bill.french's Content

#5796 Anyone have a clever hex->byte conversion routine?

Posted by bill.french on 06 December 2010 - 02:58 AM in Netduino 2 (and Netduino 1)

it doesn't appear that netmf supports int.Parse(hexValue, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber); .. so does anyone have a clever hex to byte (or int or whatever) conversion routine handy, so that if I feed it the string "ff" it returns the number 255 in some form? Thanks!!

#5149 LCDKeypad 16x2 HD44780 Shield

Posted by bill.french on 21 November 2010 - 10:17 PM in Project Showcase

Can you elaborate on the keypad/analog input issue?

#5970 Anyone have a clever hex->byte conversion routine?

Posted by bill.french on 10 December 2010 - 01:07 PM in Netduino 2 (and Netduino 1)

Thank you for the explanation, Chuckie. It seems hard enough for me to find stuff normally, and now I'm up against hidden stuff?? :unsure:

#6393 So, what's on everyone's Christmas List??

Posted by bill.french on 22 December 2010 - 07:23 PM in General Discussion

You can usually find very nice stepper motors in printers (larger motors) and 3.5" floppy disk drives

If Santa sees this and leaves me a floppy drive, I am going to be pissed.

#6431 So, what's on everyone's Christmas List??

Posted by bill.french on 23 December 2010 - 02:07 PM in General Discussion

The items chortik mentioned look good too. Plus.... dangerousprototypes.com - that's almost as good a name as Secret Labs.

i didn't notice the "dangerousprototypes" .. i was too busy laughing at "Bus Pirate"... LOL

Edit: i should add that I think the stuff chortik linked is actually very cool, but the names are funny, which I appreciate. The sexyness of the Saleae wins for me, though.

#6466 Interfacing with a USB Flash drive?

Posted by bill.french on 24 December 2010 - 12:47 PM in General Discussion

what kind of data are you storing? what kind of time period are you dealing with? Maybe a compression algorithm? Something like this and a ND+ could get you to 8GB? http://www.addonics....s/nas/nasu2.asp

#6828 Custom Data Visualization Components

Posted by bill.french on 02 January 2011 - 01:19 PM in General Discussion

If you want to see a (poorly written) sample, check out my graphing code: http://forums.netdui...ch__1#entry4637 I am using it to graph from the network, I was also messing with threads, so the code could be easily simplified.

#6819 Custom Data Visualization Components

Posted by bill.french on 02 January 2011 - 05:03 AM in General Discussion

I put some thought into it... for whatever reason, I seem to always be reinventing the wheel. Data visualization is one of those areas I explored, but the available tools are way more mature and advanced than anything i could do in my free time. Not to discourage you-- it's a neat and ever evolving area (data visualization) but many of the basics are "done" and available for free in VS.

#6814 Custom Data Visualization Components

Posted by bill.french on 02 January 2011 - 04:21 AM in General Discussion

I registered the domain name "stopreinventingthewheel.com"... some day it will be dedicated to all the wheels I've reinvented... and reinvented... lol concerning visualization, make sure you explore the microsoft charting controls, I believe they are a derivative of the Dundas controls and come w/ Visual Studio and are pretty robust. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mschart

#6480 Interfacing with a USB Flash drive?

Posted by bill.french on 24 December 2010 - 05:10 PM in General Discussion

here's another interesting unit on Amazon, with a 2TB limit:

http://www.amazon.co...3210173&sr=1-16

I'm thinking you could stage a file on the local SD card, then FTP it to the nas device on a background thread.

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#6382 So, what's on everyone's Christmas List??

Posted by bill.french on 22 December 2010 - 06:25 PM in General Discussion

Realizing that not everyone celebrates Christmas, and it's only a few days away anyway:

If you had a list of stuff that a magical creature would pick from and deliver to you via your chimney Saturday morning, what would be on it??

Here's mine:

www.stepgenie.com - stepper motor controller
a stepper motor to experiment with
an LCD display
netduino mini
Make magazine subscription
and since i've been really good this year: http://www.saleae.com/logic/ logic probe system everyone keeps talking about

Please note: no socks on this list!!

#6392 So, what's on everyone's Christmas List??

Posted by bill.french on 22 December 2010 - 07:22 PM in General Discussion

That seeeduino is neat! What's your idea for it?

#4562 2D Motion Capture, early results

Posted by bill.french on 07 November 2010 - 04:52 AM in Project Showcase

While I was admiring your project, and your strategic use of .Dispose(), I couldn't help but think the displayed frame from your youtube video looked like you were trying to punch Beaker, but missed.

