When Posterous announced their pending closure (which takes place tomorrow, Apr. 30, 2013), I immediately began searching for a new blogging platform. I wanted a self-hosted setup on my own domain, so I would never again be subject to another blog service’s site closure. I settled on [Octopress][0] (based on Jekyll), due to its hacker-friendly command line nature, integration with Git, ability to publish to Amazon S3, and easily customizable default theme.

Migration from Posterous required three major steps:

1. Exporting posts from Posterous
2. Importing posts into Octopress
3. Setting up redirection from Posterous to my new blog

Follow along below to back up your own Posterous blog.

Hi everyone! To celebrate the warming of the weather, Nitrogen Logic is offering a one week only discount on the Depth Camera Controller. Through the end of Apr. 30, 2013 (MDT), you can get a Depth Camera Controller for $200 instead of the usual $250 (20% off).

The Automation Controller will be reduced from $325 to $250 for the same time period. Quantity discounts will also be adjusted; get in touch using the Contact Us page to place an order or to inquire about quantity discounts.

If you’ve been waiting to outfit your home or business with Kinect-based automation, this is a great opportunity to get started!

I’ve uploaded a new beta version of the Depth Camera Controller firmware that includes initial support for controlling Philips Hue lights with the Kinect. This beta firmware can be downloaded by clicking the Check for Updates link on the Depth Camera Controller’s Settings page.

new in build 43 beta

• Hue bridge discovery and registration
• Basic control and identification of Hue lights and groups
• Automation rules – set Hue lights and groups based on Zone events
• Minor page layout improvements
• Fixed a bug that can occur if the power fails at just the right time

Exciting news: after tons of work, my local build of the Depth Camera Controller software is now able to change Hue lights based on zones! Using a system of automation rules similar to the Nitrogen Logic PC Remote, the Depth Camera Controller web interface is able to use zone events to trigger your Philips Hue lights.

There’s a good bit of work left to do to get it ready for production, but I just tested the first implementation and it works great! I welcome your feedback on the UI design for automation rules via the Nitrogen Logic Contact Us page.

More details to come in the future…

Today I’m announcing build 35 of the Nitrogen Logic Depth Camera Controller firmware. This is a relatively minor update focused mostly on user interface tweaks.

You can update your Depth Camera Controller’s firmware by clicking the Check for updates… link on the controller’s Settings page, downloading the appropriate file, then uploading it to the controller using the firmware update section of the Settings page.

new in build 35

• Added a confirmation prompt before deleting a zone.
• Tweaked the page layout for improved consistency.
• Added Surface Area to the zone attributes displayed in the web interface (this should have been there a long time ago; Surface Area values were already calculated and reported through the TCP/IP interface on port 14308).
• Fixed the display of zone attributes when a zone is added in another browser window or from a different device.

Some of you may have been wondering why it’s taking so long to get Philips Hue support implemented, especially now that Philips has released official documentation for the API. The reason is that I’ve been working on a new application that satisfies a very cool feature request.

So what have you been doing all this time?

I’m pleased to announce the release of version 1.0 of a new application, the Nitrogen Logic PC Remote. This application allows you to run commands on any Java-enabled PC (Linux, Mac, or Windows) in response to zone events from one or more Depth Camera Controllers.

The next few weeks will be exciting for fans of Nitrogen Logic.  First of all, I’ve been working on adding seamless support for the Philips Hue lighting system to the Depth Camera Controller.  Soon you will be able to control your Hue lights with a Depth Camera Controller and a Kinect camera, without requiring a separate automation system.  This new Hue support will be available to all purchasers of the Depth Camera Controller via a free firmware update.

Happy new year!

Things to look forward to in the new year: easier ways to buy a Nitrogen Logic controller, Philips Hue support, and more.

Have a great start to a great year!

If any Nitrogen Logic customers (or potential customers) would like to control their Philips Hue lights, or for that matter any other hardware, with a Kinect and the Depth Camera Controller or Automation Controller, please get in touch to make arrangements.  Basically it boils down to this:

1. Interested party provides hardware they want to control on a temporary or permanent basis.  Control documentation for the hardware must be available.
2. Nitrogen Logic makes the necessary changes to the controller firmware.
3. The new firmware version is released, and temporarily provided hardware is returned.

Greetings!  A new version of the Nitrogen Logic Depth Camera Controller firmware is now available.  This new version adds ambient light sensing to xAP and the web interface, visible zones on the Video tab, and an event log.  There are also several performance improvements and bug fixes, allowing greater reliability with more zones and more activity.