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A project log for Build Logger

A companion cube for makers, collecting pictures, audio, and text during a build, and serving up a build log web page to those nearby.

wesfalerwes.faler 08/20/2014 at 03:010 Comments

Build Logger (BL) has a lot of features that sure feel familiar: text to speech, voice commands, storage, web server, etc. It's no wonder people ask "What about just using your phone? It has a microphone and Internet access."

Yes, yes it does. It is not a web server though. Anything the phone posts to the Internet can only be found while.on.the.Internet. This really is where the inspiration for a new bridging technology comes from. The phone has GPS but it can't know anything unless it checks some central registry of cool GPS locations and someone registers the exacting GPS location of their project. It just doesn't work for ad-hoc things like Maker Faires or even Open Make nights at the local hackerspace.

For that, you need the project being shown to advertise itself. It needs to be fully self contained so no Internet connection is required to serve information to someone standing right next to it. (Besides, have you seen the Internet connection request forms at a Maker Faire?) Its self contained nature gives it its greatest strengths.

Strength: It must serve a complete web site about the project, highlighting the entire build timeline. This is a web site of static HTML5 files and images that can be copy-n-pasted to web host for larger sharing.

Strength: To collect the required information, it must connect to easy sources of data. Namely camera phones and keyboards made for Twitter-length thoughts. That is, to be self contained for the end viewer, it must be fully connected for the builder.

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