Programming

Speeding up your SPI MAX7219 LED displays when using Arduino and LedControl Library In preparation for the arrival of my GPSDO[1], I’m doing a quick build of an “Atomic Clock” display to have above my lab equipment. I’m using a cheap, small eight digit red LED SPI-controlled display. It uses the MAX7219 controller that I got from eBay for next to nothing. I plan to parse the RS232 information from the GPSDO unit and display the exact time. I’ll also post error messages if the GPS signal lock gets lost. I’ve done a quick prototype using an Arduino Uno, but I plan to try to get an Attiny85 to work as the controller when I’ve finished the parser and the rest of the software. After doing some research, naturally, there was a library available to connect to my LED display called LedControl. It’s part of the standard Arduino libraries (in the download section). But when I checked the code, it uses the Arduino routines to shift out the SPI data to the display. It’s great if you want to be able to use any pins to connect to the screen, but using Arduino’s bit manipulation tools for “bit-banging” the display is slow. ...

Importing pipista modules in Editorial Lets face it, the Editorial App is a fantastic text/Markdown editor. It’s incredibly powerful with scripting abilities. But one of the most amazing tool for a power user is the ability to write Python scripts that can do almost anything. There are a lot of modules included with Editorial, but how do you add a library if it’s not included? There is a script for Editorials sister application Pythonista, that makes it easy to add modules, and you can use that for importing libraries to Editorial as well. The script is called Pipista. ...

How to use interrupts with Python on the Raspberry Pi and RPi.GPIO » RasPi.TV: We’ve finally got interrupt capability on the Raspberry Pi for GPIO programming in Python using RPi.GPIO. Interesting! Saving this link for later experimenting. Need buttons for my Carputer Raspberry Pi. Via Scoop.it!

I want to be able to share interesting web pages on my Wordpress blog using iOS directly from Safari using a bookmark and a Pythonista Python script. The script takes the URL of the page, any text you copied and the page title, formats it in Markdown and creates a new post in Poster App automatically. ...

Pythonista, finally programming workflow automation for iOS? I’m doing most of my writing on my iPad or occasionally on my iPhone, and I write everything in Markdown. There are some great scripts in my current favorite language Python out there for doing Markdown conversions, image manipulations, etc., but unfortunately, Apple rules regarding programming apps on iOS devices are pretty stringent. But an app for programming Python on iOS called Pythonista have some smart ways of getting around some of Apple’s restrictions. And one of the wonderful things you can do is home screen shortcuts, making your scripts available directly from the home screen of your iOS device. All you have to do to create a Pythonista home screen shortcut is to go to a web page and enter the script name and optional arguments. After that, add the page home-screen with Safari’s bookmarks button. Another way of starting your scripts is directly as bookmarks in Safari or another web browser. I found the app from this article about making life easier by scripting with Pythonista, a great read of all the functions available in the app. Because they added a Python library for managing the clipboard, you can copy pictures or text to it, then start your script that reads from the clipboard and then put the new modified text/picture back to the clipboard, ready for pasting into any app. Very handy! ...

Here are some additions to my .bash_profile for making life easier. I especially like that completion now ignores case. Makes navigating the file system so much faster. Give them a spin. [cc lang=“bash”]export HISTCONTROL=erasedups export HISTSIZE=10000 shopt -s histappend set completion-ignore-case on [/cc]

My twelve year old son want’s to learn how to program. My first idea was to teach him Ruby or Python, but I decided to go with Arduino. It’s C-based so that’s a good start I think. Were currently planning a couple of projects but so far he’s managed to get some LED’s blinking. A good start.