Author Archives: dropdeaddick

Robot Rover

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I recently picked up the basic DFRobot Rover kit from robotshop.com, which finally arrived today after what seemed like an eternity on back order. I also picked up a Bluetooth kit and a couple of sensors to play with. I’m still waiting for their new wheel encoders for this kit and a couple of 6V motors, but I can get started without them. Oh well, it just gives me a reason to disassemble it all later to add the new parts.

I started out trying to gather parts to build something similar, but decided to go with their kit and save some time(something I don’t always have a lot of). Maybe later, when I feel more comfortable with arduino, then I will move onto building something from scratch.

parts

The only thing I am missing at the moment is a mini USB cable for the main board. To be truthful, I am not really missing the cable, so much as I need to untangle it from the magical ball of USB cables that I have stuffed in a drawer.

 

 

 

Update on February 22, 2012
I have run into a couple of small issues that well are more an annoyance than anything else. The first is that I purchased an inexpensive bluetooth dongle that was DOA. Then the dagu mini pan and tilt I purchased, is not going to fit to the rover’s mount due to the front idler axle being in its way. This was simply an oversight on my part for not giving it a once over. I will most likely create a mount for this if I use it, or look at modifying how the idler is mounted.

I also dug up some older code from cellbots for this rover, but it is outdated and will need to be updated to work with the newer IDE.

Update on February 24, 2012
I’m Still waiting on my replacement bluetooth dongle but was able to connect to the rover via terminal using the SENA BTerm app on DroidX. This worked well and allowed me to control it with WASD keys from the phone using the sample code provided by robotshop. Please note that if you want to do something silly like I did – painting the tamiya wheels – then make sure you assemble them with the end caps first. Since I didn’t add the end caps first, I had to clean up the paint around the caps that was causing the idler wheels to stick and roll as a solid axle.

Kayako API: How to Post a Ticket

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A basic PHP example of how to post a new ticket via the Kayako v4 Rest API 

<?php
 
$apiUrl = "https://support.domain.com/api/index.php?e=/Tickets/Ticket";
$apiKey = "78db96b0-1t7c-aea4-bd51-7xf39d50cdd6";
$salt = mt_rand();
$secretKey = "ZjBiZS0N2MtMzM3MTkyNTkxMjdiZWZkMGIjE3YmJiMGUtNmY0MC0yNW
U0LWY5x6DktN1NzE0LWMxMGYyZDIzOThmYjY5YT7m";
$signature = base64_encode(hash_hmac('sha256',$salt,$secretKey,true));
 
$subject = "Test Ticket";
$fullname = "DropDeadDick";
$email = "test@domain.com";
$contents = "Test test test test";
$departmentid = "1";
$ticketstatusid = "1";
$ticketpriorityid = "1";
$tickettypeid = "1";
$staffid = "1";
 
$post_data = array('subject' => $subject,
 'fullname' => $fullname,
 'email' => $email,
 'contents' => $contents,
 'departmentid' => $departmentid,
 'ticketstatusid' => $ticketstatusid,
 'ticketpriorityid' => $ticketpriorityid,
 'tickettypeid' => $tickettypeid,
 'staffid' => $staffid,
 'apikey' => $apiKey,
 'salt' => $salt,
 'signature' => $signature);
 
$post_data = http_build_query($post_data, '', '&');
 
$curl = curl_init($apiUrl);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $apiUrl);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
 
$response = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
 
$xml = simplexml_load_string($response, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA);
echo "<pre>".print_r($xml, true)."</pre>";
 ?>

cPanel – Fix Ownership of /home/user

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I recently had an issue with incorrect ownership of all files under /home/user/ due to mismatched UIDs after a cPanel server restore. The following script took care of this in no time.

echo -e "Checking ownership of /home/user \n"
for i in `ls /var/cpanel/users/`
do
if [ "$i" != "root" ]; then
chown -R $i:$i /home/$i
chown $i:nobody /home/$i/public_html /home/$i/.htpasswds
chown $i:mail /home/$i/etc /home/$i/etc/*/shadow /home/$i/etc/*/passwd
echo $i
fi
done

cPanel Webmail Direct Login Script

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A simple and configurable script for direct login to the cPanel webmail applications(Horde, SquirrelMail, RoundCube).

<?php
// Modified version of the standard cPanel login page to allow direct login to a specific webmail application.
// Must set $host , $login_path , and $mail_app, defaults to cPanel proxy subdomains and SquirrelMail
$host = 'example.com';
// Uncomment one of the following to set login URL type

View full script

cPanel Email Filter for IP Range

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I recently needed to block a large amount of incoming email via IP range in cPanel for a single account versus blocking the IP range on the entire server. This was accomplished using cPanel’s Account Level Filtering for Mail.

Here is the filter setting using 192.168.0.0/24 as an example.

Rules:
Any Header
matches regex
192\.168\.{1,3}\.{1,3}

Action:
Discard Message

cpanel mail filter

Snowing in Houston

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It’s snowing here in Houston today! We don’t see snow that often here and it sure doesn’t compare to the snow when I am up in Michigan. However it is a welcome change and distraction from the normal Texas weather. It is expected to continue though the rest of the day and we may actually see more than 2 inches. I don’t mind at all, just gives me a reason to kick the dodge into 4 wheel drive.

Bookworm Addiction

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I seemed to have a new found addiction to Bookworm. This is not a new game to me but I recently installed in on my notebook and can’t seem to stop playing it.

To make matters worse, Sharlet of SharletsWorld.com has been taunting me about my scores. I think I have her beat with my new score(3,452,580), but I really don’t see this ending well for me.

Edible Arrangement

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I received an edible arrangement today from a friend for helping with her web design class. I have seen these before but never tried them nor received one until now. I enjoy fresh fruit but don’t eat it as often as I should, so this was a welcome treat.

Thanks Cathy!