Wednesday Evening Training #JuniorEdition: experimenting with the Arduino micro controller at the Leidsche Rijn Centrum's library

This friday afternoon, we held a Wednesday Evening Training at the Leidsche Rijn Centrum's  library, especially for kids. Our IoT champion, Aishwarya Dhall, had prepared a nice handson lab on programming a LED panel with the Arduino micro controller.

So what’s an Arduino? An Arduino is like a little computer (micro controller) where you can read input of a (example) sensor and can control your output. Like lights, LCD screen, speaker etc. It’s easy to program the Arduino.

After an introduction on the Arduino, programming and basic electronics, the kids got to work creating the electronic circuit and programming the Arduino.

Thanks Aish and others for sharing your knowledge with us! That's all in the game in the Wednesday Evening Training (also on Friday afternoon)!

 

Further study

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

On the Arduino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino
The official site: https://www.arduino.cc/
Getting started: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage
Development tools: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
Basic labs & explanation: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage-0007
Keeping up to date: https://twitter.com/arduino
A nice intro video (in only 8 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtLwoNJ6klE
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7

Next week's Wednesday Evening Training

Next week we will continue our sessions on Practical 3D Graphics & Programming with Quincy Jacobs and Remko Haagsma. We'll be diving in Unity once again.

Great stuff, looking forward to next week!

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

You 'll find post of previous sessions on my blog and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Work @Capgemini?

Do you want to join us? We're always looking for and well-motivated young professionals. Do you have a bachelor or master degree or extensive practical experience? Or do you have a relevant ICT / Informatics training and you have become curious about us? Please send me an mail. Working for us gives you access to all Wednesday Evening Trainings!

Week #19's Wednesday Evening Training: Combi IoT "klusavond" and a practical introduction on IoT using the Arduino microcontroller

This evening, one of our IoT champions, Aishwarya Dhall, once again gave a good introduction of the Arduino technology with some nice handson labs. We do this on a regular basis in our Wednesday Evening Trainings, to give our colleagues the opportunity to catch up on IoT any time during the year.

More experienced colleagues continued with their own labs. In this way everyone can acquire knowledge and experience with this technology at their own pace.

Future Wednesday Evening Training sessions on IoT/Arduino and related topics...

We also had an inspiring brainstorm on future handson labs. Connecting more detectors and experimenting with other technologies. RFID (Radio-frequency identification ) and gesture sensors are just two of the technologies we'll be playing with in upcoming Wednesday Evening Trainings.

Keep following my posts to stay up to date!

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

An Arduino is like a little computer (microcontroller) where you can read input of a (example) sensor and can control your output. Like lights, LCD screen, speaker etc. It’s easy to program the Arduino. Read more in my other blog posts: https://hansrontheweb.blogspot.com/search?q=Arduino

On Arduino:
Arduino Interrupts Tutorial (explanations, 2 demo's/labs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyOiTw0oQc
My YouTube playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvV86iiXFJY-BRxOsP2A2pnH
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7
Arduino - Multitasking (e.g. interrupts): https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-2/overview
Arduino Interrupts: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Interrupts
Arduino Playgrounds - Interrupts: http://playground.arduino.cc/code/interrupts

On Fritzing (designing electronic circuit boards):
Fritzing official site: http://fritzing.org/home
A quick overview on Fritzing: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

You 'll find post of previous sessions on my blog and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Week #15's Wednesday Evening Training: Whack-a-LED!

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training, we had a great Arduino Micro controller lab: "Whack-a-LED!"

One of our Arduino champions, Aishwarya Dhall, prepared a nice little game implemented using the Arduino Micro Controller. The game is based on the well known game "Whac-A-Mole".

Using 4 push buttons, 4 LED's and a little Arduino program, the game is implemented. The LED's are lit one at a time in random order. The player must hit the corresponding button in time to proceed with the game and gain points. This requires a timer and some interrupts.

Nice lab to get started using the Arduino!

There was a special welcome to the students of the Hogeschool Utrecht who we assisted programming a LED panel with the Arduino.

Of course, there was also plenty of opportunity for other projects & topics. Even the first ever photograph of a black hole was discussed. That's agile learning ;) !

Thanks Aish and others for sharing your knowledge with us! That's all in the game in the Wednesday Evening Training!

Next Wednesday Evening Training...

