Dienhart.com

Thank you for the excellent introduction Mr. Toastmaster.

Mr. Toastmaster, Fellow members and guests, I am here to talk about the history of Daboo. The name Daboo is not a new one, it originated back in the forties by a sister that could not pronounce her brother’s name. His name was David. In case anyone was wondering how I still look so young after all of these years, that David was not me. The David I am speaking of was named David Hand, he was a friend of my parents. He started calling me Daboo from the beginning, so naturally, it stuck. I’ve used it as my signature on drawings, and typically associate the name with my projects such as Daboo Project Manager, which is a Task/Phase tracking application that I developed. I like to create things. I do a lot of this at work, but I get my real thrills out of what I create at home in my spare time.

• While in the Army, although my official job was “Tactical Communications Specialist”, I learned how to repair cables, and do minor repairs on our hardware out of necessity, as our training exercises would end before get things back that were sent out for repair. For a short time while stationed at Camp Carrol in Korea, I was known as McGyver. It was during my time in the military that I decided that I wanted to go into Electronic Engineering. After my tour was up and I got back to the civilian way of life, I enrolled in ITT Tech and with the support of my wife, pursued my newfound passion. It was during this time that my passion for software development was rekindled. I had actually done Basic programming on the Commodore VIC 20 and Commodore 64 in my earlier years, but it wasn’t until we took a few development courses, that I remembered how much fun it could be. Since then, I’ve teetered between the hardware and software realms.
• IPhone application.
   I landed my first real iPhone application while at a Tinker conference that was put on by Collexion last year. As soon as I got out of my car, I felt totally welcome and at home with like minds. I met up with a team that was frantically working on building a lego mindstorms robot. As it turns out a team bowed out of the completion at the last minute. We became fast friends so I worked with them to quickly build and program a line following robot. We finally got it completed after about 3 hours and didn't place, but considering how quickly we pulled it together, we did pretty well. The only issue we had was finding the line again if the robot veered off course. It would actually find the line and move in the opposite direction, get to the start, and do it all over again. With a little more time, I sure we could have shored up the logic, but it was all in good fun, so no worries. One of the guys I met here needed some circuit design and iPhone development done for his startup. This led to my first complete iPhone application. I had been tinkering with writing a jigsaw puzzle application for the iPhone, so he asked if I could develop a prototype for him. I developed the application in 12 hours to split manipulate pictures take with the iPhone camera into various images for further analysis. I worked with him to take to the next step, assisting with designing hardware to interface with the iPhone and developing an app to communicate with the hardware and take multiple pictures in succession using the camera for more detailed image analysis.
• Solar Panel
   This leads me to my most recent project. I’ve been interested in having a battery-powered car since I first saw one of the Ugly wedge looking ones as a kid in the 80’s. Over the years, I researched and thought about building a windmill or solar array to power my house or charge batteries for a car. I’ve pondered converting my 66 Beetle to electric, but put it as it is a rather large and project that will require a lot of up-front planning to ensure it is successful and stays on budget. A few weeks back, I decided it was time to start designing and building a solar panel to work through some of the learning curves. I assembled a plan and Bill of Materials and got everything ordered last week and my son and I started working on the enclosure just last weekend. I even managed to break my first solar cell as I took it out of the box. Thank goodness many of the articles I read about building your own solar panel warned of their fragility, and recommended ordering extras, so I did. I’m down to 4 extra’s and haven’t even started soldering yet. I hope that I have enough. I made a few posts regarding my project on facebook and a friend called me up to find out more about what I was doing. This guy is really cool and built his own original Star Trek Captains chair for his office. He is actually working on an alternate energy segment for KET and may be interested in getting a hobbyist perspective on alternate energy, so he came over on Saturday to see my progress and talk about it. We’ll see what happens with that. At my current pace, I expect to have my panel up and charging a battery in the next 2-3 weeks. 

In closing, I plan to continue down the path of tinkering and hope that some of my work in solar and alternate energy studies can be beneficial and helpful, especially since it’s been churning beneath the surface for so long. I’m Daboo, and that’s my story. Thank You, and I’ll turn it back over to you now Mr. Toastmaster.

Speech given 4/4/11 at Bluegrass Toastmasters club meeting.