Monkey See, Monkey Build

Inheritance loves WPF

Clint — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:56:57 GMT

For the ToDo application, I’ve been adding in some new toys and causing bugs. One feature I’m adding in is text glow around the listed text. So lets talk about doing this programmatically.

When doing effects (I’ll talk about .Net 3.5 SP1 also here), you really need to embrace object oriented programming here. Why? WPF is pretty strong on the inheritance. If you don’t know what inheritance is, hopefully you’ll gain an understanding. I tend to think inheritance uses the phrase “is a ”. So a Manager is an Employee. A TextBox is a Control. See? Easy. X inherits Y’s properties.

Lets say you have a TextBox and you have a Background. Well, a background is Brush which can be multiple things. A SolidColorBrush or an ImageBrush are just a few examples, MSDN has a full overview of brushes too.

Lets see an example using Background via XAML:

<TextBox>
    <TextBox.Background>
        <SolidColorBrush Color="Red" />
    </TextBox.Background>
</TextBox>

Lets see the same example using c#:

  txt.Background = new SolidColorBrush(System.Windows.Media.Color.FromArgb(255,255,0,0))

See the difference? More so see how I put a SolidColorBrush object into a Brush object? That is due to polymorphism and inheritance.

Now lets create a WPF TextBox programmatically.

private static TextBox createTextBox()
{
    var txt = new TextBox
    {
        Background = new SolidColorBrush(System.Windows.Media.Color.FromArgb(0,0,0,0)),
        Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Settings.Default.FontColor),
        IsEnabled = true,
        AllowDrop = false,
        BorderThickness = new Thickness(0)
    };
            
    if (Settings.Default.GlowColor.A != 0)
        txt.BitmapEffect = new OuterGlowBitmapEffect { GlowColor = Settings.Default.GlowColor, GlowSize = 5 }; ;

    return txt;
}

So one issue I’ve found is with .Net 3.5 SP1. They will deprecate BitmapEffects but they don’t have a replacement yet for the OuterGlowBitmapEffect. In the future you should use Effect instead of BitmapEffect.

Another issue is the needle in the haystack issue. Unless you know about predefined brushes or effects, it is a tad annoying finding them. Since “Effect” and “Brush” are post-append, I would personally put them in a new namespace, however .Net has a legacy of doing it the current way. It is just so new, I haven’t memorized everything there. I think it would be great if I had all my brushes in System.Windows.Media.Brushes. New discovery is super easy then, oh the perfect world.

Making your chains penny-pinching tight

Clint — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:41:21 GMT

After I helped out at the Monsanto event with the pro-evangelists, I was talking with one of their engineers and he told me about a few different solutions for my chain looseness issue.

McMaster-Carr has a few solutions, each has pro’s and con’s in terms of space and cost.

Floating Roller Chain

Pro’s:

$33 each
Adjustable
Would be perfect for the first gear set

Cons’s:

While 1.1” thick, .25 has to be sticking out on each side
2.5” long, the gap between gears is about that.
No clearance on the chain with the wheel

Vertical-Mount — Manually adjustable

Pro’s:

$48 each
Could possibly fit this in from the other side
1.375” thick

Cons’s:

Still requires a gear
Tad expensive
Requires a gear
Have to modify the gear box so chain doesn’t rub

Automatic Spring Roller Chain

Pro’s:

hmmm

Cons’s:

Big, 5” tall
Tad expensive @ $53

Low-Profile Automatic Spring Roller Chain

Pro’s:

.5” thick.

Cons’s:

$77 each

Lets show the gear box to see some of the issues I’m talking about

The gap is VERY narrow between gears, about an inch. Also the width is 2.5”. The wheel and big middle gear have under .25” of clearance between one another. I would have to modify the structural supports to fit in something to the middle

I could remove the middle gear set, and then use a Vertical-Mount Tensioners or a Floating Roller Chain to accomplish this. I’d have to cut a big hole to use the floater. The vertical-mount tensioner I can just create a platform and extended it from the other side and either provide tension from the inside of the chain or the outside.

I could use the Automatic Spring Roller Chain too and have it mounted from the outside on a ridge mount.

No matter what, I think a phone call to my dad is in order along with a trip back to Chicago so he can help me install a solution.

O’Rly? or is it O’Reilly?

Clint — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:04:24 GMT

A button? Coffee?

What ever could the Coding4Fun crew be working on?

defaulting on SQL

Clint — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:12:46 GMT

A friend of mine asked me a question regarding SQL and default parameters.

Here is what he ran into:

create function foo
(
      @required int, 
      @optional int = 0
)
returns int
as
begin
      return(select @required)
end
go

But if he ran it with this:

select [dbo].foo(2)

He would get an error saying insufficient number of arguments where passed in. Here is what he should have done:

select [dbo].ff(2, DEFAULT)

Making ClickOnce less annoying.

Clint — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:58:38 GMT

After chatting with my installer expert, he mentioned ClickOnce does have a ton of options to make this work properly.

MSDN, what would .Net developers do without you.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s22azw1e(VS.80).aspx

ClickOnce and updating

Clint — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:55:46 GMT

ClickOnce has some pretty nice advantages. All I need to do is upload the new files and it magically updates the clients.

But it has a problem, every start up, this pops up. It is super annoying.

I have a project installer with an old school installer that seems to have the auto-updating ability too.

If I migrate from the ClickOnce, I have to figure out also how to do a seamless transition. The ToDo project already has end users. Of which, today, got a nice present. I added in font color and a simple configuration screen.