Next Wednesday Evening Training, we'll continue our architecture series with modelling architecture patterns in Archimate and an introduction in Archi, a free Archimate editor. We'll also discuss proceedings on

Further study

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

On the Whac-A-Mole game:
Whac-A-Mole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole

On Arduino:
Arduino Interrupts Tutorial (explanations, 2 demo's/labs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyOiTw0oQc
My YouTube playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvV86iiXFJY-BRxOsP2A2pnH
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7
Arduino - Multitasking (e.g. interrupts): https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-2/overview
Arduino Interrupts: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Interrupts
Arduino Playgrounds - Interrupts: http://playground.arduino.cc/code/interrupts

On Fritzing:
Fritzing official site: http://fritzing.org/home
A quick overview on Fritzing: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor

Week #14's Wednesday Evening Training: A good old Micro controller klusavond

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training, we had a good old "klusavond" (Dutch for "a pleasant and educational evening in which we worked on our own projects and shared knowledge") on Micro controllers.

We gave some demo's on the proceedings on our projects, discussed the usage of sensors and I gave a short intro on Fritzing. Fritzing is a nice and free CAD application that can be used to design breadboard circuits for Arduino and Raspberry Pi. It's easy to use and I often use it to create illustrations for manuals for Arduino and Raspberry Pi labs.

Next Wednesday Evening Training...

Next Wednesday Evening Training, we'll continue our experiments with Micro controllers with a special lab: "Whack a LED!" using the Arduino Micro controller. Make sure to follow my posts!

Further study

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

On Arduino:
Arduino Interrupts Tutorial (explanations, 2 demo's/labs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyOiTw0oQc
My YouTube playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvV86iiXFJY-BRxOsP2A2pnH
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7
Arduino - Multitasking (e.g. interrupts): https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-2/overview
Arduino Interrupts: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Interrupts
Arduino Playgrounds - Interrupts: http://playground.arduino.cc/code/interrupts

On the Raspberry Pi:
Raspberry Pi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
Raspberry Pi (official site): https://www.raspberrypi.org
Comparison of single-board computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_computers

On Fritzing:
Fritzing official site: http://fritzing.org/home
A quick overview on Fritzing: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

You 'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Work @Capgemini?

Do you want to join us? We're always looking for and well-motivated young professionals. Do you have a bachelor or master degree or extensive practical experience? Or do you have a relevant ICT / Informatics training and you have become curious about us? Please send me an mail. Working for us gives you access to all Wednesday Evening Trainings!

Week #4's Wednesday Evening Training: Arduino your house and an intro to the Fritzing electronic circuit designer

This evening, one of our IoT champions, Aishwarya Dhall, gave a good introduction of the Arduino technology with some nice handson labs. We do this on a regular basis in our Wednesday Evening Trainings, to give our colleagues the opportunity to catch up on IoT any time during the year. More experienced colleagues continued with their own labs. In this way everyone can acquire knowledge and experience with this technology at their own pace.

So, what again was an Arduino?

An Arduino is like a little computer (microcontroller) where you can read input of a (example) sensor and can control your output. Like lights, LCD screen, speaker etc. It’s easy to program the Arduino. Read more in my other blog posts: https://hansrontheweb.blogspot.com/search?q=Arduino

Fritzing electronic circuit designer

Also this evening, I gave an introduction into the  Fritzing electronic circuit editor. Ever tried to make clear photo's of your Arduino or any other electronic circuit for your IoT device? I did, and I did not succeed. Using the Fritzing editor you can create a clear design and share this. See my SlideShare presentation below.

Fritzing breadboard editor from HansRontheWeb

(source: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor)

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

On Arduino:
Arduino Interrupts Tutorial (explanations, 2 demo's/labs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyOiTw0oQc
My YouTube playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvV86iiXFJY-BRxOsP2A2pnH
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7
Arduino - Multitasking (e.g. interrupts): https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-2/overview
Arduino Interrupts: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Interrupts
Arduino Playgrounds - Interrupts: http://playground.arduino.cc/code/interrupts

On Fritzing:
Fritzing official site: http://fritzing.org/home
A quick overview on Fritzing: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

You 'll find post of previous sessions on my blog and on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Week #2's Wednesday Evening Training: an IoT "Klusavond" on Domoticz, interrupts and a great brainstorm

This week, we had our first Wednesday Evening Training of 2019! We started with a good old IoT "klusavond" in which we discussed several topics:

• Domoticz home automation
• Implementing interrupts with the Arduino
• Brainstorm on this years IoT topics in the Wednesday Evening Training

Domoticz home automation

Luc Slutter, on of our IoT experts, gave us an excellent introduction into home automation with Domoticz. Domoticz is a compact home automation system that allows you to operate a multitude of devices, sensors and smart devices. You can control Domoticz via various devices, such as your laptop, tablet and smartphone. The user environment is web-based, and can be installed on different devices.

