Zipwhip’s Windows 8 App

 

The Windows 8 App Store is the first of its kind for Microsoft. It’s brand new, and as of this week we officially became part of it. As a company we felt it was extremely important to get into the store as soon as possible to ensure visibility and solid placement. Being available to early adopters with our app near the top of the Social category was a key part of our strategy.

Your homework has to be done before submitting an app to the Windows 8 store. Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world and their app store application process reflects that (lots of rules!). To ensure that we were accepted in a timely fashion we went native so to speak. We wanted our user interface to completely mimic the “Metro” style design of this new operating system. Tiles, notifications, and touch gestures? Check. Pin-to-start functionality? Check. The ability to share incoming MMS to SkyDrive, email, and other apps? Checkmate. These features make our app feel tailor-made for Windows 8. They’re also driving our ranking and installs up.

Like it or not, Windows 8 is going to be huge! With over 80% of the operating system market locked down (netmarketshare.com) millions of users are going to be flooding the store looking for apps that will benefit their lives. Being at the front of the class in this marketplace helps ensure our app will get the market recognition it deserves. Data shows that a majority of Android users use the Windows OS on their computers, which makes our total available market gigantic. All you need to use this app is an Android powered smartphone with an SMS plan. You don’t need a Windows phone. I repeat, you do not need a Windows phone.

So go be the first kid on the block with this new app and let us know what you think. Our VP of Product, Anthony Riemma, took a minute out of his day to give a quick overview of the app in the above video. Thanks Anthony!

In addition to the video, there are a few screenshots below so you can see what our app looks like in it’s new home. We’re thrilled to be part of the Windows family! Microsoft – you done good :)

Windows 8 log-in screen.

Zipwhip running inside Windows 8

Zipwhip’s placement inside the Social category of the app store (2 of 87)

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Zipwhip Powers World’s First Text-Enabled Espresso Machine

 

Textspresso. It’s a beautiful thing. In order to combine our cloud texting service with Seattle’s technology and coffee cultures, we created a machine that sends and receives text messages while simultaneously making a coffee. You heard right. We’ve got a robotic barista in the house. Did we mention there’s also a warming plate to keep your coffee warm? Once that feature was completed we decided to take things to the next level. We added an edible ink jet printer that provided a truly over the top touch. The build was completed with lots of head-scratching and weekend work. It was worth it. We’re having trouble keeping beans on hand and our engineers are working through the night.

We are not in the business of making these machines commercially. This is the only machine of its kind and it’ll be living right here in our Seattle headquarters. We created it to show off the power of our cloud texting technology. Simply put, our service allows you to send and receive text messages from your computer using your main mobile number. It’s very simple…building Textspresso was not.

If you have an Android powered smartphone you can go to zipwhip.com now to download our apps and start utilizing our technology. As for the Textspresso, if you’re interested in making one of your own we’ll be open sourcing all of the code and build plans in the near future. Just be sure to send us some video of your creation! Until then you’ll have to stick with those over-priced Americanos from Starbucks.

We just made human baristas old school.

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Seattle Coffee Gear Loves Zipwhip’s Textspresso

 

We had a lot of fun last Wednesday when Kat, Gayle, and Allison from Seattle Coffee Gear stopped by the Zipwhip office. They came over to shoot some video of our Textspresso machine in action for their blog. By using a one shot video technique we had plenty of time to joke around and have fun. Their engaging personalities and vast knowledge of everything associated with coffee culture make it easy to understand why their videos have amassed more than 5 million YouTube views. They are coffee superstars.

When the video was shot we weren’t quite done calibrating the machine. It’s now completely dialed in and operational. The printer was by far the most challenging piece of the puzzle in case you were wondering. A few tears may have been shed. When we release our our own video you’ll be able to see it in action so check back soon. Until then you can sign up for our service at zipwhip.com. And don’t forget that we’ll be open sourcing all of our build plans for this machine in a future post if you’re feeling motivated.

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Textspresso Mania Illustrates Power of Cloud Texting

 

The above video is an unedited look at KOMO’s Molly Shen interviewing our own John Lauer.

Things might never be the same in the Zipwhip offices again. Our Textspresso machine has caught the attention of coffee drinkers everywhere. This past Monday we brought the first ever text-enabled espresso machine into our office. For the entire afternoon and evening the machine was pieced together. The following day it took some last minute programming and a touch of manual labor (that’s right, manual labor at a tech company) to get the machine operational and shined up for an afternoon visit from GeekWire’s John Cook.

Just before John arrived we got the machine grinding beans and pouring high octane java via text message. John ended up staying for several hours. His non-stop energy made him a lot of fun to be around. As the co-founder of GeekWire, the source for tech news in the Seattle area, it’s very obvious he loves what he does. After a full demo of the Textspresso machine he took in a demonstration of our cloud-texting service. His article on our geeky creation went live on Thursday morning around 10:00 a.m. After that things got a little nutty.

