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Last week saw my app, Sun to Moon Sleep Clock, updated with a new and slightly unusual feature - a hologram mode.  The only catch is that you need to build the hologram viewer yourself from cardboard and a few other basic materials. Full instructions can be found at http://www.msibley.com/sleep-clock-stand where you will also find a YouTube run through.

The viewer consists of 2 elements, a cardboard stand for displaying your iPad or tablet at a convenient viewing angle and the hologram adapter which attaches to the stand when the app is in hologram mode.

If you have a go at building either the stand or the viewer I'd love to hear how you get on!

Update August 2016: This app now has a new home at http://www.msibley.com/sleep-clock/ where you'll find full usage instructions and latest features

Update March 2016: I have just added a couple of new features including:
• Soothing sleep sounds with adjustable timer that plays after sunset. Choose between whale song, white noise (hair dryer), breaking waves or off.
•  Audible sunrise alarm. Choose between digital alarm clock, birds singing or off.

It's been over two years since the release of my original Sun clock, in which time I have had numerous feature requests and ideas from users so I felt it was time to give it an update.  The app has now become Sun to Moon Holo Sleep and as well as some new features I am also releasing an iOS version to accompany the Android version.

Continuous Sunrise/Sunset times

Sunrise and Sunset can both be set by touching the clock digits on the settings page and selecting from the hours, minutes and AM/PM selector.  The clock will adhere to this settings on a continuing daily basis although Sunrise time can also be changed from the main daytime page and the 'Goodnight' button clicked for an immediate sunset.

Shooting star progress bar

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to work out how many stars have gone and how many were there at the beginning so I have added a shooting star progress bar underneath the time display.  Once the star reaches the right hand side of the screen you know that the sun is about to rise.

'Secret Star' sunrise activation button

One request I received on numerous occasions was to have some way of activating an early sunrise without having to delve into the settings or draw attention to the fact you are changing the wake-up time in front of your children.  I have added a star with a reddish tint which is the Secret Star which can be touched at any time to activate an early sunrise.  The delay between touching the star and sunrise can be adjusted from the settings.

Auto dim

Whilst it can be nice to have some light in the room from the clock whilst the children are going to sleep, I decided to add an auto-dim feature so that the screen is now able to dim itself half an hour after sunset/sunrise and brightened up half an hour before.  This can be turned on and off from the settings from where you can also activate a manual dim.

Saved settings

One big short coming of the original app was that you had to reset the time every time you used the app.  The new app saves all settings from the previous session including sunrise and sunset times, Secret Star delays and dim settings.

Sun to Moon Sleep Clock is an interactive night clock app that helps make bedtime more fun and consistent for kids.  With a star countdown, visualised sunrise, collectable snooze rewards and gifts for the Sun and Moon characters, it makes gauging the time until morning much easier whilst offering a few gentle incentives to stay in bed till morning.

In its simplest form you just set the wake-up time then click the 'Good night' button to switch the clock to night mode,  but there are also options for setting sleep sounds, wake-up sounds, reading times etc.. depending on your requirements. You can also customise the artwork by collecting snooze rewards which are exchanged for gifts for the Sun and Moon characters including hairstyles, accessories, face paint, custom counters and more. The app can also be tailored for special events such as Christmas, birthdays and Easter to help build excitment whilst averting the dreaded 4am wake-up call.

All the artwork used in the app is custom made in a style that has evolved from my life as an artist.I will continue to add functionality and new artwork whenever I get the time, so feel free to email me with suggestions!

Sun to Moon Sleep Clock is available for Android, Amazon and iOS devices.  It can also be used completely free as part of the Amazon Underground scheme.  Full details can be found at msibley.com/sleep-clock or you can download it using the links below:
 

UPDATE 31st October 2014: With the release of Coda 2.5 the Channel entry tag gained a red background.  You can remove this by importing the Coda EE2.sss file that has been added below.  Drag the file to your Coda icon in the dock and select 'Coda EE2' from the dropdown menu that appears. Close the preference window and your tag should be restored.  I have also updated the syntax mode with some of the newer EE2 tags.

