5 ms·

How we built a web controlled robot with SSL tunnels and perl

24 points by danecjensen 16y ago

brandon 16y ago
I find the "and perl" part particularly dubious. Here's an excerpt: system("echo '$mydata' > /home/rhett/usernick"); system('/home/rhett/music_player.rb &'); system('/home/rhett/servos/phidgets-examples/AdvancedServo-simple &'); As a former perl hacker, this kind of stuff was infuriating to me before, but it just seems silly now.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  He's got more system() than perl. Probably just should have used a bash script. You know there's trouble when they use system("echo...") to write to a file!
- heyrhett 16y ago
  Hi, I helped to make this. It actually uses a smattering of different technologies. Namely: Perl, Ruby, C, Javascript, Apache, SSL tunnels, an electric wheelchair, and hobby servos from phidgets. We didn't mean to be misleading to the perl lovers, it was just too long to post all of that in the title. Not more than a few lines of each, and it truly is more of a hack than anything else. BTW, we just changed the 1 line of system("echo...") to have perl print the file to avoid any potential security vulnerability.
- variety 16y ago
  silly, yes. but nonetheless, an accurate reflection of how many people view that sphere of activity known as "perl scripting." i.e. pretty much like bash scripting, but with slightly different punctuation.
mleonhard 16y ago
Serving live video over the internet The Cam.ly security camera and interface system is super simple to set up. Plug power into the camera and connect it to the internet. Point and shoot. We slightly changed the interface for the pinata buster. We won’t talk more about this part because how it works exactly is a trade secret. It's seriously disappointing that they refuse to talk about the streaming code. Last year I tried to build a web-enabled robot. I never found a way to stream the live video from the web-cam to a flash widget. There were lots of online services and commercial products, but no open-source stack. It looks like Cam.ly will become unusable when the manufacturer's online web service goes down.
- danecjensen 16y ago
  We're actually working on making the cameras run a rtmp server locally, so soon you'll be able to stream it to your own flash widget. The Cam.ly is also a completely open source product. We encourage hacking: http://cam.ly/blog/2010/08/different-ways-to-modify-your-cam-ly/ http://cam.ly/blog/2010/08/different-ways-to-modify-your-cam....

24 points by danecjensen 16y ago

I find the "and perl" part particularly dubious. Here's an excerpt: system("echo '$mydata' > /home/rhett/usernick"); system('/home/rhett/music_player.rb &'); system('/home/rhett/servos/phidgets-examples/AdvancedServo-simple &'); As a former perl hacker, this kind of stuff was infuriating to me before, but it just seems silly now.

noonespecial 16y ago
He's got more system() than perl. Probably just should have used a bash script. You know there's trouble when they use system("echo...") to write to a file!
heyrhett 16y ago
Hi, I helped to make this. It actually uses a smattering of different technologies. Namely: Perl, Ruby, C, Javascript, Apache, SSL tunnels, an electric wheelchair, and hobby servos from phidgets. We didn't mean to be misleading to the perl lovers, it was just too long to post all of that in the title. Not more than a few lines of each, and it truly is more of a hack than anything else. BTW, we just changed the 1 line of system("echo...") to have perl print the file to avoid any potential security vulnerability.
variety 16y ago
silly, yes. but nonetheless, an accurate reflection of how many people view that sphere of activity known as "perl scripting." i.e. pretty much like bash scripting, but with slightly different punctuation.

mleonhard 16y ago

Serving live video over the internet The Cam.ly security camera and interface system is super simple to set up. Plug power into the camera and connect it to the internet. Point and shoot. We slightly changed the interface for the pinata buster. We won’t talk more about this part because how it works exactly is a trade secret. It's seriously disappointing that they refuse to talk about the streaming code. Last year I tried to build a web-enabled robot. I never found a way to stream the live video from the web-cam to a flash widget. There were lots of online services and commercial products, but no open-source stack. It looks like Cam.ly will become unusable when the manufacturer's online web service goes down.

danecjensen 16y ago
We're actually working on making the cameras run a rtmp server locally, so soon you'll be able to stream it to your own flash widget. The Cam.ly is also a completely open source product. We encourage hacking: http://cam.ly/blog/2010/08/different-ways-to-modify-your-cam-ly/ http://cam.ly/blog/2010/08/different-ways-to-modify-your-cam....