Blogs

Angular has a convenient launcher to serve your app during development (ng serve). It watches for file changes and automatically reloads saving time. By default it serves over HTTP but to avoid issues with mixing HTTP and HTTPS content, you might want to run the local development server using SSL to serve over HTTPS. This will cover how to use ng serve and npm run start to include SSL certificates to use HTTPS.

This guide will walk through the steps needed to setup WordPress on a Windows desktop by installing everything manually, as opposed to using something like WampServer or Xampp. There is nothing wrong with those options and I highly recommend them if you want a convenient solution.

JavaScript in the browser allows you to make asynchronous HTTP requests using AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). The benefit of making an AJAX call is that it does not require the page to reload, creating an interface that feels smoother and more responsive.

Some frameworks like jQuery make this even easier, but it is important to understand how to do it without a framework.

Let's look at an example of how to do this.

With Angular 7, when you create an app with the default app generator, it creates two basic environment files: development and production.

When you run ng serve it serves with the development environment settings. To build production you run ng build --prod.

My problem was that I wanted more environments, particularly, a local, development, and production environment. So I wanted to add a new settings file for local work and have ng serve use the local settings.

This will look at how to create additional environment settings files, how to use ng build with your custom environment, and how to use ng serve with the custom environments too.

The serve command first calls build, so we will first look at how to update the build step and then the serve action.

This will demonstrate how to install and use Font Awesome's free icon pack. The files will be hosted on your own server without using a CDN. We will look at the minimal installation with the least amount of files for maximum efficiency.

There is an official Arduino CLI application that allows you to compile and upload sketches from the command-line without IDE.

This guide will walk through the process of installing and configuring the CLI tool as well as compiling and uploading sketches. It will also cover third-party boards and libraries like the ESP8266, Adafruit PyPortal, and Seed Studio boards like Seeeduino Nano.

The PyPortal is an awesome little IoT device that is programmable with CircuitPython. It's got wi-fi, a color touch screen, a speaker and speaker connector, microSD card slot, 8MB flash memory, a light sensor, a temperature sensor, a NeoPixel LED, a few JST connectors, and more!

You can buy a PyPortal at https://www.adafruit.com/product/4116. This tutorial covers the PyPortal that came in AdaBox011. I don't believe there are any differences between the AdaBox version and the one you can buy separately from the shop.

In this tutorial we will take a look at the various components and how to use them in CircuitPython with code examples for each. After following the tutorial you should have a solid grasp on the PyPortal.

Since the hardware and software is open source, you can find the sources online:

• EagleCAD PCB files
• Schematic files
• Fritzing PyPortal object
• Laser cutting files for stand
• CircuitPython source
• CircuitPython PyPortal libary
• Adafruit CircuitPython libraries

Serial communication, while old, is still used in many embedded systems and microcontrollers. It is commonly used with Arduino, CircuitPy, and similar boards. We will look at how to connect, send, and receive data using serial.

The Ruby ActiveRecord gem provides easy-to-use abstractions for working with databases and allows you to easily swap out the database backend. For example to switch from SQLite3 to MySQL without changing code. It has built-in support for database abstractions to SQLite3, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. One of the primary aspects of ActiveRecord is that there is very little to no configuration needed. It follow convention over configuration.

ActiveRecord is commonly used with the Ruby-on-Rails framework but you can use it with Sinatra or without any web framework if desired.This tutorial will focus on using it independently, outside of any other framework.

See my SQLite3 Tutorial and Ruby SQLite3 Tutorial for more background on using SQLite3 directly. It is good to have a solid foundation with SQL before trying to work with ActiveRecord.

I subscribe to Adafruit's AdaBox and I get a fun project every 3 months mailed to me. A little while back I received AdaBox 010 which came with a NeoTrellis M4 board as the centerpiece. The board comes with a microcontroller that can be programmed with Python using CircuitPython.

The NeoTrellis M4 comes with a grid of 32 NeoPixels, which double as buttons. On top of that, it has an audio processor with an 1/8" audio output jack so it can play sound files and generate noise. Furthermore, it even has an accelerometer that can detect motion in three direction so you have even more input available to control the audio and lights. It also comes with a microphone. To top it off, it can act as a MIDI device! It can use the USB port as the MIDI interface or it can use the UART connector for MIDI.

The micro-USB connector is used for power but also acts as a USB removable drive for easy access to the source code files and easily upload sound files. It can also serve as a MIDI USB interface to interact with MIDI software. The USB can also serve as a generic USB HID (Human interface device) like a mouse or keyboard to send events to a computer that it understands like a keypress or a mouse event.

In this tutorial, I try to provide an overview of all the capabilities and give you an idea of all the possibilities with this board. You will find several code examples that focus on one specific aspect of the board.