2011 - Pete Brown's 10rem.net

Living room window bench and bookcase update: cabinet doors!

In every project, there comes a part you just dread doing. It's always the part you put off until the very end. When programming, maybe it's that exception logging, or security interface. With most house projects, it's painting. With carpentry/cabinetry, well, I hate building cabinet doors. There. I said it. I love woodworking, but BOY do I hate doors. I know the appropriate tricks...

Published Sunday, December 18, 2011 | Tagged: Home-Renovation, Hobbies, DIY | Leave comment

MFOS Synth 5: Trimmers and some capacitors in place

The next step was to solder yet more components to the board. I soldered the trimmer potentiometers as well as a number of the capacitors. Over the next several months I'll be building what is definitely my most complex electronics project to date: the MFOS (Music From Outer Space) Sound Lab Ultimate, Ultimate Expander and (if Santa brings one) Sound Lab Mini-Synth Mark II, lik...

Published Sunday, December 18, 2011 | Tagged: Synthesizer, DIY, Electronics, MFOS | 1 comment

MFOS Synth 4: Resistors all soldered

Phew! The resistors are all soldered. The board has a few hundred of them, so there was quite a bit of soldering. Over the next several months I'll be building what is definitely my most complex electronics project to date: the MFOS (Music From Outer Space) Sound Lab Ultimate, Ultimate Expander and (if Santa brings one) Sound Lab Mini-Synth Mark II, likely all in the same home-m...

Published Friday, December 16, 2011 | Tagged: Synthesizer, DIY, Electronics, MFOS | 7 comments

Slides and Code from my VSLive Silverlight 5, REST, WCF Web API, MVC talk

This talk was an adaptation of two chapters from Silverlight 5 in Action. I started with a brief explanation of REST, and then explained the solution we were going to build during the session. The idea was to show how you can use REST in place of the heavier Soap approach in many cases, and make your services accessible to far more clients. I also showed how to share model objects bet...

Published Thursday, December 15, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Silverlight, Events, WCF, ASP.NET, WindowsClient, MVC, Presentations | Leave comment

Announcing the Release of Silverlight 5!

Look what just came out, and well in time to beat the Christmas rush :) Yes, it's Silverlight 5. We had originally announced that Silverlight 5 would be out by the end of this year, and I'm glad to report that it has made it in in time to give everyone something interesting to play with over the holidays. My congratulations to the engineering, marketing, support, and documentation te...

Published Friday, December 9, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Silverlight, WindowsClient, XAML | 41 comments

MFOS Synth 3: Starting the Front Panel

In this post, I'm starting to build the front panel for my MFOS Sound Lab Ultimate analog synthesizer. Over the next several months I'll be building what is definitely my most complex electronics project to date: the MFOS (Music From Outer Space) Sound Lab Ultimate, Ultimate Expander and (if Santa brings one) Sound Lab Mini-Synth Mark II, likely all in the same home-made wooden...

Published Sunday, December 4, 2011 | Tagged: Synthesizer, DIY, Electronics, MFOS | 1 comment

MFOS Synth 2: Some main synthesizer board work

In this post, I'm starting to populate the main board for my MFOS Sound Lab Ultimate analog synthesizer. Over the next several months I'll be building what is definitely my most complex electronics project to date: the MFOS (Music From Outer Space) Sound Lab Ultimate, Ultimate Expander and (if Santa brings one) Sound Lab Mini-Synth Mark II, likely all in the same home-made wood...

Published Friday, December 2, 2011 | Tagged: Synthesizer, DIY, Electronics, MFOS | Leave comment

WPF 4.5: Adding a delay to your binding updates to reduce noise

A couple weekends back, I was giving a talk on the .NET Gadgeteer, and spoke about the support for Potentiometers. Unlike some of the other modules, a potentiometer (like the volume knob on a stereo) varies so much in use that you wouldn't want to raise an event for every little change. The solution in electronics is typically to poll the pot to find its current value. Similar situati...

Published Friday, December 2, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, WPF, WindowsClient, XAML | 5 comments

MFOS Synth 1: Built the Power Supply

Over the next several months (3? 6? 10?) I'll be building what is definitely my most complex electronics project to date: the MFOS (Music From Outer Space) Sound Lab Ultimate, Ultimate Expander and (if Santa brings one) Sound Lab Mini-Synth Mark II, likely all in the same home-made wooden case, side by side. The Ultimate and Expander are together a 3 oscillator monophonic true analo...

Published Friday, December 2, 2011 | Tagged: Synthesizer, DIY, Electronics, MFOS | Leave comment

Dear Lego: How not to write a customer service email

Today, due to a bug in their website which put my order through without my credit card info (d'oh!) I got this unfriendly and suspicious email from lego: My first thought was this was a Phishing scam email. Why? Well, the subject was somewhat strange, the message was plain text, but in HTML format, it didn't contain any actual information about my order, and it told me to take som...

Published Wednesday, November 30, 2011 | Tagged: Rants, Web, Lego | 5 comments

WPF 4.5: Binding and change notification for static properties

One of the new features in WPF 4.5 is support for binding to static properties. In addition to the binding syntax itself, there's new support for static property change notification. In many cases, it is still advisable to use a Singleton pattern or another approach for binding. However, there are cases when your application design requires binding to static properties. In those cases...

