Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Do you know what browser you are using in your smart phone?

You don't like your smart phone browser. Find it and change it (you can change it for only iPhone and perhaps Androids).

Open your browser and type-in the following:
http://www.whatbrowser.org and you will get your answer as I got on mine (Android) Windows Phone 8.1 (I have to double check if this is true).

You can of course change it. Unfortunately none of these can be chosen as they appear to be not available for Windows Phone from windows store.

Here is the correct and complete answer: Go to WhatIsMyBrowser.com on Windows Phone.


 Few more comments added here.

How do you add a new sketch library to Arduino in Visual Studio?



The previous post shows all the libraries in the Arduino 163 nightly builds as seen in the Visual Studio 2013 Community edition's IDE. You can add the library in the list using Visual Studio as shown in the previous post.

What if you want to add a library that is not in the list?

The first thing is for you to find the library or write one.

Let us say, I need to add the WaveHC library. You may want to know what WaveHC library can do. Well WaveHC is an Arduino Library for the Adafruit Wave shield. WaveHC library has four C++ classes.

* SDCard Library
* FATReader
* WaveHC
* WaveUtil

This library turns Arduino into things you can do with audio.

Where do you find WaveHC?

You can find WaveHC here:
I downloaded the wavehc20090418.zip file to work with (hope!) Arduino UNO.

Here is a screenshot.
After downloading I extracted the folder WaveHC and moved it to the following location where it was saved (WaveHC was added to the install directory of Arduino).

C:\Users\Jayaram\Desktop\Arduino163\arduino-nightly-windows\arduino-nightly\libraries

Now I launch Visual Studio and open the sketch project I want to add the library and refresh the libraries (you get a message that the Toolchain reload is complete). It is now added to the libraries accessible via Visual Studio). Now WaveHC is available to add to my existing project:

Monday, May 25, 2015

How to add Sketch libraries to an Arduino Project in Visual Studio?

You can add other libraries to your Arduino sketch project using Visual Studio 2013 Community edition.It is quite easy to add as shown in this post.

Read more about Arduino and Visual Studio here, here, and here.

First click on the Project (not the Solution Explorer) and then click Project in the main menu as shown.

ArduinoImport01.png

Click Add/Import Sketch Library followed by Core in the menu to open the list of libraries you can add on to your project as shown.


ArduinoImport02.png

I just added a Ethernet library and you can see a number of Ethernet related files added to my project.

ArduinoImport03.png

How to change battery for a Toyota Corolla remote?

Sometimes you need to change the battery of your car remote as it fails to open one or the other doors and if it is completely dead.

 In order to change the battery you must first open your key. This is best done by placing a sharp edge very near to where the key chain slot is located as shown in the image and twisting. It may need some patience and effort to do this. The car remote in the present case was for a Toyota Corolla 2003, quite a old one but in excellent running conditions. As it has run only in Honolulu there are not many miles on it considering its age.




Once you pry open the key, you can change the battery. You would be needing a CR 2016 battery which is very similar to the CR 2032. The CR battery provides 3V and the appropriate battery for Toyota Corolla 2003 is CR 2016. The CR2032 is too thick to be accommodated although if it does accommodate CR 2032 can be used.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Postponed: Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu: Introduction to Structured Query Language

This was offered once in 2012 and once in the beginning of this year and was a total success. It is offered once again to those who could not make it.

Please register at the PCATT.ORG site.


New in 2015: You will also get an introduction to Windows PowerShell. SQL Server 2012 Express will be used.

For details you can also write to:
Hodentek@live.com with course name in the Subject line.


This non-credit course at PCATT is postponed. New dates are as follows:
Tuesdays and Thursdays:  June 2, 4, 9, skip (11) Kam Day, 16, 18, 23, 25, 30, July 2, 7

How do you enable Hyper-V in Windows 8.1?

In case you want to run more than one operating system on your PC you may want to use Hyper-V. You can run both 32bit as well as 64 OS.

Hyper-V is included in Windows 8.1 Professional. It is quite easy to enable Hyper-V.  It is very similar to Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7. Hyper-V is needed for Windows 8 Emulator .

Right click Start on Desktop__>;Control Panel-->;Programs-->;Select 'Turn Windows features on or off'
In the Windows Features window displayed place check mark for Hyper-V as shown and enable both Hyper-V GUI Management Tools and the Hyper-V Module for Windows PowerShell.



