Pete Brown's Blog (POKE 53280,0)
Pete Brown writes on a variety of topics from XAML with the Windows Runtime (WinRT), .NET programming using C#, WPF, Silverlight, XNA, and Windows Phone, Microcontroller programming with .NET Microframework, .NET Gadgeteer and even plain old C, to raising two children in the suburbs of Maryland, woodworking, CNC and generally "making physical stuff". Oh, and Pete loves retro technology, especially Commodore (C64 and C128). If the content interests you, please subscribe using the subscription link to the right of every page.
Archive for tag:
C
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The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, 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
...
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A large number of apps in the Windows Store follow the "bunch of
boxes in a GridView" approach to the hub screen.
This can work in some cases, but I encourage developers and
designers to move beyond that look, and consider either evolutions
of it, or completely different approaches.
Boxes 1.0
For many, the basic box layout is a very workable layout. Here's
one of my essential app...
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It seems that each generation is exposed to more mature or
serious situations at earlier ages than the one before it. There
are a lot more ways for kids to get in trouble online than just
running afoul of the creepily mustachioed basement dweller you see
on "that" episode of Special Victims Unit.
tl;dr: A child was banned from Xbox live and that caused me to
investigate some things ...
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.NET 4.5 quietly introduced several attributes which are useful
for debugging and error reporting: CallerMemberName, CallerFilePath
and CallerLineNumber, all collectively referred to as "Caller Information". One of those,
CallerMemberName, is also very useful for MVVM apps and other apps
using INotifyPropertyChanged for change notifications.
Getting the calling function name
The Cal...
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The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, 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
...
Published
Tuesday, January 22, 2013 |
Tagged:
Commodore, Gadgets, geek, c64, Netduino, Electronics, Gadgeteer, 3d-Printing, MakerRoundup, Maker, AVR, Arduino |
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A common cause of Windows Store app certification failures is a
missing or insufficient privacy policy. Many don't realize that a
network-enabled app must have a policy, or if they do, don't
realize exactly what needs to go into it. In this post, I'll talk
about some of my observations regarding what makes for a good
privacy policy for a Windows Store app.
IMPORTANT: This is neither...
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I'm working on a Windows 8 synthesizer app using XAudio2 and a
C++ + DirectX/XAML Windows Store app for Windows 8. As part of
this, I thought it would be fun to add a simple bit
crusher effect with included sample rate reducer. The point of
this effect is to make samples sound like they came from older
machines with lower bitrates and sample depth. To do that, I had to
do two things to ...
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I recently did some work on my MikroElektronika ARM development
board. This was the first time I fired up the board on my
Windows 8 system. Everything in the IDE worked fine until I tried
to do some deploying and debugging on the board itself. It was then
that I realized the board's driver wasn't correctly installed. I
looked in the device manager and, sure enough, the board had the
lit...
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I have a few pieces of analog gear which either don't support
MIDI, or simply work better with voltage control. This makes
including them in a sequence difficult as timing of arpeggios or
sequences will drift away from the rest of the performance. Not to
mention that synchronizing them by ear is not a simple task in any
case, and impossible to do in real-time if you want to adjust the
t...
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I recently upgraded my main desktop PC to Windows 8. When I did
that, the Microsoft LifeCam software stopped working. It was
recognized as incompatible with Windows 8. For most people, this is
not an issue, as it works perfectly fine with the built-in Windows
8 camera app.
For me, however, I need a small camera app sitting on my desktop
so I can see the hallway leading to my office. I...
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At Build, the Surfaces used by Jordan Rudess (and later provided
to Jordan and his tech Gianluca Trombetta, just like we did with
other Build attendees) were set up in advance with local accounts
rather than Microsoft accounts. This made it easy for me to have
everything ready for when Jordan took the stage.
One thing both Jordan and Gianluca needed to do to make the
Surfaces their ow...
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My WPF talk from Build 2012 is live at
Channel9. Slides are available via that link as well.
I cover a few of the more interesting features in WPF 4.5, as
well as techniques for using Portable Class Libraries (PCL) to
share code with Windows 8 app.
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My son is 6 1/2 and my daughter is 4. Today, my wife had some of
my children's homeschool friends over. One of them is a 10 year old
boy.
He saw Windows 8 on my 6yo son's laptop upstairs and said "You
have Windows 8?!?". He was very excited because he didn't have it
yet himself. He started telling my son all about Windows 8 and
what's coming. This is a 10 year old boy, mind you.
UP...
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Privacy is a huge concern to most customers. Part of the Windows
Store app certification process includes checking for the presence
of a privacy policy if your app declares any capabilities which
could affect privacy.
MSDN has a section (4.1.1) explaining what is expected
from the privacy policy. I won't quote it here, but some important
points jump out (emphasis mine):
Declaring...
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At several recent events (VSLive Redmond, thatConference, the
Heartland Developer Conference and more), I've had a neat little
.NET Micro Framework robot with me. The remote control for the
robot is a Windows 8 tablet running a simple Modern UI/Windows
Store app I wrote in C#/XAML. The example shows both how you can
use C# skills to build robots, and also how flexible the new
Windows St...
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I've posted a few videos lately on YouTube. Here they are,
newest to oldest. Take a look, and if you like them, drop a comment
on the video and/or "like" it. Thanks!
All videos are available on my channel on
YouTube.
My
tutorial on how I hand-solder tiny surface mount components. Watch
in 1080p.
A drone I
created with my JP8080 and Spectrasonics Omni...
Published
Sunday, August 26, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, Synthesizer, WindowsClient, Videos, Netduino, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer, Windows8 |
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The platform is new. The design aesthetic is new. Many
of us could use some architecture or design consultation when
building Windows 8 apps. My friend Andrew Duthie pointed me to a
Microsoft service called "Generation App". This is something we
offer to help you get started building apps, and to help you get
quality apps into the store early (
which may help you to earn more money wit...
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In this post, I show how to create a simple talk countdown timer
using a Netduino GO and the komodex Seven Segment Display
Module.
Yesterday, I received the
Seven Segment Display Module I pre-ordered from komodex
systems. Matt Isenhower did a great job with designing this board
and making it an attractive piece of kit. It has a lovely shiny
black silkscreen, professionally installed...
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The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, 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
...
Published
Monday, July 23, 2012 |
Tagged:
Commodore, Synthesizer, c64, Netduino, Micro+Framework, Robotics, Electronics, Gadgeteer, MakerRoundup, Arduino |
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This is the story of how I moved my infrastructure out of my
house and into the hands of people who do this for a living.
In addition to six laptops (two for me, one for my wife, one for
each kid, one for my CNC machine) several PCs, and countless other
connected screens (tablets, phone, game consoles, smart tv, STB,
blu ray player, and more), I actively run three rack servers. One
is...
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The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to
makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino,
AVR and other MCUs, 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
...
Published
Tuesday, June 26, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, Commodore, c64, Netduino, Micro+Framework, Electronics, Gadgeteer, GHI-FEZ, MakerRoundup, Maker |
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In this post, I show how to have bidirectional UDP
communication: The Win8 Metro style app will send messages to the
Gadgeteer device which responds with ACKs.
This is part 3 in a series of posts about using sockets to
communicate between Windows 8 Metro apps and a microcontroller. The
rest of the series may be found here:
Part 1: Simple UDP networking test from a Metro style XA...
