Category Archives: Computers

Pebble Development in 2020

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After a fair amount of trial and error I now have the Pebble SDK working on my Mac (macOS 10.15.4 Catalina). I was working from the guide here. I can now create, build and deploy programs and watch faces to my Pebble watch.

Firstly I had problems with the virtualenv command:

cd ~/pebble-dev/pebble-sdk-4.3-mac
virtualenv --no-site-packages .env
source .env/bin/activate
CFLAGS="" pip install -r requirements.txt
deactivate

It turns out the –no-site-packages flag is not required and should be omitted (see here for details).

I then had issues with no SDK being installed (and the scripts trying in vain to locate the SDK on the Internet). After trying:

pebble new-project testing

I was greeted with:

No SDK installed; installing the latest one...

Consulting Google yielded:

Cannot install SDK from pebbledevelopers

The key part of the reddit post is path to the SDK. I used the following to successfully install the SDK:

pebble sdk install https://github.com/aveao/PebbleArchive/raw/master/SDKCores/sdk-core-4.3.tar.bz2

The last fix was disabling the analytics tracking by creating a NO_TRACKING file in the SDK directory.

SDK Install Guide from pebble

iPad Keyboards

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After using the Logitech K380 Bluetooth Keyboard with my 6th Generation iPad for a while (as mentioned in my previous post), I spotted a second-hand Brydge keyboard online for $50. This was a great deal, worked well and cemented my love of Brydge keyboards.

Fast forward a few months and Brydge have the Brydge 9.7 on sale for $99, another great deal I quickly snapped up. This seems to be a later version (Model BRY1012) to the second-hand one I was using (Model BRY1001A) – it has extra keys on the trip right hand corner (Battery/Bluetooth/Power) which are a great addition to an already fantastic design.

I even typed this blog post up using it 🙂

TempMonHTTP

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For a while I’ve been tinkering around with a simple project – an Arduino-based temperature (and humidity) monitor that outputs a webpage on my home LAN. The Arduino I used was the Freetronics EtherTen, a quality product.

Screenshot of the TempMonHTTP webpage. Yes, it gets hot in my walk in robe where the home LAN switch is…

Check out the code at https://github.com/gjhmac/TempMonHTTP.

Ahead of their time…

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One of my tasks as an undergraduate in the engineering firm I was working at was to look after the website. Back then knowing a little HTML and how to use FTP wasn’t as common as it is now.

The web hosting company we used provided quite detailed logs for all of our virtual visitors. By looking at the IP addresses in the logs it was possible to speculate (the key word here being speculate) which company the visitor worked at.

Our sales and marketing guy caught wind of these logs and suggested we send emails to the companies we suspected had had one of their employees visit our site asking if we could be of any assistance or if they required any further information.

I explained that a) we didn’t 100% know that they had visited and b) this raised all sorts of privacy issues. Plus to me this sort of practice was creepy and not how the Internet was supposed to work.

How naive was I?

New Year, New Kit Update

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The new iPad (iPad 6th Generation (128GB)) has been fantastic. I’m now hanging out for some of the goodies promised in iOS 13 (or iPadOS as it may be)…

Unfortunately I can’t say the same about the keyboard/case I selected to go with it (Logitech Slim Folio iPad Keyboard Case). Firstly, the top part of the keyboard seemed to rub on the iPad screen (thankfully only damaging the screen protector). Secondly, the keys are quite fragile and it wasn’t long before one had popped off after the mechanism had broken. To be fair I may have gotten unlucky, plenty of other people online recommend this keyboard/case.

After abandoning the keyboard/case I purchased an STM case and an external Logitech K380 Bluetooth keyboard. Both are going well.