If you are into electronics you should be into Fritzing. It’s a fantastic way to visualise circuits at breadboard level, schematic level and finally on a PCB. I’ve been using it for ages. I’ve just installed it again on my newly built PC and I noticed that this time there’s a proper option to pay. Which I was very happy to do. Software of this quality deserves to be supported.
I’ve been self-isolating now for a couple of days and so I now feel that I have acquired sufficient experience to be able to give out a few tips to you, dear reader. After all, it is only a matter of time before you have to do it too.
My biggest tip so far is to do something that I’ve been doing for a while anyway. When I stopped having a “proper” day job a few years ago I found that it was hard to focus on things that I was working on. So now I have a diary that I fill in every day. Some of the items are under headings for particular projects, but others are just things that I want to keep track of having done. If I have a bunch of things that need to be done I put them on the day as a series of bullet points and then tick them off when complete. I then carry any left overs onto the following day.
I find that this gives a nice structure to what I’m doing and means that I can see what I’ve achieved going forwards. I’m sure there are some good programs for this (what I really want is one that I can use to tag items to make it easy to search for entries on a particular topic) but for now I’m just using a Microsoft Word document. I keep the master copy on OneDrive so that I can update and view it on any platform, including the phone.
I’ve found it very useful in real life too. I don’t have to try and remember when I ordered those tickets or whatnot, I just look up the event in the diary. And of course when historians want to find out just when the great Rob Miles did all his mighty deeds they will have just one place to look…
Looking forwards to playing Animal Crossing on your Nintendo Switch but not looking forward to spending fifty quids to do it?
You can reduce the hit on your wallet a bit by heading over to ShopTo where you can pick up the download for about ten pounds less.
I thought that the Facebook Portal TV was an interesting device when it came out, but at the time I didn’t think that I had a particularly good reason to own one. That changed this week, with the prospect of spending a while unable to meet up with people in person. So I’ve got one.
It works rather well. You clip it to the top of your TV and plug it into your TV and the mains adaptor and away it goes. One real annoyance is that it needs an HDMI cable to connect to the TV but one is not supplied in the box. Facebook are not selling this device cheaply, and to leave out a crucial cable is just annoying penny pinching.
The setup is easy (although the firmware update took ages) and the calling to other Portal owners works smoothly. You can call people via Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. Since the device is made by Facebook (the clue is in the name) I think it is unlikely that they will be adding Skype or Zoom capability in the future. But what there is works well. And there is Amazon Alexa integration too which is a strange inclusion, but works well. There is even a little speaker in the Portal itself so you can hear responses without having to turn your TV on.
The camera will try to find the people in the room and frame the image around them. It is not a particularly high resolution device and when it zooms in the picture can get a little bit blocky. It also has an annoying habit of occasionally heading for interesting wallpaper patterns or book cover that it finds interesting but in general it works very well. Audio is picked up by a bunch of 7 microphones and is quite clear.
There are some very neat Augmented Reality features on show with the “Story Time” applications. These let one party in a call read a story to everyone else with animated graphics and sound. Sometimes the narrator is given a dynamic costume or mask overlay in the story which is both impressive and amusing. There are also a bunch of fun environments that you can overlay on your room and a picture frame mode that you can use to view photos.
As a way of keeping in touch with family it works very well. We’ve had a few calls drop out, but this is not necessarily something we can blame the Portal for.
The biggest problem that I’ve had with it is that it is a very “needy” HDMI device. Plug it into a TV and turn it on and it will automatically tell the TV to connect. This is useful if you want to just switch to an incoming call, but at the end of the conversation it will frequently refuse to give you your TV back. You end up having to manually select the TV input which makes using it a bit more fiddly than it needs to be.
The fact that the device is produced by Facebook is mildly concerning, although I’ve always thought that a faceless multinational corporation with thousands of shareholders might not be entirely on my side anyway. If they can find a way of making commercial use of what happens in my living room then good luck to them. I’ll live with the lack of privacy for now. And later, when we can go and see people in person I might relegate it to the spare room. But for now I think its usefulness outweighs the risk.
If you’re really concerned about your privacy you can cover over the camera with a little shutter and press a button to turn off the microphones.
If you can get one I reckon they are a good buy. Having a call on your TV does really seem to open up a window into the world of the person you are calling. I think the smaller devices are less compelling; if I want a small device to make video calls then I’ll take a look at the Echo Show.
