If you’re looking for a way to fix the flickering or flashing LCD display on your Fitbit Ultra, I’ve got a few tips to help you on your way. This post is basically broken into three parts – how to revive a Fitbit Ultra, my experiences with Fitbit’s support, and an update about me.
How to Fix the Fitbit Ultra LCD Display Flashing “FITBIT 4.14”
I bought my Fitbit Ultra about 15 months ago and misplaced it about six months ago, only finding it again on Wednesday. The device was entirely unresponsive, so I plugged it into the USB charging base overnight. The next morning it would flicker and flash the LCD display saying only “FITBIT 4.14”. Here’s what I did:
Found Fitbit Ultra, plugged into USB base overnight. The result was the LCD display flickered and flashed only “FITBIT 4.14”.
Unplugged Fitbit, pressed the button, and discovered the only thing it would do is flicker “FITBIT 4.14”.
I plugged it back into the USB base, pressed the button, and it still flickered the same message.
With the Fitbit connected to the USB base, I turned the base upside down and inserted the end of a paperclip into the recessed reset button. The Fitbit still flickered the same message.
I let the Fitbit remain connected to the USB base for another entire day. At the end of that day I discovered that I could cycle through the display options – but the time on the Fitbit was entirely wrong.
I re-downloaded the Fitbit Ultra software, re-installed it, re-logged into the software, and let it sync with the Fitbit. After a few minutes of this, the Fitbit was back to life!
Experiences with Fitbit Support
In trying to revive my Fitbit, the first thing I tried was searching the Fitbit website and support forums, without success. After that I reached out to Fitbit’s support team explaining I tried the basics.1 The response from Fitbit’s support was that their records reflected my Fitbit was out of warranty and that they were making a “a one-time offer, for one (1) Fitbit One Tracker” for $49. I found this response incredibly disappointing. I would have appreciated something, even a token effort at helping me to fix my Fitbit instead of an upsale. I realize they’ve got a business to run, but offering “one-time offers” for upsales it not a suitable substitute for actual product support. While I would assume a warranty would cover a product’s functions, I wouldn’t have expected that they would abandon support after the warranty period.
Personal Update
A little over a year ago I bought a Fitbit Ultra to help me track steps, activity, etc towards my ambition to lose weight and be more active. While I tried to introduce more activity and made a point of checking out the steps I had logged, using an online food diary called FitDay.com was easily the mosthelpfulthingforme.
Last year was very successful, overall. From 222.5 pounds in January 2013 I dropped to a low of 193.0 in June. Since that time I’ve slowly gained a some weight – back to 203.5 now. The most important things I did to lose weight were to eat something for breakfast, walk a little more, and eat less. I tried to cut out or cut back on potatoes, bread, pasta, and rice and increase eggs, cheese, yogurt, protein, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and drink more water.
In the months since June, I haven’t been walking as much, have been eating more delicious pizza, sandwiches, and burritos. I want to feel a little remorseful about this, but I just can’t. :)
This is not how chicken should be served – shaped to look like a human child
This last year the office Christmas party was held at Ruth’s Chris where I was served an unappetizing and inedible dish.1
Setting aside the profound service issues and the presentation, the dish was just not edible. Now, I like cheese – I even like a lot of cheese. But, there was so much cheese inside and underneath this piece of chicken that I was just not able to scrape enough of it off to be able to eat it without coating my entire mouth and tongue. I only managed to eat a few bites before having to give up entirely.
If the meal itself was inedible, the presentation was actually worse. The dish looks like a little girl with pigtails was scalped, had her head was stuffed with cheese, and baked until golden brown. Below is an animated GIF of what the dish looked like to me.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine had a “bad movie night” where he was showing the film1 “Sharknado.” Inspired by the theme for the party, I decided I had to wear a shark hat for the event. After making my hat, my daughter requested a monkey hat. This was not a request I could refuse.
I took pictures of the process to show you how you can make your own. I haven’t ever tried to make paper mache hats before, so this was not only a lot of fun – but a great learning experience. While I own the really great paper mache monster books by Dan Reeder, I only used them for inspiration and tried out a few new things on my own.
Even though I used this process to make hats, the directions here could easily be adapted to making anything out of paper mache.
Step 1: Gather Materials and Tools
All the things you need to make your own awesome paper mache anything
Here’s what you need to get started:
Cardboard Boxes. Cardboard forms the “skeleton” of the structure. It’s cheap, ubiquitous, sturdy, and easy to cut and form.
