Showing posts sorted by date for query arduino. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query arduino. Sort by relevance Show all posts

12/11/19

The Wednesday Evening Training: a recap of 2019 and quick preview of 2020

Also this year we organized around 50 sessions on diverse technical topics. We learned a lot and we had a lot of fun...



On 3D graphics... Quincy Jacos and Remko Haagsma organised a number of sessions covering various techniques in computer graphics like WebGL, Unity 3D, Blender and of course the math involved. We dealt with one topic per evening and had also have time to work on projects together or alone. At the end of 2019, we mainly discussed topics that were close to the basics. The sessions that have been held so far were about the layout of the track and the Unity game engine.

On Quantum Computing... Julian van Velzen organised sessions in which the basics of Quantum Computing were discussed: the physics, gates, programming and platforms (IBM, Microsoft) involved.

On architecture... Amir Westhoff, Fred van Nimwegen and Hans van Rijs discussed ways in which architecture can be modelled, stored & queried and visualized. Some of the topics: Neo4J (graph databases) and Apache Jena for storing and querying models, patterns, modelling in Archimate/Archi and UML and model visualization prototypes in threejs (2D/3D).

On IoT and Microcontrollers... Aishwarya Dhall organised sessions on Arduino, Raspberry Pi. In various labs we experimented with various sensors, made our own LED cube and learned to implement basic home automation solutions using IFTT (If This Then That) and Smart Home Devices like Alexia.

We discussed various topics on software engineering and specific technology stacks like C#, Python, Code Reviewing & SonarQube, ASP.NET Core, WebSockets and SignalR.

On mobile we had workshops on Android Studio, Ionic4 and Progressive Web Apps (PWA).

There was also room for Frontend technologies like Angular, Web Components, FlexBox and Vanilla Frontend Architectures (that is: building the frontend without frameworks).

On security, we had sessions on Encryption and Social Engineering in which we discovered that you don't need to use advanced technology to hack an organisation.

Various platforms were discussed, like Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes and DevonFW.

And in our "klusavonden" (which translates from Dutch as "an educational and sociable evening full of experiments on technology") we worked on our projects on various topics, gave demos and held discussed on the topics involved.

Thanks to all colleagues who contributed to the sessions by sharing their knowledge, experience, prototypes, demos and participating in the inspiring discussions!


There remains a lot to learn in our Wednesday Evening Training... a quick preview on 2020


In 2020, we'll continue our tracks on Graphics, IoT & Micro controllers, Architecture and our Combi klusavonden. And more topics have been put on the agenda... and there is still room for more.

The agenda for the sessions in January and February 2020 will include:

  • Combi IoT klusavond: Squat for coffee (Arduino and sensors)
  • Practical 3D Graphics & Programming: Practical 3D Graphics & Programming: Unity movement
  • A practical introduction to the Kotlin cross-platform programming language
  • A practical introduction to the ReactJS framework
  • Combi IoT klusavond: Automate your house using IFTTT.com (If-This-Then-That)
  • Practical 3D Graphics & Programming: Blender modeling
  • Architecture: API management


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


Would you like to attend one of our Wednesday Evening Training sessions?

There is a limited amount of seats available to attend our sessions. Please send me an email if you would like more information on the sessions and the the possibilities to attend.


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 email. Working for us gives you access to all Wednesday Evening Trainings!

11/16/19

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!

7/4/19

Week #27's Wednesday Evening Training: A good old IoT "klusavond" featuring the Arduino microcontroller and Mozilla WebThings

Two topics, this evening, on Internet of Things (IoT)...

An introduction of the Arduino technology with some nice handson labs by Aishwarya Dhall

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.

A first exploration van Mozilla WebThings (by me)

Well, this is quite a new thing and quite promising!
As a result of Mozilla's Project Things, Mozilla WebThings is an open platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web.

It consists, roughly, of the following products:

  • WebThings Gateway: a software distribution for smart home gateways which allows users to directly monitor and control their smart home.
  • WebThings Framework: A collection of re-usable software components to help developers build their own functionality (web things).
  • Things UI: a unified web interface to monitor and control all smart home devices.

The interesting thing is that WebThings allows users to directly monitor and control their smart home over the web, without a middleman. Yes, no subscription for some kind of portal needed. This smart home gateways is focused on privacy, security and interoperability.

Installation and setup of WebThings is quite easy. In tonight's Wednesday Evening Training we just did that, and brainstormed on the applications and next steps we're going to explore next.

Interesting stuff, we'll definitely continue with WebThings!



Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post?

On IoT technology
What is an IoT Gateway? (SAP EA Explorer - Short Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ObesqWDpEo
Mozilla IoT - Mozilla IoT team: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/

On Mozilla WebThings
Mozilla Project Things: https://labs.mozilla.org/projects/project-things
What Mozilla WebThings Has to Offer for the IoT: https://blog.paessler.com/what-mozilla-webthings-has-to-offer-for-the-iot
Introducing Mozilla WebThings: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/04/introducing-mozilla-webthings
Simple server for WiFi101, ESP8266, or ESP32 boards compliant with Mozilla's proposed WoT API: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/webthing-arduino
Mozilla WebThings - An open platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web: https://iot.mozilla.org/
Easy Home Automation With Mozilla IoT & Raspberry Pi - Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maSdWQHSzCg
Getting Started with the WebThings Gateway for Raspberry Pi®: https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-getting-started-guide.html
Mozilla WebThings Documentation - A guide to using the WebThings Gateway and WebThings Framework: https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/

On demo's and examples (video's from my YouTube channel)
Mozilla Project Things Workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEHL3ZYS790&list=PLSiMhBs48YvXSmJyFMt3eYOG12Llcqyi-&index=23&t=0s
A Universal IoT Gateway? Setting up Mozilla IOT Gateway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZexWQJtni4&list=PLSiMhBs48YvXSmJyFMt3eYOG12Llcqyi-&index=24&t=0s
Mozilla IoT Framework - Kathy Giori (Mozilla): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWCa6byiPco&list=PLSiMhBs48YvXSmJyFMt3eYOG12Llcqyi-&index=25&t=0s
mozilla-iot-gateway-sensors-20180406rzr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4haKrPetGmg&list=PLSiMhBs48YvXSmJyFMt3eYOG12Llcqyi-&index=26&t=0s
mozilla things gateway - orange pi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4eTym_TVFo&list=PLSiMhBs48YvXSmJyFMt3eYOG12Llcqyi-&index=27&t=0s

On communities
Mozilla IoT GitHub Community: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/
Mozilla IoT - Mozilla IoT team: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/
Mozilla IoT - Discussion board: https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/iot
Mozilla IRC: https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC
MozIoT - The Mozilla IoT Team (a small team inside the Emerging Technologies department at Mozilla, working on the Internet and Web of Things): https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozIoT

On related topics
Mozilla IoT - Supported hardware: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Supported-Hardware
Raspberry Pi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/
Balena Etcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives, safely and easily: https://www.balena.io/etcher/
Other Mozilla projects: https://labs.mozilla.org/projects/

Next week's Wednesday Evening Training

Next week we will have an update on our exploration of storing, querying and visualizing software architecture models. We’ll share the prototypes and discuss the proceedings of our research on using graph/noSQL/RDF databases like Neo4j and Apache Jena and 3djs / 3D force graphs.

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

What happened to the posts of previous Wednesday Evening Trainings?
Well, to be honest I am a bit behind with my blog posts. I hope to catch up with my work in the coming period.

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!

5/20/19

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

5/3/19

Week #17's Wednesday Evening Training: Quantum Computing & Encryption

On the 24th of April, the 6th edition of the Wednesday Evening Training on Quantum computing was held.

The topic was:  how quantum computing could effect encryption.

In this session, we had a great discussion on how long the most modern supercomputer would take to calculate every single answer in an RSA 2048 bit encryption calculation. And how a Quantum Computer could help.

The time that it would take was estimated to be much longer then the universe will be in existence. That is why this form of encryption is very secure and used everywhere today. However,  immense quantum parallelism would enable quantum computers to break RSA within days or hours.

This would mean that current cryptography would be completely useless when quantum computers are ready. To make matters worse, loads of data is already logged today by companies and governments. This means that data that is secure today, will not be protected tomorrow. We should, therefore, start to think about how long we want to keep our data safe.


Thanks Julian, for sharing your knowledge with us!




Further reading

Do you want to read more on the topics in this post?

