Hack24

February 2026: The Platform Edition

Posted on by burf2000

Hello and welcome to another Burf Update. I have been super busy trying to get the first version of The Platform out to see if the idea has legs. Hopefully by next month I should know if it does.

The Platform
Formerly known as Burf Platform—a name that didn’t make much sense—the Platform is a robotics system designed to make it easy for users to teleoperate their robots. It is launching with ROS 2 support and also supports a range of other robots, including the Sanbot Elf, Double 2, and even the InMoov humanoid robot.

The goal is to contribute something meaningful to the field of robotics. There are plans to expand support to additional robot types, with a particular focus on helping hobbyists, supporting drones, and enabling data collection. A fully functional API is already available.

Burf Robotics
The goal is to continue to build the brand and client base. I have already had some positive talks with other robotics companies this month. I still have the lust to build my own robot, however The Platform is my current focus.

ROS2
I am continuously using ROS 2; however I need some focus time on expanding my knowledge. I have been focused on The Platform, and that needed limited ROS 2 functionality. I need to get back to the Udemy courses that I had started a while back.

I have started work on a PiCar ROS 2 driver (Ackermann-steering), and I have updated my TurtleBot2 to ROS 2, and it is now running a Jetson Nano instead of the Jetson TK1. I also purchased a VIAM robotic rover to try out.

Brilliant
Continuing daily and at 443 days now. Like ROS 2, I need to take myself out of my comfort zone.

Hack24
A blast from the past, Hack24 was one of my favorite game projects that I built over 10 years ago. Well, I decided to chuck the old Objective-C OpenGL code base at Claude and see if it could rewrite it in Swift using SceneKit, and I have to say, it did a good job. The server has been rewritten in Swift Vapor, as I need to focus on learning Swift again. I hope to release it pretty soon as a bit of fun.

Meta Quest Tracking
I have also started working on a Meta Quest 3 app to track body movement. This is to replace the Apple Vision Pro demo I had controlling the Inmoov Humanoid Robot, as I do not have access to the AVP anymore.

InMoov Humanoid Robot
I did have a brief play with one of my InMoov’s recently. The SD card in one of the Raspberry Pi’s had died, so I fixed that and ordered it a sound card and mic. I hope to use this with the tracking app very soon

Plan for 2026
The last month has been super busy, so yet again I find myself running before I have properly thought about the year’s goals. However, let’s see if there is any progress from last month.

  • Strengthen Burf Robotics and its offerings
    Target: Gain at least one additional customer. (Progressing)
  • Launch Burf Platform as an MVP
    Target: Deliver an MVP with user management, robot management, and support for a range of robot platforms. (Done)
  • Continue learning ROS2
    Target: Deepen my understanding of Nav2, MoveIt, and integrating AI with ROS2. (Needs more progress)
  • Inmoov Robots
    Target: Focus more on interactive demonstrations rather than building additional robots. I would still like to develop a mobile InMoov platform. (Progressing)
  • Continue Brilliant learning
  • Build my own robot product
    I am not fully committed to this yet; however, I did begin building my own robotic arm. Developing my own robot could be a valuable learning experience, particularly by designing and implementing the ROS2 drivers around custom hardware. This would focus on a robotic system with arms rather than a mobile platform. (Needs refining)

Hopefully, next month’s edition, I will actually finish formalising a plan.

Lets kick it off again!

Posted on by burf2000

So one of the only plus points of not getting any sleep due to the effects of the extreme diet for this bodybuilding show is insomnia, my mind gets very creative and forces me to start kicking off new ideas, projects, missions et!

So, if you saw my last post, I said I was gonna finish Hack24, fix Burf.co and sort the garage!   So far, Burf.co is back up, but about to completely change, the garage is nearly finished being geared up as a robotics lab and Hack24 has not moved.  I do want to finish hack24 but I don’t want to rush it and I want to harness my energy on some crazy robotics ideas while my brain still works 🙂

So the plan v2!  Warning it’s a little bonkers, even for me!

Build a backend set of machine learning API’s that Burf.co, mobile devices, and my robots use to send and retrieve data.  The idea is I could send it a question, a command or an image and it does some magic and responds.

  • So for mobile devices, they would send images and text to speech, it would return ImageNet classification or answers to questions.
  • Burf.co would become more of a knowledge base system using NLP to feed into other systems.
  • There would also be a public facing chatbot which would hopefully learn off of all of this.  Planning a system POC using AIML to test the waters
  • This would all somehow be also brought together to add some usefulness to my future robotics projects (image classification, knowledge base, etc)

I brought some odd bits of hardware, upgraded the Burf.co server, brought some domains, and started rewriting Burf.co in Java.  I decided I want to try and use a common language and randomly Java seemed the best fit (client, server, mobile etc)

It’s gonna be a slow progress but I think its gonna be exciting.

Let’s kick it all off!

Posted on by burf2000

Sorry for the last few months there has been little update. I decided that before I got too old I should enter a bodybuilding contest, honestly seemed like a good idea at the time. Well it’s been the hardest 3 months of my life to be honest. First off it isn’t the cheapest thing to do (I have spent £500 on chicken alone), you have to be super disciplined (up at 5, 1 hour cardio, training even if ill), you become very moody, tired and even get insomnia (writing this at 3am) because your constantly hungry! However with less than 2 weeks to go, I am still chuffed I decided to do it. On a positive side, because you don’t sleep as much, your brain seems to be come very creative!!!