Masking Tape. Once the cardboard has been cut, liberal use of masking tape will keep your creation together until it can be covered with paper mache.
Scissors and Utility Knife. Scissors can be very helpful in cutting cardboard or paper. While scissors can be helpful, and appropriate for kids, I find a utility knife gets the job done faster.
Measuring Tape. If you’re not making a hat (or other apparel or armor) you won’t need this. But it is helpful when making measurements. ((In a pinch, you could just use a piece of yarn or string to mark lengths, and then put the yarn on the cardboard for reference.))
Plastic Wrap. Whether you’re working with gluey paper or paint, the process is messy. I would recommend covering the work surface with plastic wrap. I happened to have a really large plastic bag, which I taped directly to the table.
Glue. I just used a big bottle of Elmer’s white glue from the hardware store, but I’m pretty sure wood glue would have worked as well, if not better. It’s also more versatile and sturdy.
Plastic Tray. The next time you get take-out or have a plastic liner from inside some packaging, save it. It makes a great wide tray for mixing water and glue or when your project is dry, it is also great for mixing paints.
Paper Grocery Bags. The “twist” with this process is that I used torn up grocery bags, rather than the traditional newspaper. It turned out this was a really good idea for a number of reasons. Paper bags are a cheap and plentiful material. When thoroughly wet strips of paper bags are easy to place, mold and shape. However, the most important features of paper bags is that they hold glue and water really well and then dry quickly into a sturdy hard shell. In fact, they form such a sturdy surface that I only had to do a single layer of paper mache around the entire hat. This means that you can quickly put down a single layer of paper bag strips all over your cardboard form, wait a few hours for it to dry, and then get to work finishing the project.
Paper or Newspaper. While grocery bags work really well to cover your cardboard form, they can leave some small gaps where they overlap. When I found gaps in the project, I simply used a few thin strips of the newsprint style paper to cover the holes and smooth out spots on the rough paper bag layer.
Cup of Water and Paintbrushes. An old mug is best and pile of cheap dollar store brushes is probably fine.
Paints. I prefer acrylic paints. They are cheap, can be diluted with water, easy to mix, they stay wet long enough for you to blend, but not so long that you have to wait days for it to dry. They also clean up well with water.
Step 2: Create Cardboard Form
Process for creating awesome hat
The process I used to create the cardboard forms for the hats was pretty quick and easy. I measured the circumference of my daughter’s head and then the distance from her ears to the top of her head. Using these measurements, I cut out a strip of cardboard as tall as the distance from her ears to the top of her head and as wide as the circumference of her head – with a little extra to allow for overlap.
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In the pictures above you can see the strip of cardboard cut out and then taped into a cylinder with the masking tape.
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Cut strips into the cardboard cylinder, fold them down, and add enough masking tape to mold it into a hat-shape.
Step 3: Add Embellishments
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A paper mache hat is way more interesting with some kind of embellishment, like ears, shark fins, wings, or whatever else. Here I cut ear shapes out of cardboard, curved them slightly, taped them to hold the curve, and then taped them to the hat. When I made the shark hat, I cut a long slit into the hat through the tape and inserted the shark fin through the underside of the hat. Don’t be afraid to use a lot of tape.
Step 4: Prepare the Work Surface, Paper Strips, and Glue Mixture
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Cover the work surface with plastic sheeting. I used a big plastic bag from a helium balloon order from my daughter’s birthday. However, a big garbage bag or plastic wrap would also work well. Paper bags from the grocery store work really well – but there are too thick in places. Tear off the handles and pull the paper bag apart at the seams. You’ll probably need to discard some of the sections where the the paper bag is too thick to use.
Add some glue (I used about a tablespoon) and warm water (about a half cup or so) to the plastic pan. It should look like milk or heavy cream once you’ve mixed it up.
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Completely soak the strips of paper bag in the glue mixture. They should be completely soaked all the way through until they’re nearly translucent. Unlike paper mache with thin pieces of newspaper, you won’t need to put layers and layers of paper on the form – just one layer where the pieces overlap a little should work fine. The excess glue from the strips of paper will soak into the cardboard and help make the entire structure sturdy.