By Friday morning the story was picking up steam. Our one-of-a-kind machine was featured on NBC’s bay area online affiliate and engadget. That’s when Seattle’s own KOMO News came calling. They interviewed John Lauer for a 2:30 KOMO News Radio 97.7 spot and featured the Textspresso coverage as a lead-in story for the evening news with Molly Shen. The video of that segment can be seen here. Since then #textspresso has gone global on twitter and we’re left scratching our heads as to what people are saying about our company from across the world.

We’ll have our own video featuring Textspresso early next week on this blog. We can’t wait to show you how gorgeous and unique this thing is. Until then we have a friendly reminder; We don’t sell Textspresso machines. We are a cloud texting company. That means you can text-message seamlessly across all of your devices from your main mobile number. If you have an Android powered phone, go to the Zipwhip homepage to download our free service today.

“I think this is the coolest invention in terms of geek culture and coffee culture colliding. It’s awesome.” – John Cook

Manual Control of a Servo on the Arduino for the Zipwhip TextSpresso Machine


Control a servo without using the Arduino servo library.

The Arduino has a great servo library, but we found while making our TextSpresso machine that the servo library wouldn’t play nice with our stepper motors. We happily connected our stepper motors up to pins 2 through 9 because we were using a stepper motor shield. Then we connected the servos to much higher pin numbers like 26 and 27. To our dismay whenever we sent commands to the steppers, it would cause massive gyrations on the servos.

This had us investigate what was going on and to do that we had to dig under the covers of the servo library. Not many newbies know about the timer capabilities of the Arduino. The servo library hides us from the gory details. Well, it turns out that the servo library relies on a timer callback to get the precision control of the servos. This callback means the Arduino can’t be processing any other code at the exact moment the callback occurs. If the Arduino is busy, then all hell breaks lose on the exact timing of pulses being sent to the servo.

Servos expect a 20 millisecond (ms) pulse. To set the servo at 0 degrees, you send it a high voltage for the 1st ms of the 20 ms pulse. To set the servo at 180 degrees, you send it a high voltage for the 1st 2 ms of the 20 ms pulse. Pretty easy actually. Anywhere in between 1.0 ms and and 2.0 ms gives you different degrees between 0 and 180.

We wrote the sample code below to help you manually control your servo. It just takes a millisecond value and sends it to the servo and then pauses for the remainder of the pulse. I’m actually not sure why the Arduino IDE doesn’t give a manual example like this because it’s so easy to do. We couldn’t find any sample code on the Internet either for “manual servo control on the Arduino”. We hope you find this helpful.

// Manual servo control 
// Copyright 2012 by Zipwhip. 
// You are free to use and modify this code in your own software.

#define SERVO_PIN         39  // Any pin on the Arduino or Mega will work.

void setup()
{
  pinMode(SERVO_PIN, OUTPUT);

}

int lenMicroSecondsOfPeriod = 20 * 1000; // 20 milliseconds (ms)
int lenMicroSecondsOfPulse = 1.8 * 1000; // 1.0 ms is 0 degrees

void loop()
{

 // Servos work by sending a 20 ms pulse.  
 // 1.0 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 0 degree position
 // 1.5 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 90 degree position 
 // 2.0 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 180 degree position 
 // Turn voltage high to start the period and pulse
 digitalWrite(SERVO_PIN, HIGH);

 // Delay for the length of the pulse
 delayMicroseconds(lenMicroSecondsOfPulse);

 // Turn the voltage low for the remainder of the pulse
 digitalWrite(SERVO_PIN, LOW);

 // Delay this loop for the remainder of the period so we don't
 // send the next signal too soon or too late
 delayMicroseconds(lenMicroSecondsOfPeriod - lenMicroSecondsOfPulse); 

}

Manually Sweeping the Servo from 0 to 180 Degrees

Taking the example above further and trying to mimic the Arduino sample sweep code for a servo we produced the test code below. This let us fully test our manual control of the servo. We found that for our HiTec HS-422 servo that the 0 degree position was at about a 0.5 ms pulse and that the full 180 degrees was around a 2.2 ms pulse. You may find something different for your servo but you can adjust the control variables in the code below until you’re happy.

We also found that a pulse length of about 25 ms worked better for our servo. The standard is 20 ms so I’m not surprised we found something a bit longer than the expected pulse worked better. When we went shorter on the pulse like 18 ms we found the servo acted really weird. That’s probably because the voltage was getting applied prior to the servo finishing it’s measurements and that would throw off pulse lengths overall.

// Manually Sweeping the Servo from 0 to 180 Degrees
// Copyright 2012 by Zipwhip.
// You are free to use and modify this code in your own software.

