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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!

Past Wednesday Evening Trainings on all topics

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

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.

Fritzing breadboard editor from HansRontheWeb

(source: 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

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!

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