Step 5: Set Model to Dry, Patch Holes with Paper
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Since the cardboard helps soak up the water, the entire structure should dry relatively quickly. I put the shark hat outside in the sun for a few hours and it was ready for painting. Once the hat is dry (or dry enough), you’ll probably notice some holes and gaps from the paper bag strips. Tear up some newsprint paper, soak those in the gluey mixture, and cover and smooth out any defects. Once these pieces dry, the project will be ready to paint!
Step 6: Paint to Suit
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The great thing about acrylic paints is that they are so easy to work with. They dry really quickly, so you can paint one side of the model, work on the other side, and then come back to the first side to add details. In any case, just paint the project to suit and you’re done!
Each hat went together really quickly. I put the cardboard form together in about 15 minutes, covered it with the gluey paper bag strips over maybe 30 minutes, let it dry for several hours, and then paint it over the course of maybe an hour.
If you make your own paper mache hat (or other sculpture), let me know in the comments!
I’ve been blogging on this site since 11/2009 – almost 4-1/2 years.1 In that time I’ve published just over 1,000 posts23 and I’ve got more than 200 just sitting around in draft form. Those are posts with partially finished ideas – possibly just a title or a link or a sentence. Others are almost entirely done, waiting for a small spark of creativity or maybe just an interesting photograph.
February 2014 was the first month in nearly 4-1/2 months that this site went without a new post. I am a little bummed about that. There were reasons – but reasons for not having done something are just excuses. Thus, instead of giving you an excuse, I will offer up this post as a bald-faced lie. It was “published” on 2/28/2014 at 11:59pm.
Now that my lie is out of the way… I wanted to add a little bit about the post I have/going to publish about working with paper mache. In January and February my daughter was working on a project for her science fair – which involved “The Brain and the Sense of Touch.” As part of the display, she created a paper mache model of the brain so she could point to the different regions and explain what each does. She says her favorite part was applying the strips of paper and then painting it. She enjoyed applying the gluey bits of paper and actually making something. She also enjoyed the painting because she loves painting and colors and being artistic.
I’d say I started noticing a change in the keyword stats reported on my websites about six months or so ago. Instead of seeing all of the keywords and search terms people used to arrive at my websites, most of the search terms were showing up as “Unknown search terms” in my WordPress Jetpack stats plugin and “(not provided)” in Google Analytics.
Apparently this is all due to a number of changes with Google. As Google pushes more people to be logged in or stay logged in to their Google, Gmail, or Google plus accounts, the more their searches will be done over SSL. This has the “side effect” of making their searches opaque to website owners. However, that same data is of course available to Google themselves. I say “side effect” because I’m not so sure this is unintended, rather than one of their actual goals.
Why then do I accuse Google of breaking their social contract? Here I am, an owner of multiple domains who has been running Google Analytics tracking bugs in all of my sites since their various inceptions. The entire point of doing so is that I might be able to better understand the search terms and patterns of people coming to my sites, with an eye towards improving traffic. In exchange literally allowing Google to insert code inside my websites, they were supposed to help with these insights. Insights they are no longer providing.
I’m not so naive as to think Google ever promised or contracted to provide this information to me. I’ve never read their Terms of Service and never plan to. When every piece of software includes click-shrink-wrapped terms of service, it’s impossible read, comprehend, or provide knowing consent to these things. All I can go on here is that I’ve continued to let Google inside my websites – and they’re not giving me the very thing I had been lead to believe would be provided in exchange.
That said, Google Webmaster Tools is still pretty useful.
I love every damn thing about this beautiful post by Rachel aka AverageJaneCrafter.12 I love how she drew inspiration from John Grunsfeld (one of her favorite astronauts), a sweet bit of paperclip art, her first cross-stitch design, and how a quote from that astronaut brought it all together into a simple and elegant statement and artwork. Her cross-stitch just looks as if all the elements were specifically engineered to one day come together in this one place, for this one purpose.
If you didn’t click through to Rachel’s post, the quote “One screw at a time” refers to how Grunsfeld would go on space walks to repair the Hubble which involved managing more than 100 screws. To deal with the magnitude of the task, he just focused his mind, not on how many he had finished or had to go, but on “one screw at a time.”
If this man can handle tasks hundreds of miles from the earth while traveling thousands of miles an hour on a mission that probably cost billions, I’m sure as hell going to kick the crap out of today.