Take a look at my post: "Quantum computing: an introduction and a lot of links to resources":
https://hansrontheweb.blogspot.com/2018/11/quantum-computing-introduction.html

Or visit my YouTube channel on Quantum Computing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSiMhBs48YvWecXqKP00NGuiP5UD6RoCk

On specific topics:

Bra–ket notation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%E2%80%93ket_notation
Quantum Mechanics Concepts: 1 Dirac Notation and Photon Polarisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBh7Xqbh5JQ
Conjugate transpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugate_transpose
What are theta, phi and lambda in cu1(theta, ctl, tgt) and cu3(theta, phi, lam, ctl, tgt)? What are the rotation matrices being used? https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/2707/what-are-theta-phi-and-lambda-in-cu1theta-ctl-tgt-and-cu3theta-phi-lam
Grover - A fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9605043

Next week's Wednesday Evening Training

Next week we'll have a good old "klusavond" in which we will have multiple topics, like the Arduino Micro processor, IoT  Neo4j, WebGL (continuation of this week's session) et al.

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!

4/13/19

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!

3/8/19

Week #10's Wednesday Evening Training: Control your Raspberry Pi using LUIS on Azure (part 1)

This session was the first part of two sessions where we got an introduction on the Azure Cognitive Speech Services, combined with LUIS, .NET Core and the Raspberry Pi.


Raspberry Pi

In many Wednesday Evening Trainings we experimented with the Raspberry Pi. This is a  is a series of small single-board computers developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries. The Raspberry Pi can be also be used in home automation, industrial automation and commercial products. Several generations of Raspberry Pis have been released. All models feature a Broadcom system on a chip (SoC) with an integrated ARM-compatible central processing unit (CPU) and on-chip graphics processing unit (GPU). The Raspberry Pi Foundation provides Raspbian, a Debian-based Linux distribution for download, as well as third-party Ubuntu, Windows 10 IoT Core, RISC OS, and specialised media centre distributions.[109] It promotes Python and Scratch as the main programming languages, with support for many other languages. .NET Core 2.0 applications will also run on a Raspberry Pi (see the resources below).

LUIS

LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) is a machine learning-based service to build natural language into apps, bots, and IoT devices. LUIS enables you to integrate natural language understanding into your applications without having to create machine learning models. Instead, you can focus on the application's logic.

A client application for LUIS is any application that communicates with a user in natural language to complete a task. The application sends utterances (text) to the LUIS natural language processing endpoint API and receives the results (interpretation) as a JSON response. In this JSON response, Intents describe how LUIS determines understands what a user wants to do. Entities recognized by LUIS will also be returned. The client application then uses the Intents to make decisions about how to fulfill the user's requests.

For this workshop, a (free) LUIS account was needed. This could be created on the LUIS portal at https://www.luis.ai. This portal also offers an excellent intro into Artificial Intelligence.



So what did we do this evening?

We built a prototype based on a sample app with which we could control two LED lights on a Raspberry Pi by spoken commands. The example prototype was built for a Raspberry Pi and contained a Console App for recording spoken text through a microphone, a LUIS app for voice recognition, and an ASP.NET API, directly installed on a Raspberry Pi that controlled the LED lights.

The sample prototype used in this session used the following hardware:

  • Raspberry Pi 3B
  • One 40-way T-Cobbler Breakout Board for Raspberry Pi
  • One 830 point Breadboard
  • One yellow led light
  • One blue led light
  • Two resistances of 500 ohm
  • Four male to male cables to connect the different parts

With the prototype we could turn on and off a yellow and a blue LED light by using the following voice commands: “turn on the yellow / blue light” and “turn off the yellow / blue light” “. The prototype therefore had to be able to understand whether I had to turn a LED on or off, but also which color that had to be turned on or off.

We therefore had to create a LUIS app with which we could analyze a spoken command and determine the intents of this command. A console application that received a voice command and forwarded it to our LUIS app had to be created as well. The LUIS app then sended back a response containing the received voice command and an overview of the intents.

To convert the results that we received from LUIS to GPIO commands on the Raspberry Pi, we had to build an ASP.NET Core Web API that had to be installed directly onto the Raspberry Pi. Therefore, .NET Core had to be installed on the Raspberry Pi. No problem, since .NET Core also runs perfectly on Linux.

Thanks Ronnie Jongenelen, for sharing your knowledge with us! Great stuff!



Next steps...

Next Wednesday Evening Training we will continue our lab. Also: we will be experimenting on using alternative solution components: MQTT and NodeRED. Since the Arduino (single-board computer) also has our attention in the Wednesday Evening Trainings, we'll also have a brainstorm on how to implement this solution on the Arduino.

