This is my new blackberry storm. For a while I was going to build a hardware based remote control for project-E… but as the design became a little clearer to me; the remote control became a little too complicated for a hardware based system. I thought the touch based interface on the storm would make a nice remote control. The entire remote can then be implemented in software which makes a lot of neat possibilities easier to do.

So far the storm has been pretty fun to develop for. It’s completely java based and very well documented. I know it’s not the geekiest phone out there right now but it was the best one for my purposes. My first choice would have been the G1 but unfortunately it’s only on a network that doesn’t have anywhere near the coverage that Verizon has. I don’t always like all of Verizon’s policies but it’s hard to beat their network coverage. I absolutely love the design of Apple’s phone, but they don’t seem to be very friendly towards developers and I find it difficult to understand how so many developers get excited over a phone that its company is so restrictive about.

Here is a look at my current work. Most of my work has been concentrated on gumstix development for the last couple weeks. I have the custom code written and communication up and running between the gumstix and the roboaudiostix via i2c. I’ll start posting my code soon… I just have to figure how I want to start posting the code to the blog.

I also have bluetooth communication working between my blackberry storm and my gumstix although the code has to be finished on the gumstix. The custom code is working on the blackberry but I simply used minicom running on the gumstix to verify my data coming across so far. My next step will to write the custom c code that runs on the gumstix to handle the incoming messages from the storm.

Here is a closeup of my new gumstix board. I now have a verdex pro XM4-bt to use as the main computer for the parade. I changed to a new board for two reasons. One is that I needed enough memory to store the wav file for the parade and the new verdex pro boards have an on-board SD card slot on them, and the other is the control system is now a blackberry storm. The best way way to control project-E with the blackberry is via bluetooth so it just made sense to have a board with built in bluetooth.