Published Tuesday, November 29, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, WPF, WindowsClient, XAML | 8 comments

Maker Geek Roundup 004 for 11/29/2011

The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, CNC, 3d Printing, Robotics, Microsoft Robotics Studio, Electronics, General Maker stuff, and more. If you have something interesting you've done or have run across, or you blog regularly on the topics included here, please send me the URL and brief description via thecont...

Published Tuesday, November 29, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Commodore, Synthesizer, Micro+Framework, Robotics, Gadgeteer | Leave comment

Alien Autopsy: Dissecting a Fijit Friends Sage

I have a Fijit friend. There, I said it. I have a toy targeted to 9 year old girls. I have a toy my kids want. I have a toy I'm about to butcher in the name of …er … science. There. Doesn't she look so innocent and happy? You know, I bought this before they were a "hot toy" for Christmas 2011. If that makes me a hipster, pass the glasses. (And no, I didn't pay the outrageous p...

Published Tuesday, November 29, 2011 | Tagged: Toys, Gadgets, Robotics, Electronics | 7 comments

Windows Client Developer Roundup 085 for 11/28/2011

The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WinRT XAML, WPF, Silverlight, Visual C++, XNA, Expression Blend, Surface, Windows 7, Windows Phone, Visual Studio, WCF RIA Services and more. Sometimes I even include a little jQuery and HTML5. If you have something interesting you've done or have run across, or you blog regu...

Published Monday, November 28, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, WPF, Silverlight, 3d, XNA, Surface, WindowsClient, WindowsClientRoundup, Kinect, Windows8, XAML | Leave comment

Our .NET Micro Framework and .NET Gadgeteer Talk at CMAP Code Camp 2011

G. Andrew Duthie and I recently gave a fun and informal .NET Gadgeteer-focused talk at the CMAP Code Camp here in Maryland. Unlike most sessions we give, this one was actually recorded (by a couple people even) so there are some videos of the talk on YouTube. I've put them all together in a single playlist, or you can watch the inidividual parts: Part 1 .NET Micro Framework ...

Published Friday, November 18, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Netduino, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer, GHI-FEZ | 6 comments

It’s a wrap! I’ve completed writing Silverlight 5 in Action

Well, I've completed the initial writing anyway. Anyone who has written a book understands the, umm, pleasure of the multiple editing cycles which shall follow. I have my normal development editor review Thursday afternoon, and then it's turned over for tech review the following week. Tom is really going to have his hands full with the 1191 pages this book came in at before editing and ...

Published Thursday, November 17, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Silverlight, 3d, Silverlight-in-Action, WindowsClient | 19 comments

Rant: Tricking people into “Liking” your stuff on Facebook

The whole Facebook "Like" button is getting out of control. I don't really mind sharing the "like" information with websites, but I do mind websites that try to trick you into liking something. It's the same lowball approach the sites that have invisible ad click areas in the whitespace to the left and right of the page. They aren't accurately capturing intent. You might think it's just ...

Published Friday, November 11, 2011 | Tagged: Rants, Web | Leave comment

Update to .NET Gadgeteer Larson Scanner

So, I got to thinking (with the help of some friends) about the current sourcing capabilities of the pins on the Gadgeteer main board. Modern microprocessors generally aren't set up to be able to provide much current to things like LEDs. I saw a fair bit of that with the results I was getting with the scanner. So, what about wiring in reverse? LEDs can be wired in two differen...

Published Friday, November 11, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer, GHI-FEZ | 2 comments

.NET Gadgeteer Module Contest at GHI

I love electronic sounds. My bin of SID chips and my waiting-to-be-built MFOS sound lab ultimate boards all attest to that. But what can you do in a relatively small amount of space with a Gadgeteer and a Piezo speaker? Maybe it's not even sound generation, maybe you can use the piezo for something else? You can use them as speakers as well as microphones and sensors. In fact, I beli...

Published Friday, November 11, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Electronics, Gadgeteer, GHI-FEZ | Leave comment

Getting Started with .NET Gadgeteer Part 2: A Larson Scanner with Button, Potentiometer and Progress Display

Happy 11/11/11! For those of us who grew up in the 80s, the back-and-forth red lights on the front of KITT and the Cylons was considered a really awesome effect. It's still popular today, and is even named after Gary Larson, the person responsible for those shows. Now, a good Larson scanner uses some PWM to modify the intensity of the LEDs trailing the leading light. With th...

Published Friday, November 11, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer | 1 comment

Take 2 on milling the .NET Gadgeteer base board

The nice thing about CNC, is you can let it run while you do other stuff. So today, I updated the original program and ran another batch of .NET Gadgeteer base boards. the quality was much better this time. I had a little hiccup (maybe some EMF) for two holes in the board but it recovered by itself after that and completed the rest. Oh, and the feed rate didn't take until after the first...

Published Thursday, November 10, 2011 | Tagged: .NET, Hobbies, CNC, Gadgeteer | 2 comments

Windows Client Developer Roundup 084 for 11/8/2011