Luc showed us the features, technology and gave us a demonstration and technology walkthrough of his own home built automation solution.

Great stuff! We will definitely continue with Domoticz (and similar platforms) this year.

Implementing interrupts with the Arduino

Reading values from sensors in your IoT device (like the Raspberry Pi of Arduino) can be done by, roughly speaking, constantly interrogating them or reacting on changed measured values. The first approach requires a program loop in which all sensors are queried. This is rather inefficient and, depending on the implementation, can also give untimely measurements. The program may not react fast enough to changes in measurements. An alternative to this approach is an interrupt implementation in which the hardware detects voltage changes in the hardware pins (to which the sensors are linked), stops processing the main program and runs a specially created interrupt routine. This is a more efficient and accurate approach which also yields neater code.












This evening I gave an introduction and demo of an interrupt implementation using the Arduino. The demo consisted of a button being pressed, generating a value change on one on the Arduino pins, causing an interrupt routine to be fired in my C program loaded in the Arduino. The interrupt routine then activates another pin which turns on a LED. My C program kept the status of the LED (on/off) and, dependent of this status, could switch the LED on and off. A very simple example, clearly demonstrating the interrupt approach.

Brainstorm on this years IoT topics in the Wednesday Evening Training

We also had an inspiring brainstorm on IoT topics we should address in 2019, led by our IoT champion (and Young professional of 2018!) Aishwarya Dhall. In 2019 there is still a lot to experiment and learn in the field of IoT. Here we are thinking of experimenting with various new sensors, home automation, integration of IoT devices and (cloud) platforms and experimenting with new applications.

We'll continue our IoT workshop on January 23th. Make sure you don't miss my posts on this!

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post or play around with the technology? Here are some links…

On Arduino:
Arduino Interrupts Tutorial (explanations, 2 demo's/labs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtyOiTw0oQc
My YouTube playlist on Arduino: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvV86iiXFJY-BRxOsP2A2pnH
10 Awesome Beginner Arduino Projects: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/RoyTobby/10-awesome-beginner-arduino-projects-78a6a6
Arduino project - Adaptive LED Morse Code Decoder and Timer Interrupt: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/shjin/adaptive-led-morse-code-decoder-and-timer-interrupt-8d18a7
Arduino - Multitasking (e.g. interrupts): https://learn.adafruit.com/multi-tasking-the-arduino-part-2/overview

Arduino Interrupts: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Interrupts

Arduino Playgrounds - Interrupts: http://playground.arduino.cc/code/interrupts

On Domoticz:
Domoticz official site: http://www.domoticz.com
My YouTube playlist on Domoticz: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvWmAEqHS_w_l9Suj4lT05VX
(Dutch) Controle over je apparaten met Domoticz en Raspberry Pi: https://computertotaal.nl/artikelen/internet-thuis/controle-over-je-apparaten-met-domoticz-en-raspberry-pi

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

You 'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Last week's Wednesday Evening Training: a practical introduction to IoT with Arduino

What’s an Arduino? An Arduino is like a little computer (microcontroller) where you can read input of a (example) sensor and can control your output. Like lights, LCD screen, speaker etc. It’s easy to program the Arduino.

One of our IoT champions, Aishwarya Dhall, offers a good introduction training of the Arduino technology with some nice handson labs. She also shows and explains the exciting IoT projects she's done with Capgemini.

Exciting technology... definity to be continued!

This week (actually this evening), we took a dive into Quantum Computer technology using IBM tooling. My blogpost on tonight's session will be published shortly.

Try it yourself? Here are some pointers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino

The official site: https://www.arduino.cc/

Getting started: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage

Development tools: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Basic labs & explanation: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage-0007

Keeping up to date: https://twitter.com/arduino

A nice intro video (in only 8 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtLwoNJ6klE

Want to take a look at our previous Wednesday Evening Trainings?

Take a look here at my previous posts on this blog or at LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

#werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #capgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #iot #arduino #softwareengineering

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: a "klusavond" on a giant Arduino driven LED cube, a lot of sensors and generating 3D Archimate models

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training we had some great demo's and discussions on our individual projects on IoT and 3D modelling.