UPDATE 3rd August 2012: The original version of this syntax mode stopped working with the Coda 2.0.2 update.  The latest version should restore functionality.

I've been Googling 'ExpressionEngine syntax mode for Coda 2' almost daily for the last few weeks in the hopes that someone would come up with an EE2 syntax mode for the brilliant new code editor from Panic and put me out of my misery, but so far I've been left wanting.

As an act of desperation I decided to have a go at putting something together myself using existing syntax modes as a base from which to start.  After a bit of trial and error I have come up with something which works well enough to get me through until someone who knows what they're doing releases something better.

So far I have enabled basic syntax highlighting for ExpressionEngine 2 tags / parameters and added auto-completion for  most standard ExpressionEngine tags, variables and parameters along with some Structure tags for good measure.  The mode imports the built-in modes for HTML, PHP and Javascript so in theory these should all be highlighted correctly as well.

Feel free to download it and try it out it but please bear in mind it is only a stop-gap measure and is by no means perfect. If you have any good suggestions as to how it could be improved, leave a comment below and I will try and update it when I get a moment to spare.

To Install

Download and unzip the syntax mode then place ‘expressionengine.mode’ in ‘User > Library > Application Support > Coda 2 > Modes’ and restart Coda 2.  You can use any of the default colour stylesheets ('Coda > Preferences > Colors') although it was developed using Coda Bright.  You could also export, adapt and re-import any of these stylesheets to colour it to your taste.  I have added the stylesheet that I use below - it is more or less identical to Coda Bright except I have made the 'channel entries' tag and 'channel forms' tags bold.  Add it by dragging the .sss file to the Coda logo in your dock and selecting 'Coda EE2' from the dropdown menu.

Download v1.3

Coda EE2.sss

Changelog

1.0 - Initial release

1.1 - Fixed autocomplete for closing channel entries tag.  Adjusted class for !=  and = signs.

1.2 - Updated to work with Coda 2.0.2

1.3 - Updated for Coda 2.5 and with latest EE tags

I count myself as being fairly proficient with Photoshop but at the same time I am sure there are a lot of very basic techniques that I am unaware of and until recently this was one of them.  Whilst there are a few different ways to achieve HTML curved corners for your website including javascript methods and CSS3, for those clients who insist that their site looks identical in every browser the only reliable solution is to use 2 background images on an outer and inner element. 

I have always been convinced that creating these graphics should be very simple to do in Photoshop and as it turns out they are, but for years my half-hearted Google searches came up with nothing satisfactory and I was left using rounded marquee fills or importing vectors from illustrator, neither of which were particularly quick or satisfactory to look at.

My New Years resolution was to find out how to do this properly in Photoshop and to write it up in case anyone else is struggling with the same problem.  The answer is embarrassingly simple.

1. Create a new document and draw a rounded rectangle (a) setting the corners to the desired radius (b).

2. Double click the new shape's layer (a) to open the layer style dialog box.  Reduce the fill opacity to 0 (b) and open the stroke panel (c).

3. Alter the stroke colour (a) and size (b) to your requirements and click 'OK'.

4. Rasterize the layer containing your shape and you're done! A hollow rounded rectangle to be sliced up and used for your backgrounds.

In my quest to integrate our birds with our garden I decided it was time that they were confined to two areas of the garden.  The problem was that the two areas that they needed access to, the chicken house area and the duck pond area, are on two different levels and separated by a footpath.  The obvious solution was a tunnel so I set about digging, unsure as to how well birds cope with tunnels.  It turns out they cope really rather well.

The tunnel spans a length of about 2.5 metres and is supported on either side by a series of large roof tiles which are retained by wooden stakes.  The roof of the tunnel is a metal frame with wooden panels, covered in earth and a brick path.

The chickens had a few days with the tunnel uncovered to get used to the new route to the pond and compost heap. A few needed some gentle persuasion that it really was a good idea, but they all got there in the end and now shoot down at a rate of knots.

