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:
.NET
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I'm working on a little WPF 4.5 sample app. As part of that, I
needed to create a drop-down list of Font Families. Here's what the
ComboBox currently looks like:
The Data Source
I wanted control over the fonts including sorting and,
potentially, filtering the results. I didn't want to use static
binding from XAML. So, in my viewmodel, I added a collection of
FontFamily objects ...
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Join us live on April 24th for our first ever online live
streamed patterns & practices Symposium! Register at
eventbrite to ensure you can attend and participate (and, of
course, to help us gauge attendance so we can properly scale the
streaming for the best experience).
The April 24th online p&p symposium program 2012 will
include keynote sessions and technical sessions ...
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For those of you in the US, today is Pi day : 3/14. For those
countries that would call this 14-3, bear with me, as you don't
get any pi pfftth :)
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 st...
Published
Wednesday, March 14, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, CNC, Commodore, Synthesizer, c64, Netduino, Electronics, Gadgeteer, 3d-Printing, MakerRoundup, Maker, Arduino, PIC |
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Last year, I
designed my first Gadgeteer module. I didn't have a board
designed, but went through all the same steps. I recently designed
a MIDI module primarily for use with the .NET Gadgeteer, but also
for use with any 3.3v to 5v microcontroller with a serial port.
Existing MIDI boards all assumed a 5v signal level from the MCU.
Most modern MCUs are 3.3v or even less.
Having tried...
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I'm working on a little side project that requires the use of
Ethernet on the .NET Micro Framework. Here's how to get Ethernet
going on the .NET Gadgeteer, specifically the FEZ
Spider with the Ethernet
module. I also used a T35
display module. Both of the modules and the Spider were bought
as part of the larger FEZ Spider
Starter Kit.
This post covers what's needed to get started wi...
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At the South Florida Code Camp last week, I gave an early
morning talk titled "Getting Started with XAML". In this talk, I
covered the basics of XAML, the property system, layout, and other
things you need to know as a XAML developer for WPF, Silverlight,
or Windows 8.
Slides
Attached to this post
Demos
It was all real-time stuff in this talk. No downloadable demos.
I...
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At the South Florida Code Camp last week, I presented the ".NET
Micro Framework and .NET Gadgeteer". The primary demo was the
Gadgeteer diaper monitor, but I also showed off hardware, wired
some LEDs to the Netduino etc.
PowerPoint Slides
Attached to this post
Demos and Code
The .NET Gadgeteer Diaper Alarm Part 1 (Moisture Sensor)
Building a .NET Gadgeteer Comp...
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At the South Florida Code Camp I gave a newer version of the
REST Silverlight talk using the just released MVC 4 Beta and
ASP.NET Web API.
This talk shows how to share code between different versions of
the framework, how to use the ASP.NET Web API from Silverlight, and
how to integrate a Silverlight application into an MVC 4 site.
Powerpoint Slides
Attached to this post
...
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I log into my local bank's website quite often. I transfer money
between accounts and all the usual things. Today, when I logged in,
I saw that they've decided to dump the security questions they had
us answer earlier this year and replace them with a completely new
and obscure set. If you don't set the security questions,
you can't get to your bank account.
Don't get between me and m...
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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
Wednesday, February 08, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, WPF, Silverlight, XNA, CPP, WindowsClient, WindowsClientRoundup, Kinect, Windows8, XAML |
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While doing the (long!) tech review for Silverlight 5 in Action,
my friend and former coworker Tom McKearney mentioned
that we should put together some code to make handling windows
across multiple monitors a reasonable task in Silverlight 5. Then,
on a mailing list, I recently saw the question:
Hi all -- I'm wondering if there is a maximum window size for
Silverlight documented any...
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Late last week, I cracked open the Commodore 64 emulator
code once again, in preparation to post it. However, I had to
have a change made to the source control on CodePlex, so I had a
few days to make some changes. So far, it's shaping up quite
nicely:
I went back to the latest version of the Frodo C64
emulator source code and decided to port some of their changes
over to this ve...
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Many developers don't realize that a common source of memory
leaks in .NET applications is the event handler. WPF 4.5 includes
built-in support for weak events to help us do the right thing and
not eat up all the available memory.
The Problem
Events are ubiquitous in .NET. When you add an event handler
using the EventName += <my event handler delegate>
syntax, the event sourc...
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During the .NET Microframework and .NET Gadgeteer code camp talk that Andrew
Duthie and I gave several weeks back, we tossed around the idea of
using the Gadgeteer and a moisture sensor to alert parents of,
ahhhh, soggy diaper issues.
Shortly before the holidays, in the mail, I got a package of
goodies from Microsoft Research. That package included one of these
moisture sensors from S...
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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 the
con...
Published
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, Commodore, Visual-Studio, Synthesizer, geek, c64, Robotics, Electronics, MakerRoundup, Maker, AVR, Arduino |
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Before joining Microsoft, I was a consultant, primarily building
desktop applications using a variety of MS technologies. During my
last couple years there, Silverlight was a large part of that both
for full apps and as parts of larger web sites. Prior to that, it
was WPF, Windows Forms, VB, HTML and even SharePoint.
tl;dr: The point of this long post is not to
show you examples of ...
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After assembling my Netduino-powered PIX-6T4, I
wanted to go and write a simple game. This post describes the
construction of that game, including all source code.
Concept
When you have 64 monochrome red pixels, you need to keep the
graphics simple. I decided on a game inspired by the classic Atari River Raid game. This is essentially a
vertical scrolling game where you need to dodg...
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I recently picked up a PIX-6T4 build by Fabien Royer (with games
by Fabien Royer and Bertrand Le Roy). This is a 64 pixel, two
joystick/button, monophonic sound hand-held game device based
around the Netduino Mini from Secret Labs. You create games in C#
using Visual studio.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft and I enjoy working in the .NET
Micro Framework as well as C++ on other micr...
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In my post about WPF 4.5 Observable Collection
Cross-thread Change Notification, I showed the basics of how to
synchronize collection updates in WPF, and how to avoid having to
manually dispatch calls to the UI thread. In the comments, Jonathan
Allen brought up some very good points that I simply didn't know
the answers to (and a lock I was missing in the example). Thanks to
Jonathan fo...
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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
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 |
Tagged:
.NET, Silverlight, 3d, XNA, CPP, WindowsClient, WindowsClientRoundup, Kinect, Windows8, XAML |
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A reader of my Silverlight 5 book recently reached out to
me about threading and why I create some objects on the UI thread
in the examples. We discussed some of the reasons, but I felt this
would be a good topic to share with everyone. In fact, this is one
area where it would have been fun to go into great detail in my
book, but there simply wasn't the space. Threading and cross-thread
...
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I recently posted an updated version of Silverlight reporting on
codeplex. Here's the overview.
This project, a unofficial project by Pete Brown of Microsoft,
provides a a very basic framework for building simple, short,
multi-page reports using Silverlight 5.
The intent is not to be an all-encompassing reporting solution,
or a solution for large reports. Instead, this is a set ...