These are the strangest times that I can remember. And I go back a long way. Today we discovered that one of our family was showing some symptoms that meant that we have to go into “self isolation” mode. The good news is that self-isolation doesn’t stop you from sitting in front of a computer for multiple hours a day, and so I think I’ll be just fine.
The Little Bookshop in Leeds is one of my favourite places on the planet. Really. It’s just a lovely place with a great selection of kids books and a splendid cafe. We went there today for lunch and it was great.
There was a definite “end of term” feel about the whole affair, as if we were doing something for the last time for a while. I really hope that the nasty things that are coming down the tracks don’t put lovely places like this out of business. I wish them (and all places in the same position) the very best of luck.
If you’ve ever played with a Raspberry Pi you’ll be familiar with the annoying way you have to configure the device before you can use it.
You might have no intention of using your shiny new Pi Zero W with a keyboard, screen and mouse but to get it set up you have to connect them all.
I thought I’d found the answer to my problems in the form of these serial connectors. You can connect them to the serial port pins on your Pi, plug the other end into your PC, fire up a terminal program (I use PuTTY) and then use the command line interface to set everything up.
A while back this would have been an excellent idea. Unfortunately modern versions of the Pi operating system are a bit more security conscious than the older ones, and disable the serial port command line by default.
So if you want to use this cable you have to use a mouse, keyboard and screen to turn it on and enable the serial console…… Oh well. It will still be useful for “on the fly” modifications.
Today I completed the installation of the Evohome system. The system comes with two remote controlled relays, one for hot water and the other for heating. There’s also a remote temperature transmitter which you attach to your hot water tank. Once I’d done the wiring I had to take the controller unit around to each device and “bind” them together. This was slightly hampered by the fact that the controller has horrible battery life. The good news is that once I’d got the system installed I could then use an iPhone app to mange everything.
It’s been quite a pain free experience. These are my takeaways so far:
everything works and looks to be well made (in the UK, which is amazing)
the documentation is OK, but it glosses over some bits more than it should. However, once you get into the swing of how it works its fine
the controller is very “last generation” with its resistive touch screen and Nmih batteries. However, the user interface itself is fine and seems to have been designed to make it easy to control your heating system, which is nice
the radiator valves are a bit noisy when a little DC motor opens and closes them, but I think we’ll get used to this
I’ve not tried any of the fancy remote controlled features, but at this point I’m well pleased with how well everything works.
I’ve been meaning to do this for literally years. A while back I got all enthusiastic about replacing the radiator valves in the house with computer controlled ones, found out how much it would cost and then backed off a bit.
Earlier this week, armed with my “You’re not going to the MVP summit” bonus (in the form of a hotel room refund) I ordered a bunch of bits from these very helpful people and today a box arrived.
I’m using the Honeywell Evohome system. It’s been around for ages and has got consistently good reviews over the years. I like the idea of using something proven. The geek in me is intrigued by the If This Then That (IFTTT) integration. The Apple lover in me is rather upset about the lack of HomeKit integration but he’ll get over it.
Today I went round the house swapping the old mechanical control valves with the Evohome ones. The valves come with a couple of adaptors and these fit all but one of my radiators. At this point I’ve got a bunch of very clever but unconnected valves. Tomorrow I’ll install the remote controlled relays that will control the heating and then link everything together.
On the plus side, I’ve finally got Una the Ultimaker to print something that has actually turned out quite well.
On the minus side, the dishwasher has just produced a load of soaking wet dishes.
There’s always a moment in a spy film when someone says “I’ll just hack into their network and reconfigure it….” Today I did this for real. I suppose I was hacking my own network, but it still felt a bit like James Bond.
I was fixing one of our sensors on our Connected Humber network. These all use MQTT to send readings back to the server which then displays them on a map. The problem was that when I set up the sensor I’d set the publish topic incorrectly, so the readings were being sent to the wrong place. I needed to change that topic remotely.
Fortunately my sensor code can accept configuration commands, so this should have been an easy fix. Just send the appropriate message. The snag was that once the sensor has sent a reading it then goes into a deep sleep to save power. So it is hardly ever around to hear any messages. However, I’d built a delay into the software so that it stays running for a couple of seconds after it has sent a reading.
All I had to do was wait until I saw a message and then quickly send the configuration command. This seemed like a bit of a waste of time, and at my age there is no guarantee that I’d have the required ninja reactions that would allow me to send the message in time. So I wrote a bit of Python instead.