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#4547 MFToolkit - new release (VS2010 support / .NET MF 4.1)

Posted by bill.french on 07 November 2010 - 12:02 AM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

Is there a link to just what exactly the above MFToolkit is? I was not able to find a site that stated a simple overview of what it is and why it exists. Thanks!

#4580 MFToolkit - new release (VS2010 support / .NET MF 4.1)

Posted by bill.french on 07 November 2010 - 02:08 PM in Netduino Plus 2 (and Netduino Plus 1)

Very awesome, thank you!

#4565 2D Motion Capture, early results

Posted by bill.french on 07 November 2010 - 05:37 AM in Project Showcase

Glad you enjoyed my very advanced Paint.Net skills!

Thinking about it (the project) some more, the datasheet says 5us is "typical"... (and since you say you got the pwm call wrong anyway) which makes me wonder if you could have gotten away with something like:

out1.Write(true);
out1.Write(false);

which, according to here, gets you a 60us pulse.

... I also wonder if you had gpio pins to spare, you could you one pin in output mode to fire the pulse, then another pin in input mode (both tied to the sig pin on the ping thing) to read the returning pulse, then you wouldn't have to worry about .Dispose()'s timing.

#7417 Solid Graphic LCD

Posted by bill.french on 10 January 2011 - 03:19 PM in Netduino 2 (and Netduino 1)

2 things -- I believe your can "reflash" the SGC to GFX and vice-versa, based on this reply from 4D's support:

Certainly you can change the configuration from SGC to GFX and vice versa. See the links below with individual configurations,

Also, another screen to consider if anyone stumbles across this thread:
http://www.dfrobot.c...&product_id=135

#8018 Replace analog pot with Netduino using PWM

Posted by bill.french on 20 January 2011 - 07:11 PM in Netduino 2 (and Netduino 1)

Can you better describe what you are trying to do, what you're wiring up, etc? I have some ideas.

#9004 Pull Up/Down Resistors, and when to use them?

Posted by bill.french on 04 February 2011 - 07:32 PM in General Discussion

I guess a basic guideline is if you need to read a 0 or 1 reliably, and your circuit has an "open" state, say the reed switch, then you'll want to use a pull up/down resistor, depending on the circumstances. The problem with an open state is that the input will be open to the environment, so any stray charges can make the input go to 0 or 1 unpredictably. In your case, knowing nothing else about your circuit, you can probably get away with a "pull up" resistor instead, which the netduinos have built in and available for activation via software. This will simplify your circuit.

#7281 MagStripe Reader with Netduino

Posted by bill.french on 08 January 2011 - 06:28 PM in General Discussion

I was just reading about magstripe readers in a copy of Make magazine. I have no idea if this is relevant, but check this thread out, dealing with interrupt ports and IR: http://forums.netdui...p?showtopic=185

#6267 netduino+ Sous Vide Test Egg 1

Posted by bill.french on 20 December 2010 - 01:36 AM in Project Showcase

Water circulation is definitely necessary. I didn't believe it at first, but the temperature differential between top,bottom, and middle of the water can be significant, as much as 5 degrees I was noticing, which is a big deal apparently, with hots spots at the bottom from the element, and a hot spot up top where the hot water rises. Also, the pot will set up pretty solid water currents from the convection, which now makes hot and cold spots horizontally. I do need to do something with the motor. I keep forgetting about that part of the project. Right now it's just a motor with the wand part of a baby bottle stirrer stuck on the end. It's super effective, too effective, really - it keeps moving the food around and sucks it into a votex and into the blades. An air bubbler would be easier, i think. I'm not quite at "version 1" yet, it's more proof of concept. I am going to now work pretty steadily towards etching my own PCB and get it into a shield form factor so that it will actually be usable and not require and hour of setup. Also, a lcd and interface are needed. Right now, changing the target temperature requires visual studio. I definitely want it to be easily multi-channel, as that's about all that really differentiates it from a $35 pid controller. I also need to test and build in some kind of safety so it doesn't burn my house down. Ultimate end-goal would be a professional produced "shield" product. I've always wanted to make and sell a product -- if one person buys it, that would be awesome and a check on my bucket list. The key for that is going to be getting it arduino compatible, and probably also make it useful for other things, such as environmental controls. It is basically a sophisticated thermostat. Once the netduino supports onewire out of the box, the game changes quite a bit. Thanks for asking, by the way. My family camps up in Alfred, ME pretty much every year. I'll have to invite you over for sous vide steaks finished on a camp fire.

So let me get this straight. This thing is a color LCD with built in controller, backlight circuitry, microSD socket which is compatible with both low capacity and high capacity cards, AND! it basically has a user programmable microcontroller with 10k of program space and 2 GPIO lines in addition to all the on-board control lines for interfacing with the LCD?

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