So what’s the plan Batman?

So, I have many plans, lots of ideas and have been researching lots of stuff but I need to do some house keeping first!

1) Release a v1 of Hack24 cross platform to prove the framework works.

2) Fix Burf.co Search Engine because I turned it off.

3) Finish the garage so that large projects are possible 🙂

All of the above are in progress and I hope to have them done very soon. Then it is full speed ahead for some cool robotics / machine learning project that I will discuss in my next post 🙂

We have Music, Sound, UI but no Dependency Injection

Posted on by burf2000

So another night coding Hack24 fueled by sugar and Redbull (well cheapo versions). I wanted to try and get Dagger2 working on my project so I could do Dependency Injection which is something I am interested in learning.   I timed boxed it to 1 hour and failed 🙁 This was due mainly to not understanding how it works with Kotlin. This project has a lot of moving parts to make my life more difficult, if it was a straight forward Android project, life would be fairly simple, however, it uses the LibGDX game engine which is cross-platform and normally in Java, and I am writing it in Kotlin. There seems to be not a single example anywhere of doing these 2 things together. My issue at the moment is with Gradle and the mass of gradle.build files that LibGDX has.

On the positive side, I did add a sound manager that does sound effects and music (quick win), I skinned the buttons, added the Hack24 logo and started building the factory methods to build the buildings in the game!

My focus is to build a minimal viable product of Hack24 before Christmas and release it on a single platform (Probably Android) as a soft launch.

Main areas I need to look at still:

  • Networking and the server side
  • UI for hacking a building
  • The player logon model, e.g Apple Game Center, Google Play etc

Hack24 V2 started :)

Posted on by burf2000

So, it may end up being called something else but I have now started writing a new (well kinda) game.  The last couple of weeks I have been bug fixing and improving the LibGDX framework / demo app that I made a few years ago.  Code can be found here: https://github.com/burf2000/BurfEngine

Yes, it has a terrible name!  Anyway it was my attempt at a simple game like Minecraft where you can place and remove cubes.  I added things like chunking, gravity, and culling.  It also has a database and network layer, custom collision code and works on iOS, Android, and Desktop.  It has been converted to Kotlin, which I am really liking 🙂

Now, after a few long nights of fixing, that code is being parked and anyone can use it!  I now plan to rip it apart and use the best bits to form the engine for Hack24 (v2).  Made aim is to make a 3D game that has the same look and feel as Hack24 that’s cross-platform and easy to develop further.

I will focus on a MVP first, which should not take too long, I will try and rewrite the server in NodeJS (Well KotlinJS).

So why am I doing this?  A few reasons:

I really liked Hack24 but it had some performance issues and really needs rewriting to use OpenGL VBO / VAO.  It also makes sense to make it cross-platform while I am at it.  I don’t fancy doing it in Unity and really want to learn Kotlin for work (which I can for LibGDX).  It would be nice if people enjoy playing it too, so I hope to make it bigger with more content 🙂

Watch this space!

 

 

New version of Hack24 submitted!

Posted on by burf2000

I May of just solved a programming issue that’s been bugging me for many months. The only way I thought I could get round it was a complete rewrite of the 3D engine for Hack24. However it seems you can get around the massive performance with Hack24 by having multiple threads. Yes seems obvious however this is OpenGL world and that is completely different, the items have to created in the main context!

The fix worked, so a new version of Hack24 has been submitted (with other bug fixes!)

Hack24 2.0 out now!

Posted on by burf2000

So, finally I got some time to update Hack24, my first ever MMO for iOS.  2.0 is not as big upgraded as I hoped but added some more fun to the game.

  • You can now customise the colour and building type
  • You can now message online players
  • NPC have been introduced to add more fun
  • Bug fixes
  • Game balancing
  • iOS8 fixes

Next, I plan to improve performance, the game keeps getting new users, and so development will continue

You can get it free from iTunes

Hack24 : Whats coming next?

Posted on by burf2000

So Hack24 has seen some downloads, and some regular players. 1.01 was a fast update to fix a few issues however 1.02 (which may become 1.1) will hopefully see quite a few improvements.

New stuff coming (hopefully) soon

  • Steal player buildings (done)
  • Rob player item (master key for players basically) (done)
  • Claim all money for buildings (would save a lot of time)
  • Scan renamed to probe. (done)
  • New scan item to list online players
  • Some in game help to guide you on your way (done in a basic way)
  • Avatar colour changes based on level / rank?
  • APN’s (may not make 1.02)
  • Some server securities (done)
  • More game levels (may not make 1.02)
  • Joystick improvements (done)

Near Future:

  • In game messaging
  • Customise buildings
  • Heads up display of near users  (may not make 1.02)

Don’t do server updates in your lunch break!

Posted on by burf2000

I decided to have a rest today as I have been training for a marathon and a few other things.  I thought this lunch break I would do some important fixes to Hack24 server.

DON’T do this, lunch breaks and servers do not mix.  

I assumed my fix would sort out the issues, it did, but it brought on a whole load of more because I cleared out some corrupted records and forgot the client side would have a cache that now does not match the server side.  Oh boy what a mess.

Backup, nope because I was rushing as it was my lunch break!

Luckily, one of my friends managed to do some database magic.  He will receive a burger on me .

So again, don’t do server upgrades at lunch time, it ruins your day when it goes wrong!