#define SERVO_PIN         39  // 26 or 39. Any pin on the Arduino or Mega will work.

int lenMicroSecondsOfPeriod = 25 * 1000;       // 25 milliseconds (ms). found much better smoothness at 25, not 20 ms.
int lenMicroSecondsOfPulse = 0;                // used in the while loop below
int lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStart = 0.5 * 1000;  // 0 degrees
int lenMicroSecondsOfPulseEnd = 2.2 * 1000;    // 180 degrees
int lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep = 0.01 * 1000;   // .1 millisecond. That's 200 increments b/w 1.0 and 2.0

void setup()
{
  pinMode(SERVO_PIN, OUTPUT);

  // Setup our start point for our main loop
  lenMicroSecondsOfPulse = lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStart + lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep;

}

void loop()
{

 // Servos work by sending a 20 ms pulse.
 // 1.0 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 0 degree position
 // 1.5 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 90 degree position
 // 2.0 ms at the start of the pulse will turn the servo to the 180 degree position

 // Do a while loop starting at our start pulse and incrementing each time thru the loop
 // Stop when we reach our final end point
 while (lenMicroSecondsOfPulse = lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStart)
 {
   // Turn voltage high to start the period and pulse
   digitalWrite(SERVO_PIN, HIGH);

   // Delay for the length of the pulse
   delayMicroseconds(lenMicroSecondsOfPulse);

   // Turn the voltage low for the remainder of the pulse
   digitalWrite(SERVO_PIN, LOW);

   // Delay this loop for the remainder of the period so we don't
   // send the next signal too soon or too late
   delayMicroseconds(lenMicroSecondsOfPeriod - lenMicroSecondsOfPulse); 

   // Increment our pulse
   lenMicroSecondsOfPulse += lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep;

 }

 // Now reverse the step so we go in the opposite direction
 lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep = lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep * -1;
 lenMicroSecondsOfPulse += lenMicroSecondsOfPulseStep;

 // delay for a few seconds and do it all again
 delay(2 * 1000);

}

U.S. Cellular Launches Web To Text Powered By Zipwhip

 

 

We’re very excited to announce our new partnership with U.S. Cellular. This partnership allows all U.S. Cellular customers access to a co-branded version of Zipwhip’s web texting portal. The portal is accessible from the U.S. Cellular website or by going directly to uscellular.com/webtotext. Customers can now send text messages to friends and family on all major U.S. mobile networks.  More of the benefits and details are available in a press release that went out yesterday.

As you watch this video you’ll notice how incredibly fast and easy it is to send a text from you computer–that’s the beauty of U.S. Cellular Web To Text. Cristy Burgan, our VP of Sales, introduces the video. She played a big role in bringing this partnership to life, so it was very fitting to include her in this blog. Congrats to her and the rest of the Zipwhip and U.S. Cellular team members. This is another way that cloud texting is making communication better.

Zipwhip Commercial

 

 

This is our official direct to consumer video. It was created with the help of WINTR. Our goal was to produce a video that was both informative and fun. We hope it also shows that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. At Zipwhip we successfully mix hard work with play. Sometimes that’s not as easy as you might think. Come join us as we bring cloud texting everywhere.

Zipwhip Registration Process

 

 

We thought it was important to demonstrate the Zipwhip registration process. This video covers it all. We know that nobody likes wasting their time with lengthy sign-ups. That’s why ours is so simple. Like the rest of our services we hope you find it easy and uncomplicated.

After watching this video you should be whipping out text messages in no time. It’s cloud texting, pure and simple.

 

Zipwhip Desktop App Installation (PC)

 

 

For today’s blog we take you through the installation process for our desktop application (PC). Towards the end of the video you’ll get to see cloud texting in action. Software developer Greg Mace is the movie star for the day, while social media manager Kelsey Klevenberg took care of the filming and voice work. If you have any questions about our service please send us an email to info@zipwhip.com. We are also active on facebook (facebook.com/zipwhip), and twitter (@zipwhipinc). Thanks for watching and we hope to hear from you soon.

Zipwhip Boss Man Comes Home

 

 

Last Friday we finally got to pick up Boss Man from Metrix: Create Space. He turned out absolutely perfect and we couldn’t be happier with the finished product. Boss Man and two other characters (Androgyny Woman and Library Girl) were created by WINTR for our consumer launch video this past December. We got such a kick out of the characters that we decided to bring them to life. Boss Man is our favorite character, thanks in large part to his gruff demeanor and rad haircut. His mustache is nothing to scoff at either. In order to stay in his good graces we decided that he should be the first one up. Right now he’s mean mugging the entire office and signing pink slips. We hope to have the rest of the characters alongside him soon.

To really attach these characters to the Zipwhip brand we did something unique. Instead of using something boring and standard, we implemented these characters as our stock avatar. Thanks for being a part of this creative process. Let us know what you think of the finished product. We think it’s been well worth the wait.

Boss Man says to get back to work. Turns out he needs you to come in this Saturday, too.

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