That is all there is to it.
The above image is captured on a Windows 8.1 Professional on a Toshiba S70 Series laptop.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

How to run the System File Checker(SFC) program?

After using the computer you may reach a situation that something or the other not working, perhaps it is the browser, perhaps it is some device on your computer. The reason could be corruption of the system files.

This can be fixed using the SYSTEM FILE CHECKER program on your computer. It is located as shown
in the next image.

 
This program requires elevated permissions and should be run by the administrator.
This is a two-step process:
1st Step: Start Command window with administrative privileges. The second step [running SYSTEM FILES CHECKER (sfc )] cannot be run if you are not the administrator of the computer.
Close all open programs
Click on Windows Icon at bottom left extreme and this will bring up a window on top of it as shown. In the place which says ‘Search Programs and files’ type-in cmd as shown.
 

 After you type-in you should see that search brings up the following: (notice the cmd at the very top)
 
 

2.  Go to the very top. Place your mouse on cmd but do not click. Now right click on cmd and a menu opens up as shown.
 

Click on ‘Run as administrator’
The above window goes away and your display goes dark and a small window asking ‘Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer’ is displayed. In the bottom there is a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’.
3. Click Yes. The screen becomes visible and you will see the following window. In my case it is white and in yours probably black with white letters:
 

You should see ‘Administrator’ at the very top as shown in the above.
This is the window that allows you to make changes to your computer.
Step 2: Running the SFC program that fixes system files.
Type in as shown: Spelling is important. After typing in sfc leave a space and then type the rest.
 

After typing in as shown hit ENTER on your key board.
The process may take some time. You should see the progress as shown:
 

Note: I did not have any serious problems, but to show you the steps I ran this program. It does take quite a bit of time as it goes through the whole system.
However the program cleaned up my files:
 
 


You can check the log file at the above indicated location.
 

Monday, May 11, 2015

How do you obtain JSON formatted response to a SQL Query?

There are two ways you can do this as per my experience, but there could be more ways.
One method I found was to install the DocumentDB Migration tool from Microsoft and launch the program to convert the SQL Query response to a JSON format.

The details of the migration tool and downloading the tool are described here:

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2015/05/tips-and-trick-to-format-sql-reponse-in.html

A step-by-step description of how it is done is described here:

http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2015/05/migarting-from-sql-to-json-using.html

The second method is to download a software tool called SQL-JSON from the internet and use the tool. This tool can run both on Windows and Apple Mac OS. It can be used with SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012 and requires Java Runtime 6 or 7.

The download link is here:
http://www.sqljson.com/index.html

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

What version of Visual Studio do you need to work with Arduino?


You need to install the Visual Studio 2013 Free (Community Edition) or higher prior to installing Visual Micro, the Arduino IDE.

Visual Micro can be installed from here:
http://www.visualmicro.com/page/Arduino-Visual-Studio-Downloads.aspx

There are lots of versions, OS dependencies, etc. read carefully what you are downloading.
Visual Micro, the latest Arduino IDE version 163+ installs an .msi file (arduinoforvisualstudio.msi).
This file must be installed to work with Arduino projects with Visual Studio IDE.

Read more on Visual Studio 2013 Community here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/11/free-visual-studio-community-2013-for.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/11/you-get-all-this-for-free-in-visual.html

Sunday, May 3, 2015

What is Office Mix?

Office Mix is a cool addition Power Point. Power Point  which becomes even more powerful with interactive features. Office Mix when you install adds a menu to the ribbon and that is the starting point for creating your special mix. You can add ink (annotate) to your slide, add video content and
narration, screen shots, audio and set up polls, quizzes all in Power Point.

Of course you can save it to your computer or send it to the cloud and share your mix (or video of mix) with anyone and it can do even more by allowing you to use powerful analytics to gauge your audience (Educators, Consumers and Business).

Office Mix is still in Beta but you can download it from here:
https://mix.office.com/

 
Make sure you visit the gallery here:
https://mix.office.com/Gallery

Here is video of Office Mix
 

Friday, May 1, 2015

Hands-on Learning Event in Honolulu 2: SQL Server Reporting Services 2012

The class is forming and is expected to start in August 2015. Please register at the PCATT.ORG site.



SQL Server 2012 Express or Developer Edition will be used.

For details you can also write to:
Hodentek@live.com with course name in the Subject line.