Simple Zulu is a simple flash-card app to teach you Zulu words, that I wrote in conjunction with content from Funda Njalo. Both a limited free version and a full pro version are available on the Market.
Search Results Category: Projects
February 10, 2012
August 16, 2011
DroidOrb
I have started my first open source project called DroidOrb. This is an extensible accessory for Android that most electronics hobbyists can build for themselves. The basic accessory will act as a phone dock and display notifications via the glowing “orb” in various colours. Extensions will allow the docked phone to control other systems, such as your home alarm or automation system.
For more information, please see the DroidOrb website: http://droidorb.com
August 2, 2011
Android accessory
I was extremely excited when Google announced the Open Accessories Development Kit (http://accessories.android.com/) at Google IO earlier this year. I decided that this was the ideal opportunity to bring together my hardware and software skills and create an interesting accessory.
So far, I have a working prototype, and more details will be posted once my accessory nears completion, but you can check out the current progress here: https://plus.google.com/118226948467140990198/posts/JzPAkmKWa6B
The idea is to see how close I can take my idea to a store store shelf…
June 2, 2011
200SX Site status
Current state of the 200sx site:
- The 200SX site has now found a new home, with Riekert in charge. The forum has been upgraded to phpBB3, so the URL has changed to:
http://200sx.za.net/phpBB3/
- See this post for details: http://200sx.za.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=7604&highlight=
Your point of contact is Riekert – email riekertvv at gmail dot com.
May 24, 2011
Fancy app
I wrote the Android app “Fancy” for thingd, which includes a honeycomb-optimized tablet version. It is an Android client for the website thefancy.com. It has since been worked on by other developers.
Here is the Market blurb:
Fancy is for curators of style. It’s part blog, part magazine and part bookmarking tool.It’s a place to share and discover great stuff, to curate a collection of things that define your style, to create a museum of Me.
We built it because we love to show off the things we have and to window-shop for things we admire.
You can find it on the app market here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.thefancy.app&feature=search_result
See some screenshots below:
This app was featured on the Verizon Android app store, as can be seen in this image:
Fancy app on Verizon's Featured apps tab
December 14, 2010
Nissan 200SX Owner’s club of South Africa
I started a car club back in 2003, for owners of the Nissan 200SX sports car in South Africa. It now has a fairly active forum. I’ve loved the shape of this car ever since I first saw a picture of it in a book, and I finally bought one in 2001. I still have it, and use it as a daily driver, but there were long periods of time when it wasn’t running and I eventually had to remove the engine and gearbox at home, and rebuild them. I had to rebuild the engine 3 times, twice with the help of some friends from my club, but the last time I managed to do 90% of the work myself! Since then, it has been running very well. My car was even featured in the Max My Ride magazine (Issue 09 – Dec 09) as a pristine example of a factory-standard model.
Dual Projector Home Theatre
I built a home theatre utilising two projectors to create a massive 3.5+ meter screen! Read all about it here. Also part of this home theatre is a home-built subwoofer capable of a flat response down to 35Hz, and I have a plan to get that down to 25Hz or less, using a home-built subwoofer amplifier and a Linkwitz Transform Subwoofer Equaliser.
Other plans include bi-amping the main speakers using a pair of 80watt Gainclones which I’ve already built (using my own PCB design, etched at home). Unfortunately I went bonkers with the torroid transformer, bought a hefty 700VA job that provides *just* a bit too much voltage for the poor TDA7293 chips I’m using, although they’ll survive if I don’t use high volume. Part of that plan was to use a pair of parallel chips bridged together (that is 4 chips each capable of delivering 80 to 100 watts), for a grand total of around 600 continuous, crazy, RMS watts! That’s when I realised my subwoofer can only handle 350 watts peak! So what am I gonna do with the 10 TDA7293′s I bought? 
I really get a kick out of using simple electronics to get massively improved performance out of consumer electronics. For example, with my above plans, I should be able to make my R5000 sound system sound like a R20000+ sound system. As another example, I want to build myself a CMoy headphone amplifier complete with cross-feed and the Linkwitz transform equaliser for the best headphone sound possible. This would probably sound better than any off-the-shelf headphone amplifier (even using cheap headphones), simply because I can tune it for the best sound *for my ears*.
SmsFu Android app
I’ve always wanted to get into mobile application development, and finally got down to writing my first Android application. It is called SmsFu. From my market blurb:
“SmsFu stops junk or spam SMS’s from irritating you, without you blacklisting them first. How? It silences notifications when the SMS is from a long number (or optionally, not in your phonebook).”
I wrote this application mainly out of irritation with “Jimmy’s Killer Prawns”, “Coco Bongo”, “Honda Midrand”, and other spammers who somehow got hold of my phone number and then started arbitrarily spamming me. I decided that the real irritation was that it got me excited about receiving an SMS, thus leading me to drop what I was doing, only to find out that I’ve been spammed.
SA Events Android app
SA Events is an Android app I wrote that lists the major South African events such as expo’s, shows, festivals, concerts, carvinals, cultural events, etc. It is a great way to quickly browse upcoming events and then add them to your calendar with a reminder, so that you don’t miss your favorite events.
BatteryFu battery saver Android app
BatteryFu is an Android application I wrote to save battery life (and data) on my HTC Dream (G1). After trying JuiceDefender from the market, I was quite disappointed at how bloated it was and how it actually ended up using memory and battery on my device which went against what it’s supposed to accomplish.
So I wrote BatteryFu as a proof-of-concept to see if a lean and mean battery saver would work. And boy, does it work! I can get almost 4 days of battery life under normal usage (using conservative settings).
