Founder, Inventor, Creator
Finally live today! I don’t have any discount codes right now and numbers are super limited. If it gets later in the day and there is still some rings left I will provide a discount code but for now if you want to guarantee you will get one for XMas visit McLEAR Ring Pay by McLear Ltd.
PS. The name choice wasn’t mine… \o/
2+ years of my life is available for you to back (or not). Check it out on Kickstarter..
During this time I got married, ate a lot of curry, um, no other benchmarks really..
On a personal note.. If we raise anything < £200k I still wont see a penny, crazy huh? Don't launch new products, they drain your soul and capital. My entire drain into this product now is about ~£144k.. That's a lot of cash... I have plans to turn it around though! 🙂
The main reason of doing Kickstarter is to validate market demand. If people want it, we will make it and that proves to myself and investors it's a worthwhile venture. The more we make, the more that gets invested, and the cycle of madness continues...
I’d like it if we could raise more than our initial launch but I doubt that because of the gartner hype cycle.. I’d say we’re nearer to the trough than the peak mostly because V2s are never as exciting as V1s.. We’re definitely nearing the Slope as we’re seeing innovations land elsewhere around our tech that really do improve peoples lives..
Stay frosty people and thanks for backing 🙂
Replace profiles, IP and ring ID with your own values.
Run in a Screen
node whatever.js
var fs = require('fs');
var request = require("request");
var inp = fs.createReadStream("/dev/ttyACM0");
inp.setEncoding('utf8');
var inptext = "";
var XBMCEventClient = require('xbmc-event-client').XBMCEventClient;
var xbmc = new XBMCEventClient('node.js app');
var blob = { "id": 1, "jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "Profiles.LoadProfile", "params": {"profile":"lydia"}};
var options = {
method: 'POST',
uri: 'http://user:pass@127.0.0.1:8080/jsonrpc',
json: blob
}
xbmc.connect(function(errors, bytes) {
inp.on('data', function (data) {
if (errors.length){
throw errors[0];
}
if(data === "."){
return; // do nothing
}
if(data.indexOf("InsertRingUIDHere") !== -1){
console.log(options.json.params);
options.json.params.profile = "john";
}else{
options.json.params.profile = "lydia";
}
request(options, function (error, response, body) {
console.log("changed to", options.json.params.profile);
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(body.id) // Print the shortened url.
}
});
});
});
Note that I just threw this together as a proof of concept, it needs a bunch of polish! 🙂
In this example I use a keyduino but you can use any Arduino device that has the PN532 or NFC module loaded on. The Arduino has to just push out the ID of the Ring (or tag) via Serial print. This arrives at ttyACM0 and we then parse it and do some xbmc events..
var fs = require('fs');
var inp = fs.createReadStream("/dev/ttyACM0");
inp.setEncoding('utf8');
var inptext = "";
var XBMCEventClient = require('xbmc-event-client').XBMCEventClient;
var xbmc = new XBMCEventClient('node.js app');
xbmc.connect(function(errors, bytes) {
inp.on('data', function (data) {
console.log(data);
// inptext += data;
if (errors.length){
throw errors[0];
}
if(data.indexOf("yourringUIDhere") !== -1){
xbmc.notification('Resuming playback', 'Resuming playback');
xbmc.keyPress('space');
};
});
});
Over the past few months I have been using ThreeJS to create a 3D model of the NFC Ring.
ThreeJS from Wikipedia:
Three.js is a lightweight cross-browser JavaScript library/API used to create and display animated 3D computer graphics on a Web browser. Three.js scripts may be used in conjunction with the HTML5 canvas element, SVG or WebGL.
The ThreeJS community is actually really helpful, I’m not saying other communities aren’t helpful or useful I just found that the ThreeJS community did a lot more to help get me started. There are also quite a few demostration videos online that can be used as reference material.
The real power of ThreeJS comes when you mix it with the power of Blender.
Blender from Wikipedia:
Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender’s features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.
At first I was completely stuck, the video tutorials were out of date and the documentation far too fuzzy, finally I met someone on IRC who did the type of task I was trying to to accomplish every day as his day job. Things fell into place quickly, so quickly I thought it would be worthwhile putting together a video showing how easy the process is to model an object and export it as something that can be used in ThreeJS:
Canvas is pretty much a no-go for the work I’m doing, it’s nice to have the fallback options there but Canvas just doesn’t have the features I need to display a ring in all of it’s glory. With that in mind if a user wants to see the ring and doesn’t have WebGL supported they are shown a message how best to upgrade their browser.
Finally we should note both three.js and blender are open source projects, completely free and depend on community donation and support. They are both evolving under great leadership and they deserve the credit and respect they get.
This is what I was able to accomplish, I’m pretty proud of it.