A lot of IoT

Aish showed us her giant LED cube (10x10x10 LED's, that's a lot of soldering!) and explained to us how she managed to build and run it. We discussed powering such a large collection of LED's and how the software was designed. Such a bug LED cube offers plenty of applications, including running 3D animations and games within the cube. We've started building a graphics library for basic LED handling that is going to be a great help in building such applications.

Aish also showed us her multi sensor project; a test platform on which all sorts of sensors are installed. We discusses the various sensor types, how to connect and use them and how (combined) measurements can best be done. Interesting stuff! One of the topics we also discussed is the way which the sensors are read in the software. That can be done in a loop but also using interrupts (low level event handlers). The latter method is faster, less error prone and cleaner. We'll be investigating this technique in the upcoming Wednesday Evening Training IoT sessions.

Archimate architecture models in BabylonJS 3D

This week's session, I gave give a demo of my BabylonJS prototype in which an Archimate model view (using the free Archi editor) is converted into a BabylonJS 3D model. For complex architectures, 3D modelling may give more insight than plain 2D models. Worth doing some experiments to see whether this is a good approach. The Technical Proof of Concept is running great. It uses MySQL as a central database and a simple website with some Web Workers to gather model data, generating and continuously updating a JavaScript Archimate model and a derived Babylon 3D model from this in the background. Our colleague Fred van Nimwegen also joined my project and he had experimented with Neo4j in which he stored the Archimate model.  Neo4j is a graph database (while MySQL is a relational database). Graph databases have some advantages over relational databases, mainly when querying data collections that naturally resemble networks. And that is exactly what an architectural model resembles: a network of related nodes. Moreover: modern architectures are getting more dynamic and will change over time more rapidly. When analyzing an architecture model to answer architectural questions like "what will happen when I change this?", an efficient query language and dito database are very convenient. We've planned a Wednesday Evening Training session on Graph databases and Neo4j in november. Fred will then share his knowledge gained with us.

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post? Here are some links…

Considering building your own LED cube? Start simple with a 4x4x4 cube (still 64 LEDS, but at least you won't be needing a nuclear plant to power it): https://www.instructables.com/id/4x4x4-LED-Cube-Arduino-Uno/
BabylonJS: https://www.babylonjs.com
Archi: https://www.archimatetool.com

Archimate tool database plugin: https://github.com/archi-contribs/database-plugin

Neo4j: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo4j

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings

You 'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Next week 's Wednesday Evening Training

Next week, we'll have the intro on Progressive Web Apps (PWA). This a hot topic in the world of web development and its only growing further in popularity. It is a relatively new way to develop applications for the mobile phone, combining the best of the web and apps. We will cover benefits using a PWA instead of traditional hybrid/native solutions, the basics and possibilities of a PWA, show some examples in functionality and give an example of how you can get started building your own PWA’s quickly. Yes, there will also be a handson lab. In later sessions we expect to cover topics like push notifications, background refresh, et cetera. 

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: continuing our 3d and IoT projects and a bit of Windows programming

This Wednesday Evening Training, we continued our exploration of IoT and 3D technologies and learned about Windows programming.

Also: a special welcome to our guests from Siemens Germany: Florian, Alexander and Achim.

Windows DIB Buffer and Sound Buffer

First we had a nice demo and code walkthrough of our colleague Quincy Jacobs, who has experimented with the Windows DIB Buffer and Sound Buffer using good old C++/C. This ignited a lively discussion on wave and sound generation and techniques used for that. It took me right back to the era of home computers, in which I experimented a lot with the Commodore 64's SID (Sound Interface Device) programmable sound generator chip. Revolutionary for it's time (see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_SID).

BabylonJS

Next, I gave an update on my BabylonJS Archimate model project. This week, I had implemented an Observer to keep the Archimate (JavaScript Object) model in sync with the BabylonJS model. This enables the 3D model of the architecture being updated at runtime. I abandoned the proxy approach that I mentioned last week, since this is not supported by IE (in Edge it is supported) and IMHO it's too early to exclude IE. Instead I used a classic Observer implementation in JavaScript. We did a code walkthrough and discussed application of the Observer- and Factory pattern in general and in JavaScript. There is interest to plan a separate knowledge session on BabylonJS and WebGL. BabylonJS is based on WebGL (Web Graphics Library), which is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins.

To be continued...

RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification)

As promised last week, we took a look at RFID technology. Roughly speaking: using a reader/writer  your application can interact with RFID tags (e.g. in your security card). Your RFID tag provides a unique id to your application, which you can use as a key in your database. In a nutshell this is the basis of access and registration systems. At very low costs, a few Euro's actually, you can have a lot of fun in your IoT project! See the links below for resources on this.
We could use RFID labels and a scanner for building an interactive toy for young children (see my last week's post on this). Based on RFID and Lilypad Arduino technology we should be able to create some kind of easily foldable and transportable carpet on which you can place all kinds of tagged objects and interact with them using an sowed in Lilypad Arduino.

Anyway... a lot to learn!

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post? Here are some links...

RFID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification
Tutorial 12 for Arduino: RFID Card Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlSLwcbeTU
What is RFID? How RFID works? RFID Explained in Detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukfpq71BoMo
MF522 RFID Write data to a tag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=uihjXyMuqMY
RFID Programming Made Simple and Cheap: https://www.developer.com/net/article.php/3628811/RFID-Programming-Made-Simple-and-Cheap.htm
BabylonJS, see my previous 19th july post: https://hansrontheweb.blogspot.com/2018/07/this-weeks-wednesday-evening-training_19.html
Understand the Factory Design Pattern in plain javascript (one of the many articles on this): https://medium.com/front-end-hacking/understand-the-factory-design-pattern-in-plain-javascript-20b348c832bd
The Observer Pattern in JavaScript explained: https://pawelgrzybek.com/the-observer-pattern-in-javascript-explained/
WebGL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings

You'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Next Wednesday Evening Training

Next Wednesday Evening Training, we'll take a deep dive into Micro Services. We'll discuss this from both an architectural point of view and a (Java) software engineering point of view. Demo's will be shown, code walkthroughs will be done and hopefully we'll have yet again a lively discussion!

Experiment, learn and have fun!


#capgemini #werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #3d #virtualreality #unity3d #babylonjs #arduino #rfid #iot #internetofthings #archimate #archi #patterns #windowsprogramming #c #c++

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: continuing our Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Babylon projects and brainstorming on new projects

This Wednesday Evening Training, we have continued our exploration of IoT. We made progress on our projects and had a brainstorm of two new project initiatives: creating an application for tuning musical instruments (yes, like a digital pitchfork like the one that you can buy online for a few Euro's, but building one is a lot more fun) and building an interactive toy for young children (yes, with lots of lights and sounds, robust and easy to travel with).

One of the nice things of the Wednesday Evening Trainings is that it's free format. We, as a group, can decide on the spot what topics we want to discuss and what learning form we'll adopt. That's agile! In this case, two of our colleagues came up with some idea's for which we could immediately search for suitable technologies. In case of the toy project, we found out that using RFID and Lilypad Arduino we should be able to create some kind of easily foldable and transportable carpet on which you can place all kinds of tagged objects and interact with them using an sowed in Lilypad Arduino. It's a rough concept, but this could work.
Anyway... a lot to figure out to realize this. Therefore, the next Wednesday Evening Training will contain the following topics: RFID and Arduino Lilypad. We'll gather some links, labs, tools and share video's for this. There is a lot to be found on the internet. See my links below for a few pointers.

 

Also, this evening, we had a portion of BabylonJS for dinner. Last week I showed my first prototypes of a 3d architecture model. This week I showed a mechanism to synchronise a JavaScript based Archimate architecture model with a BabylonJS 3d (Mesh) model. Since it must be possible to immediately reflect changed in one model into the other, I looked for some kind of observer pattern implementation. I chose not to use a heavy framework like Angular, but keep my application as light weight as possible (perhaps I have to say: "Frameworkless JavaScript"). Luckily, JavaScript currently includes proxies, which is quite useful in this situation.
Also next week, I'll show my proceedings on the prototypes and do some explanation on JavaScript proxies.

To be continued...

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post? Here are some links...

BabylonJS portal: https://www.babylonjs.com
JavaScript Proxies: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Proxy
RFID Basics: How to Read and Write Tags: https://blog.atlasrfidstore.com/rfid-basics-read-write-tags
Arduino hardware, also the Lilypad: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products
The ArchiMate Enterprise Architecture Modeling Language: http://www.opengroup.org/subjectareas/enterprise/archimate-overview
Archi Open Source ArchiMate Modelling Tool (a free and easy to use open source modelling tool to create ArchiMate models and sketches): https://www.archimatetool.com/

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings

You'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Next week

In next week's Wednesday Evening Training, we'll be having an additional "klusavond" (translated into English as "a typical Dutch evening of doing, learning and a lot of fun") on Arduino, RFID and BabylonJS.