Further reading

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

On Azure:
Microsoft Azure - Cognitive Services: https://azure.microsoft.com/nl-nl/services/cognitive-services/
Quickstart: Use prebuilt Home automation app: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-get-started-create-app
RaspberryIO - Pi's hardware access from .NET: https://github.com/unosquare/raspberryio/blob/master/README.md
Setting up Raspbian and .NET Core 2.0 on a Raspberry Pi: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/david/2017/07/20/setting_up_raspian_and_dotnet_core_2_0_on_a_raspberry_pi/

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
Raspbian Debian-based computer operating system for the Raspberry Pi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspbian

On LUIS:
LUIS: http://www.luis.ai
Tutorial: Recognize intents from speech using the Speech SDK for C#: https://docs.microsoft.com/nl-nl/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/how-to-recognize-intents-from-speech-csharp
Learn Azure (learn at your own pace): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/azure/

On Azure/LUIS/IoT combination:
Quickstart: Use prebuilt Home automation app: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/luis/luis-get-started-create-app
Control your Raspberry Pi using LUIS on Azure (Part 1): https://www.ronniejongenelen.nl/control-your-raspberry-pi-using-luis-on-azure-part-1/#blog
Control your Raspberry Pi using LUIS on Azure (Part 2): https://www.ronniejongenelen.nl/control-your-raspberry-pi-using-luis-on-azure-part-2/#blog
Control your Raspberry Pi using LUIS on Azure (Part 3): https://www.ronniejongenelen.nl/control-your-raspberry-pi-using-luis-on-azure-part-3/#blog
Handson Lab - Combine LUIS and the Azure Speech Service to control a Raspberry Pi (sources with Ronnies' hands on lab): https://github.com/rwjjongenelen/CognitiveServices.Speech.IntentRecognition

Other stuff:
A nice and free tool for designing electronic circuits: http://fritzing.org

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!

1/26/19

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.



(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

1/23/19

Using the Fritzing electronic circuit designer for your IoT (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, ...) project


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. I've done a little presentation and demo during tonight's Wednesday Evening Training. The post of this will be published shortly, but I could not resist publishing my Fritzing stuff now.



See my SlideShare presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/HansRontheWeb/fritzing-breadboard-editor

1/12/19

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 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


12/25/18

Week #51's Wednesday Evening Training: A practical introduction to Graph Databases and Neo4j

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training, Fred van Nimwegen and I gave an introduction to graph-oriented databases, and Neo4j in particular.



Why a session on this topic?

During our work with on of our customers, Fred and I work on quite large architectures, modeling them in Archimate and UML. Having an architecture model is only step 1, using it in an effective way is really important and is gives much more challenges. Usually, a collection of usefull architecture views are defined to illustrate the architecture from the point of view of the stakeholders. The Archimate standard provides a set of views and the 4+1 architectural view model as well. But when architectures are getting more extensive and more dynamic, you'll more often find yourself needing a powerful way of "searching" and "selecting" relevant elements in an architecture model. Since architectures can be stored in databases (e.g. by using plugins like the Database export/import plugin for Archi), you can query them. Fred and I have done some research on this and found out that querying a relational database isn't that efficient. You can look on an architecture model as a collection of element (types) interconnected with each other. Each architecture element can have a relation of some kind with another element. For example: a service has a assignment relation with an application interface that has a realization relation with an application that can have serving relations with other applications. Finding all services that in some way are influences by infrastructure processes, for example, is not that easy. It's a network that is hard (inefficient) to query on using a relational database using, for example, joins or procedures. This is caused by the concept of a relational database that just isn't suitable for models that look like networks of interconnected elements. Luckily, the Database export/import plugin for Archi also supports Neo4j, a graph database, which seems to be more suitable for this. Graph databases like Neo4j actually provide an excellent way of displaying complex architectures in which there exist many connections between elements.


So what is a graph database? And what is Neo4j?

A graph database is a type of NoSQL database that uses graph theory to store, map and query relationships. This is essentially a collection of nodes and edges. Each node represents an entity and each edge represents a connection or relationship between two nodes. Graph databases are very well suited for analyzing networks, e.g. to mine data from social media.

Neo4j is a graph database management system developed by Neo4j, Inc. Described by its developers as an ACID-compliant transactional database with native graph storage and processing, Neo4j is the most popular graph database according to DB-Engines ranking, and the 22nd most popular database overall.

Back to our Wednesday Evening Training...

This evening, Fred explained us the basics of graph databases, and us how to query networks using the Cypher Query Language. He also showed us prototypes of extensive Archimate models generated using Neo4j. Using Neo4j and three.js (JavaScript library) 3D views of architecture models (networks) were displayed and filtered, showing all kinds of relations between architecture elements. Quite a useful way of gaining insight in a complex architecture!

