Barking Larry

I won’t pretend that anyone every even visits this site, so my goal is to simply log all endeavors into setting up RGB lights for my holiday display. This doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned my Android projects. In fact, I’m near ready to publish, but the load at work has been usurping any activity.

I’ll place here anything relevant to what I’ve discovered for RGB lights or, My own decisions and why. First, here is the before picture of my 32-channel display:

There are very few helpful sources out there, but they are there. Besides various people that have sites for their christmas displays, and videos, three come to mind that have gotten me through boot camp. They are:

1. Lightorama.com, or more specifically, forums.lightorama.com. While this is a vendor site, there are my delving into RGB area which the vendor doesn’t entirely provide product for. The vendor is very gracious in fostering the hobbyists, though I’m sure they’d prefer you buy their products. I started with two of their AC controllers, and will be updating my Software license to support my RGB setup (more on that Later). They stand behind their product line, but at a premium cost.

2. Holidaycoro.com – Another vendor, but David Moore has provided what I consider the RGB Dogma. He has 4 videos (on vimeo.com) that are a crash course for someone new to RGB. His got some great kits for RGB as well, including “experiment” kits. I’ve made room in my budget for his startup kit, and possibly the corostar kit as well.

3. AUSChristmaslighting.com – Ok, this is the place for questions and answers. This forum is run my my new found Australian friends, where low-voltage lighting is near the standard, and they are masters at RGB. There is a chat room as well, but for the US, I find it most active in the late evening. No question is a dumb question, and while I’ve found a WEALTH of knowledge for the basics, there is so much more way over my head at this time. And as I’ve become more educated on the topic, the chatroom leads to specific Q&A that may not be found in the forum, or if you’re like me and want answers fast.

RGB stands for the primary light emitting colors, Red, Green  and Blue. It’s how your TV works. When I was a kid (ok, I still do it) I’d look real close at the TV and notice that there were tons of red green and blue dots. When you back up a little, they blur into the colors you see on you TV. Same goes with these new strings of lights. There are red, green and blue LED’s placed closely together, and through the use of a controller, you control how bright each will be. At a distance, that gives you the many colors of the rainbow.

Wow, i can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted anything. Back at Android games again. Working on a new one, but I want to publish before I post pictures here. It will be soon! I even have my next idea. Mind you, these are things I’m interested in, so we’ll see if anyone else cares. Just about to publish to Amazon Mart as well as Google mart. While I’ve been confident with the coding stuff, Beta Testing, Deploying and Support had been my “blackbox” areas. Open Source to the rescue!

I’m using ACRA for troubleshooting, and osTicket as a helpdesk support system. Both are open source, and easy products to implement.

Sorry for the vagueness, more to follow soon!

What I was finding for binding a dropdown list in an insertemplate for a 3.5 Listview has been either erroneous or clunky. First the issue:

When triggering an Insert Template to appear, there is no event that occurs as the form is rendered, like the the Update form. So any dropdown list, pretty much needs to be filled before fact. Or not…..

I created a simple web control inherited from the dropdown, and have it load from a datasource on it’s load. With a couple of checks, it loads once, and doesn’t repeat the databind. While the code I  put here probably won’t work exactly as is outside of my app’s context (custom object collections are retrieved a bound) You’ll get the idea. Once you create the control, simply put it in the template. No additional work needed!

Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic
ImportsSystem.ComponentModel
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Web
Imports System.Web.UI
ImportsSystem.Web.UI.WebControls  <DefaultProperty("Text"), ToolboxData("<{0}:ServerControl1 runat=server></{0}:ServerControl1>")> _
Public ClassTypeDropDownList
InheritsDropDownList<Bindable(True), Category("Data"), DefaultValue(""), Localizable(True)> PropertyTypeName() As String
   Get
      Dim s As String = CStr(ViewState("TypeName"))
      If s Is Nothing Then
        Return "[" + Me.ID + "]"
      Else
        Return s
      End If
  End Get
  Set(ByVal Value As String)ViewState("TypeName") = Value
  End Set
End Property
<Bindable(True), Category("Data"), DefaultValue("False"), Localizable(True)> PropertyIsLoaded() As Boolean
Get
   IfViewState("IsLoaded") IsNot Nothing Then
     Return CBool(ViewState("IsLoaded"))
   Else
     Return False
   End If
End Get
Set(ByVal Value As Boolean)ViewState("IsLoaded") = Value
End Set
End Property

Private Sub ServerControl1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e AsSystem.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
	DimopRes AsdbhJRBusiness.OperationResult
	If Not Me.IsLoaded Then
		DimlItems As List(OfdbhJRBusiness.DataContracts.TypeContract)
		Dimotyp As NewdbhJRBusiness.Entities.TypeEntity(Me.TypeName) opRes = otyp.GetListItems

 		If opRes.Success = True ThenlItems =CType(opRes.data, List(OfdbhJRBusiness.DataContracts.TypeContract))
			Me.DataSource = lItems
			Me.DataBind()
			Me.IsLoaded = True

		End If
	otyp =Nothing


	End If
End Sub
End  Class

And here is what I've put in the aspx. Note the simple way to find to the value.  

 

<isd:TypeDropDownList runat="server" DataTextField="LongDesc"  

SelectedValue='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "AddressTypeGUID") %>' 

DataValueField="Id" ID="ddlAddresstype" TypeName="AddressType" /> 

 Hope this helps! I'll respond to any questions, but please be patient!

So I see that Google has published the new OS. I’ve downloaded it, and plan to assess the new features and maybe how I can put a few apps out fast. TwitWit has graced me with the skillset needed to do some cool stuff.

So sorry it’s been a while. Work has dealt me an overtime card that could last a couple of months, so I’ve been taking advantage of it. I think it’s a good thing, because it’s given me an opportunity to assess my goals with Android.  I’m a little discouraged by the (worthless) celebrity fanfare it’s received. It’s become…shallow. Mind you there are a few celebs out there who get it (BrentSpiner, donttrythis, PennGillette) but, the others have just ruined it for everyone else. I may continue efforts on TwitWit, for notoriety on the Twitter site, But plan to focus on areas that are scarce with development on the Android OS. Apparently, I’ve been secretive on my bio page. so I’ve updated it.

Found these links helpful for creating an upload class capable of supporting TwitXR .
Upload multipart form using httpclient
Converting file to ByteArray

I think I”ll go with TwitXR over TwitPic for their api. I’m no security expert, it seems to me that TwitXR api is more secure than others. TwitXR seems to at least cover themselves with some basic authentication, which I’m accustomed to. Also, I think this first version will not cache the images to the sd card. Maybe an option later.

This one kept me up at night. I thought I had the right format string, but my dates never worked write, though the strings were ok. Then I found this at http://svn.liferay.com/browse/plugins/trunk/portlets/twitter-portlet/docroot/WEB-INF/src/com/liferay/twitter/service/impl/FeedLocalServiceImpl.java?r=23183

 SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat( “EEE MMM d hh:mm:ss Z yyyy”);  �
Date createDate;
createDate = sdf.parse(<yourTwitterCreatedAtDateStringGoesHere>);