#capgemini #werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #3d #virtualreality #unity3d #babylonjs #arduino #arduinolilypad #rfid #iot #internetofthings #archimate #archi

Last week's Wednesday Evening Training: continuing our Arduino & Raspberry Pi handson labs

Last week's Wednesday Evening Training (sorry for the delay of this post), we have continued our exploration of IoT using Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

One of our IoT champions, Aishwarya Dhall, shared her prototypes of multi sensor projects and idea's with us.

There will certainly be a sequel to this session, there remains a lot to discover! To be continued...

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings

You'll find post of previous sessions here: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining

Next week

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training, we'll continued our exploration of Virtual Reality using Unity3D and BabylonJS. See my next post (in a moment).


#capgemini #werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #iot #arduino #raspberrypi

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: continuing our IoT handson labs (Raspberry Pi, Arduino and lot's of LEDs)

In this Wednesday Evening Training we continued our IoT labs on Arduino and Raspberry Pi. There was soldering (yes, the LED cube), even more LED's, a quick intro to Arduino (C) programming and my first steps in programming the Arduino Nano using the web and windows editor.

We programmed a long LED strip and experimented with various light color and sequence patterns.

Aish gave us a quick intro into the C programming language (actually, for some of the older colleagues like me, it was a recap of a language that we learned a long time ago :) ) and the basics in writing/reading the Arduino ports.

We also experimented with the Arduino's web editor which offers a nice online IDE (Integrated Development Environment), with example projects available as well.

In the Wednesday Evening Training of july 11th, we'll continue our labs. We'll have a demo/walkthrough on an IoT project using multiple sensor at the same time and we'll be taking a closer more comprehensive look at the Arduino's IDE. It may also be a good time to look for future handson labs... maybe a programmable robot arm?

Thanks Aish for sharing your knowledge!

Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics? Here are some links...
Connect and Control WS2812 RGB LED Strips via Raspberry Pi: https://tutorials-raspberrypi.com/connect-control-raspberry-pi-ws2812-rgb-led-strips/
Getting Started with Arduino Web Editor on Various Platforms: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Arduino_Genuino/getting-started-with-arduino-web-editor-on-various-platforms-4b3e4a
Step by step guide for Arduino Web editor part 1 (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvl8HkajXHg

Next week

In next week's Wednesday Evening Training, we'll be taking a close look at the Aurelia framework. Aurelia is a JavaScript client framework for web, mobile and desktop that leverages simple conventions to empower your creativity. It's a kind of Angular, React or Knockout. Some key point of Aurelia: modern architecture, two-way databinding, extensible HTML, routing & UI composition, broad language support, use ES5, ES 2015, ES 2016 and TypeScript, testable… etc.

 

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings

You'll find post of previous sessions in LinkedIn as well, see: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=%23wednesdayeveningtraining


#capgemini #werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #iot #internetofthings #arduino #raspberrypi #ledcube

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: a "klusavond" with Arduino and an electronics 101

A quick refresher training in the field of electronics tonight; a real electronics 101 by Aishwarya Dhall and Harrie van der Plas.

Components, current vs voltage, measuring, a bit of arithmetic and building some electronics circuits ourselves tonight. Arduino is best used with a breadboard. This is a handy board on which you can build your electronics circuit quickly and easily. We also learned to calculate and measure voltage and currents in electronic circuits. Very handy when preventing your Arduino's ports from having a meltdown. It's only a couple of Volts, I know, but still...

Thanks Aish and Harrie!

Do you want to know more on electronics? Here are some pointers...

Arduino Uno Tutorial Basic circuit breadboarding
A simple guide to electronic components
Arduino Lesson 2: Multimeter & Collin's Lab: Multimeters

Next week's Wednesday Evening Training

In next week's Wednesday Evening Training, we'll start creating a programmable LED cube. Thats a bunch of LED lights, put together in a cube. Since each LED can be put on and off inividually, you can create awsome effects. We may even be doing a bit of soldering!

For an example of a LED cube, see: 8x8x8 LED cube with Arduino Uno on YouTube and below.

Post on previous Wednesday Evening Trainings on LinkedIn.



#capgemini #werkenbijcapgemini #lifeatcapgemini #wednesdayeveningtraining #iot #arduino #raspberrypi #electronics101