Of course there was plenty of opportunity for experimenting. We did some handson labs and did walk throughs of some examples and demo's. You can find these in the resources mentioned below.

We'll continue our research on architecture modeling using Neo4j for sure and in upcoming Wednesday Evening Trainings we'll update our community on our proceedings.

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 Graph databases:
What is a Graph Database? https://neo4j.com/developer/graph-database
Graph Databases for Beginners: Why Graph Technology Is the Future: https://neo4j.com/blog/why-graph-databases-are-the-future
Graph database: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database

On Neo4j:
Neo4j (GitHub repo): https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j
Neo4j homepage: https://neo4j.com/
Cypher Query Language: https://neo4j.com/developer/cypher-query-language/
Fred's GitHub repo (explanation, examples, in Dutch): https://gitlab.com/fredvn-woensdagavond/neo4j-2018-12
Learn Cypher in minutes: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/cypher
Neo4j Sandbox (handson labs, built-in guides and sample datasets for popular use cases): https://neo4j.com/sandbox-v2

Examples:
The Graph of Thrones [Season 7 Contest]: https://neo4j.com/blog/graph-of-thrones/
Dataset: Movie Database: https://neo4j.com/developer/movie-database/#_the_dataset
Exploring a UK Open Government Dataset with Neo4j: https://leanjavaengineering.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/exploring-a-uk-open-government-dataset-with-neo4j

On related topics:
4+1 architectural view model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%2B1_architectural_view_model
Database export/import plugin that store Archi models in a central database repository: https://github.com/archi-contribs/database-plugin
threejs (cross-browser JavaScript library and Application Programming Interface (API) used to create and display animated 3D computer graphics): https://threejs.org/

The next Wednesday Evening Training will be in 2019

January 9th 2019 will be our first Wednesday Evening Training in 2019. We'll start 2019 with an IoT "klusavond": continuing our projects on Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Whitty Cloud. Two of our IoT experts, Aishwarya Dhall and Luc Slutter, will share their knowledge and experience with us. We'll take a deep dive in interrupts and we'll get an introduction into the Domoticz lightweight Home Automation System.

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

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



11/1/18

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...

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

10/18/18

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and an intermezzo on cryptography

In this week's Wednesday Evening Training we had a great intro on Progressive Web Apps (PWA) by one of our front end engineers Olaf van Venetie and I. As an intermezzo, Bart van Beek gave an excellent intro and Q&A on cryptography.





Progressive Web Apps (PWA's): what's the buzz?

Progressive Web Apps is 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. 
This Wednesday Evening Training we covered the benefits using a PWA instead of traditional hybrid/native solutions, the basics and possibilities of a PWA. A PWA is actually just a basic web site that behaves like an App. Functionality like push notifications, offline usage, background processing (data loading from external resources, using Service Workers) can be implemented quite easily. We showed some neat examples of PWA's and we did a code walk through of a basic example (see the resources below). 







You can get started programming PWA's quick easily with the handson labs that Google provides. And that is just what we did during this evening.

In further sessions we can dive into more specific topics within the world of Progressive Web Apps, for example push notifications, background refresh, Service Workers and local storage.


An intermezzo on cryptography
Bart van Beek explained us the basics of cryptography, describing hashing strategies and answering questions from colleagues.




There definitely will be a sequel!
We are very enthusiastic on the PWA concept and it's potential to stirr the app development community. In upcoming Wednesday Evening Trainings we will take a deep dive in PWA related topics: notifications, service workers, local storage and combinations with other technologies like Web Assembly and frameworks like Angular. Also, we planned to take a security view on PWA's, what are the risks and how can we cope with these?
Also on cryptography, we'll will certainly discuss more cryptography topics in next Wednesday Evening Trainings.




Further reading

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

On Progressive Web Apps:

All you need to know about Progressive Web Apps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OJ24kCV-J8
Progressive Web Apps - Checklist: https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/checklist

Desktop Progressive Web Apps: https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/desktop
What Web Can Do Today - Can I rely on the Web Platform features to build my app? An overview of the device integration HTML5 API's: https://whatwebcando.today
PWA Rocks (PWA demo’s and example apps): https://pwa.rocks

Build a PWA yourself? Here are a neat lab that we used in our training:
Your First Progressive Web App: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/your-first-pwapp

On cryptography: 

Online examples of encrypting with well known standards: https://cryptii.com


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,  Aishwarya Dhall will give a workshop on the basics of Arduino's (IoT) development.