I’ve been investigating the possibility of trying to make a business out of making.1 This got me thinking about the best series and the best single post about making money out of making. I got a lot out of these posts and I hope you will too:
Ten Rules for Maker Businesses – Rule #1 Make a Profit. Chris Anderson, author, entrepreneur, and named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, has probably written the best “Ten Rules” list for a maker who is considering selling stuff. I’d rather have this list in my back pocket than an MBA any day.2 If you ever think about selling anything you’ve made, you should read every one of these posts:
The Slowest $380 I’ll Ever Make. This is the tale of a man with a dream – a dream of making and selling electronic LED QR Code clocks. Michael Ciuffo covers the money he made, lost, and made in painfully excruciating detail – with more than a little levity. This is a cautionary tale for anyone looking to sell something awesome in their spare time – and some of the dangers hidden in success.
Lately I’ve been working on drawing robots more and more. My latest creation is an itty bitty Tiny CNC drawing robot. I’ve already published the files and Arduino sketch on Thingiverse, but you’ll find all of the instructions over on my PlotterBot blog. While this site is about 3D printing and random nonsense, I’ve tried to only post stuff directly related to drawing robots over on this new website.
If drawing robots are your cup of tea, then please take a minute and check out my other side. :)
This weekend we went to the The Tech Museum of Innovation, aka “The Tech,” in San Jose.1 We had a great time and saw a lot of amazing things. (Also, a lot of people greeted me as “Bender!” because I was wearing the Bender hat my wife knit for me.)
One of the coolest things we saw was an interactive floor projection display entitled simply “Social Circles.” A projector in the ceiling created a white rectangle on the floor – with a multicolored border. When you step onto the display, you have to cross through a colored bar along the border. Once inside the display, your feet are surrounded by a small circle of light – the same color as the bar you passed through. As you walk (or run!), the circle follows you around. When someone else is on the display (with their own circle) and is close to you, your circles will join for a moment into a larger circle of a combined color. As you separate, your circle will retain it’s inner color – but will have a border color that is your original color on one side and the color of the person whose circle you combined with on the other side. As you go along and interact with more people, you can gather more and more colors onto your outer ring.
It was awesome and awesome. Kids were running across, crashing into one another, chasing everyone else, collecting colors, and trying to avoid gaining colors.
This gave me SO many ideas on how to turn this kind of a display into an interactive game/project that I want to learn how to build one of my own. After doing some minor internet research I’ve found a few resources – some a lot more user friendly than others. There are some commercial, some semi-commercial, and some open source ways of creating a floor projection display.
The difficulty with OCV project is that it seems to be geared towards vision in robots, which isn’t really what I was interested in. Rather than giving a robot sight, I’d like to create a way to track and interact with multiple people using, ideally a webcam, and a projector. I’m not even that interested in fine grain detection, so much as tracking the location of people across a display area, and integrating their movements into the scene.
Starting from what I have now, which is a lot of interest and enthusiasm for the project but little knowledge of how to make it happen, it looks like the UbiDisplays system might best suit my needs. This system seems like it incorporates a Kinect to take inputs and then manages all of the interactions through the use of web based logic3 or possibly through some Flash animation. I just don’t know if it is capable of handling multiple sources of input (more than one person). The Po-Motion system is a commercial product that seems like it might also be an interesting way to go – as long as the product allowed the purchaser to create their own custom interactions/games.
All other things being equal, I would prefer to go with an open source solution – but as long as I can create what I want without restrictions, I’m happy to pay for the software.
SO, is this something you know anything about? Do you have any suggestions on where I could start?
Last year was our family’s second time at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire. October in Oakland tends to be a really rainy time – and the last few EBMMF’s are no exception. The rain didn’t seem to dampen the crowds or diminish attendance, but it did make the experience a little more trying. ((Don’t get me wrong – I love Maker Faire, even little ones. But, the EBMMF has been a tough one to love. There are small with tight quarters inside classrooms or open spaces outside – in the rain, there were long lines for the very few food options, and most of the vendors ran out of food really early on))
So, the point behind this post – I learned something really awesome I’ve been looking forward to putting to use. Some ladies, unfortunately I don’t recall who, were teaching people how to fuse plastic bags into a fabric. The basic process was shockingly easy – layered sheets cut from plastic shopping bags are ironed together between protective layers of paper. This one site has a good detailed description of the process with lots of tips and suggestions.
I’d love to make a bag, backpack, project enclosures, package linings, maybe a kite, and/or parachute using this stuff.