The program turned out to be simple enough. It just waits for an incoming message and then sends one straight out as soon as it sees it. The command that I sent was “Don’t go to sleep after each transmission”. Then I was able to configure the MQTT correctly, check a few other settings and finally put the device to sleep when I’d done it. And I really did feel a bit like a hacker in a spy movie while I was doing this.
I think I’ll build this out into a proper command transfer program. LoRa powered sensors work in exactly the same way, in that a LoRa device only listens for incoming messages after it has said something.
The first rule of 3D printer alignment is:
It doesn’t matter whether all the calibration settings are what they should be. It only matters whether it prints or not.
Let’s just say it’s not going as well as it could…
Went for a walk to the Humber Bridge today. We had pretty much all the seasons in around fifteen minutes. But I did manage to take some pictures.
It doesn’t photograph very well.
Apparently there is such a thing as “ultra black paint”. It’s called VantaBlack and BMW painted a car with it. It looks really strange. There are no reflections that you would normally use to discern depth.
Brian has bought some and is pondering what to paint with it.
Whenever I start to think of my 3D printer as an appliance it promptly breaks. Actually, this time it was my fault in that I started a new print without removing a completed one. The resulting crash was quite noisy, as the rubber belts did what they are designed to do, and slipped.
The printer itself seems undamaged, which is a relief, but I figured it was time to show Una some care and attention. After all, she is nearly eight years old. And I have got a replacement set of belts and a new print nozzle to fit. So I took everything to pieces…..
One of the principles of 3D printing is that any given job on a 3D printer will take a day. Even if you think it will take a couple of hours. This one was no exception, but by the end of the day I had the belts replaced and print head back in position.
Next I just have to level the bed and adjust the distance of the head so that it prints properly.
Another good hardware meetup. Brian was showing off a properly working robot tracking solution, which means that Hull Pixelbot Robot Rugby is getting closer…
StarbeamRainbowlabs was showing off a Raspberry Pi cluster in the making. Love the colours.
Karen had brought along some devices that she wanted to play with, including the one above. But what does it do?
Finally, Ben and myself did a bit of Micro Python. Each time we have a Hardware Meetup I’m producing a little briefing document about the subject. You can find these documents here.
Yesterday I found out that the MVP Summit was cancelled. Wah. And I had pre-paid for my room at the Sliver Cloud Inn on a non-refundable tariff. Double wah.
I emailed the hotel cancelling my booking (no sense in leaving the room empty) and noting that I wasn’t expecting any refunds. Today they emailed back saying that because the cancellation is due to the CoronaVirus they are refunding everybody. Which is awesome. It must be costing them a pretty penny to do this, what with them having lots of bookings cancelled, but they are doing it anyway.
I’ve always loved this little hotel. And now I love it a lot more.
Update: Sorry about spelling Silver Cloud as Silver Could, but then again I think this may be kind of poetic tribute.
One of the best things about being a Microsoft MVP is the way you can meet up with other Microsoft MVPs, along with Microsoft staff, at the MVP Summit. I missed out last year, so for this year I made sure that I booked my flights and sorted out my hotel nice and early to ensure that I got to go.
And the summit has just been cancelled. Wah.
I agree with the decision. It’s a lovely occasion, but not something that should put your health (of that of anyone else) at risk. I’m sad that I’m not going to meet up with lots of great people but I’m sure that, given the talent of MVPs for invention, there will be a bunch of virtual events and synchronised pub-crawls going on over the week of the event. And with a bit of luck we might even get some T-shirts sent through.
Here’s to Summit 2021.
Picture the scene. You’ve just bought yourself an expensive Windows 10 powered computer. You’ve got it going and find the experience smooth and hassle free. You’ve put the wonderful OneDrive application on your iPhone and you decide to view some of the pictures you took with your iPhone on you shiny new computer.
And they look horrible. Finally, after a bit of searching on the internet you discover that to fix this you have to go into the Settings page for the Photos app and follow a link to install the “HEIF media extensions”.
Then you find out that the extension costs 79 pence. Just so you can view pictures that you took with your phone. At this point you’d probably be getting a bit cross with Microsoft who seem to be rather desperate for your money. I suppose it is a tiny amount of money, but that is really the point. I wonder how much Microsoft makes from this, and whether it is worth the damage to customer goodwill.
Oh well, I’ve just had to do this for my newly imaged PC. I must have installed a free solution last time. The strange thing is that I don’t remember doing it for any of my Surface devices….
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
