a wired network connection. If you go through the BIOS is just about guaranteed that it will support some sort of wake on LAN functionality. Simply enable it, and you should be good to go right?

Well, not so much.

I have an older Asus motherboard that those sales for wake on LAN. I figured this should be enough. Enabled it, set the magic package and would only work immediately after shutdown. The motherboard power savings would shut down the network connection is well after a period of time. This caused quite a bit of annoyance.

So for about $10, about it PCI express network card. This solves the problems. Once the BIOS was set, the PCI express port maintained power, even after the PC shutdown.


Secondly, not all routers will support away, and set up. In particular Linksys routers (which is what I have) don't allow you to set the subnet mask 255.255.255.255 which is required to forward the magic packet the subnet mask needs to be set to 255.255.255.128. Contact Linksys cares technical support via twitter. They were very helpful with me for sorting this out.

How does it work?

Very simply, we will be using a computer or a smart phone to send what's called a magic packet over your local area network to the desired (powered down) computer. Once you BIOSes appropriately set up, your network card essentially never sleeps and monitors the network for the appropriate magic package.

There are a couple ways to send this.

iShutdown Is probably about the easiest way to go. Simply install the app on your smart phone and then from the link here, install the service on your desired desktop. Once everything is installed, with your PC running simply search for the server via the smart phone app. It should detect it right away. This will allow you to remotely start and stop your computer and has a very nice interface. It's also very easy to monitor several computers if you so choose.

This simplicity makes it well worth the $2

Your next the best option would be to try send a magic packets with depicus.com. This is also a very good app. Works flawlessly, but is a little bit more technical as it exposes you to more of the raw details. It however also has the scanning function to find computers on your network. But what is very interesting, is that also offer a free wake on LAN packet sniffer which will allow you to view magic packets that are being sent and received by your PC. Very useful when you're setting things up to make sure things are going to the right places

This is also $2 on the App Store.

Then there is the Siri proxy… My personal favorite!

If you've already figured out how to get Siri proxy running on raspberry pie, this edition is actually really quite easy, and it's free! If you are running Debian like me. Go here for information on the install

• open terminal and type
  aptitude install wakeonlan 
• test the install
• run that but that this is packet sniffer on your PC.
  By default it should be on port 7
• type this into terminal
  wakeonlan -p 7 YOUR_MAC_ADDRESS
• if everything ends working correctly you should see something like this
  http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-monitor.aspx

Once you are sending and receiving magic packets from your raspberry pie to your PC via terminal, is just a simple matter of adding the recognition block into your Siri proxy script, editing your Mac address, rebundling and restarting your Siri proxy.

#wake on LAN-------------------------------------------------    listen_for /wake up my (computer|PC|desktop)/i do           say "waking up your computer"     system 'wakeonlan -p 7 YOUR_MAC_ADDRESS'     request_completed #always complete your request! Otherwise the phone will "spin" at the user!   end

And this should be enough to get your serial proxy sending magic packet.

But having set this up, if I decide to watch a movie I simply voice activate my iPhone, tell her to wake up my computer and within a minute or so the media servers visible on the network.

Very convenient, very fun. :-)

If you're looking to set up a wake on LAN, I hope this helps you set one up.