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My decision to try and make our chickens and ducks fully automated came just before we headed off for a three week holiday.  We decided that rather than paying someone to come each day we would invest the money in fully automating them with automatic doors, an on-demand feeder, fresh water and a diy swiveling web-cam to keep an eye on it all .  Since taking the plunge, the system has operated flawlessly for over a year without even needing the batteries changed so I thought it was worth sharing how I transported our birds to Chicken house Nirvana. Read on to find out how I tackled it.

During daylight hours there’s not much going on so below is a recording of the Chickens coming in to roost as it starts to get dark.

Building the Chicken House

I have been building our chicken house in my spare time since 2007, using a combination things I find in skips and and leftovers donated by our neighbor who is carpenter.  By the time I started the automation process in July 2008 the chicken house consisted of an upstairs with a perch for our 7 chickens and two rooms downstairs, one for our two ducks and another which had been converted into a fully sound proof box for our cockeral, Biddy.   Following a tragic incident in which Biddy decided to follow the ducks into the pond, his box had become vacant so out came the brick lining, bubble wrap and insulated cladding and in went a plastic liner and several sacks of Chicken food.  Biddy’s pad was now the feeder.  Leaving a small gap at the bottom, I attached a closure plate to the front of the chamber to allow just a small amount of food to drop down as required by the birds.

My first move in the automation process was to order the doors and closing mechanism.  There isn’t much choice when it comes to automatic poultry door mechanisms so I settled on the VSB system which I purchased from Wiltshire Chickens online shop.  I decided to get one VSBb mechanism, three VSB sliding doors and a VSB 24hr timer.  This door mechanism is light activated by default, which is great for chickens but our ducks love to stay out late so a timer was essential to give full control. In order to link up more than one door I needed to employ a couple of pulleys which can be ordered online but I decided to fashion my own from standard pulleys.

In order to give full access to the different sections of the chicken house for mucking out etc.. I mounted the sliding doors on a large removable plywood panel that bolted in place over the entire face of the chicken house.  Having cut three rectangular holes in the panel, the metal doors slotted into runners mounted either side of each entrance and the mechanism box was secured at the top.  Pulleys were attached to either side of the upper main chicken house door which guided lengths of plastic coated framing wire from the bottom corners of the upper door to the two lower doors causing them all to rise and fall in unison.  Once the doors were all in place and wired up all that was left to do was attach the main upper door to the automatic mechanism which was in turn connected to the timer module mounted on the inside of the panel.

The result was three fully automatic sliding doors, one at the top with a platform for the birds to fly up on to, one at the bottom for the ducks and one next door to protect the feeder from vermin at night.  I set the timer to close an hour or so after dark and to open just after sunrise.

The watering system came courtesy of a Hozelock AC1+ automatic watering  module which topped up both the duck’s pond and the chicken’s drinker.  I set it to turn on the hose for 2 minutes twice a day which was enough to keep the duck’s water from becoming too stagnant and provide ample water for the chickens.

Finally I needed to be able to monitor the setup over the internet to make sure it was all working smoothly.  For this I turned to a Y-cam infra red wireless webcam mounted on a small platform inside the main chicken house.  Because I wanted to be able to view them both outside during the day and inside at night, I developed a swiveling platform which looked down on the perch at night using it’s infra red night-sight, monitor whether the door had closed correctly, then swung round during the day to peer through a glass window looking out over the garden.  The platform itself was entirely comprised of bit’s and pieces I found lying around and could be set to swivel at set intervals.  The full design for this is probably a bit too much for this article so maybe I’ll cover it in a separate post in the future, let me know if this would be useful.

I hope this has inspired you to automate you chickens if you have them or to consider getting some if you don’t.  We live in a built up area surrounded by other houses and we have found them to be excellent pets that require little in the way of daily maintenance and offer eggs and animation for the garden in return.  Apart from filling their food every couple of months and changing their straw now and again all that’s left to do is eat the eggs.  If you have any innovative chicken house adaptations that might inspire me I’d love to hear about them but in the mean time you can have a look through some more of my pictures.

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