WPF, Binding, and Background colors.

Clint — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:27:49 GMT

So for my ToDo applications, one of the first task items was being able to change the font color. After reading about this on my trusty WPF advisor blog, I learned you can do direct data bindings with Settings. This is useful since I just have to create the property bind to it, and walk away. The one thing I have to do is just save the properties.

Here is the WPF for doing the background binding. Took me a bit to see the error of my ways for binding a background. I had <Button Background=“{Binding …” and this was a no no even though you can say Background=“Red” and have it be red. By binding like this, it works great.

I also bolded the important items to have if you want to bind to your settings.

<Window x:Class="ToDo.Configuration"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:Properties="clr-namespace:ToDo.Properties"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Title="Configuration" Height="300" Width="300">
    <Window.Resources>
        <Properties:Settings x:Key="settings" />
    </Window.Resources>
    <Grid DataContext="{StaticResource settings}">
        <Button>
            <Button.Background>
                <SolidColorBrush Color="{Binding Path=Default.FontColor, Mode=TwoWay}" />
            </Button.Background>
        </Button>
    </Grid>
</Window>

Now I can have multiple things bound to a setting and not have to reload after the settings have been updated!

ToDo on Lifehacker!

Clint — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:55:57 GMT

Click here to read ToDo Embeds the Contents of Todo.txt onto Your Desktop

Laptop acting up? Roll it back with WHS

Clint — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:28:51 GMT

If you follow my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/crutkas), you may have noticed my Lenovo x300 was being much like a spoiled child today. For the life of me, I couldn’t keep it stable. I had the svchost.exe that controlled some pretty critical stuff decide to go nuts on me for some random reason. It was so bad that I couldn’t even launch task manager. It was like Chernobyl.

So I went home and saw I had a few day old back up of my data. I backed up data I knew was brand new, put in my PC restore disk and went away.

I did something bad however … I didn’t trust Windows Home Server’s disk settings. I was all like, “I roll with 5 gangs and live in the 2nd most dangerous city in the US, I do what I want” and set my c:\ to the active drive when it wasn’t. So a quick bit of background information, my x300 wasn’t reformatted when I got it and has that stupid hidden partion on it. So I found out that Lenovo has the boot manager on that partition! It took me about 3 restores before I remembered that I’m a dumb ass.

Had I not messed with the settings, I would have been back up and going at about 9pm instead of 2:30am. Still, fun lesson and gave me a few hours to mess with Windows Server 2008 “workstation” on my Lenovo t61p. I must admit, I made it look like Vista. It gives me a weird sense of containing power too.

There is a blog that tells you how to make the server OS into a workstation. After checking that out, reading for 5 minutes, it took 10 minutes to get all the registry keys and services switched on. Another Server 2008 tips and tricks that I didn’t see can be found over on blogs.msdn.com.

Now do I think the Windows Server 2008 workstation build is faster than Vista? Initially I thought good god this is fast. It does seem to boot and shut down super quick too. But I think this is jumping to conclusions. I never ran Vista on the computer by itself. Also Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 kernel are the same. So what I’m going to do is get another backup with the settings as is on my WHS then do a Vista build.

ClickOnce!

Clint — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:35:02 GMT

I spent a bit attempting to figure out how to do a ClickOnce installer for ToDo. I was shocked to see where it was actually. I had to ask Martin Schray where since he created a how-to video on the “normal” installer.

So if you want to create a ClickOnce application, follow along.

Open up Visual Studio and whatever solution makes you feel good inside about.
Be sure the project you want deployed is selected in your solution window
Go to Build –> Publish
The rest is pretty straight forward. I picked FTP for my method of delivery.

One issue I dislike however with ClickOnce is it limits what you can do in terms of being an installer. I would love to put a file in the “Start up” folder, however Click Once doesn’t give me that power. Due to this fact, I’ll have to add it in programmatically.

ToDo on codeplex

Clint — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:02:59 GMT

Launched the ToDo project on CodePlex.

You can download the source in c#, VB and the executable.

http://codeplex.com/todo/

ToDo’s and WPF

Clint — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:53:45 GMT

Much like Scott Hanselman with Baby Smash, I used this as an excuse to play with WPF. If you’re like me, chances are you have a ToDo.txt on your desktop. It tends to get lost in the sea of windows I have open OR I just forget about it for a few days.

So here is my solution. It took about 5 hours to code from start to a stable, usable state. A WPF application that “lives” on my desktop that lists all my todo’s. The source code will be posted over at CodePlex shortly at http://codeplex.com/todo/ along with post an article over at Coding4Fun. ~~I need to transcode it to Visual Basic still.~~

Update: Code posted over at CodePlex with c# and VB. Plus I did a release for it too!

The really cool thing is the list on your desktop will update in real time with the ToDo list!

Really? WPF?

Yup, I tried to do the transparent text with a Win32 app first and gave up after 15 minutes. Never doing WPF before, I had a rough proof of concept in 3 minutes. My toolset was WPF due to this.

Smooth Sailing though … just a bit choppy

I had a few WTF moments with WPF. Dan Fernandez had a few moments of me grumbling due to this.

So with WPF, it works radically different with threading. I used a FileSystemWatcher object to get notifications with the ToDo’s and in a Win32 application, I could update the user interface directly.

WPF is a bit more, what is the word I’m looking for, anal, yup, that’s it, about thread safety. This is good and bad.

To update the user interface element, you need to talk to the Dispatcher object. Here is the code I used for my application.

private delegate void NoArgDelegate();
private void todoWatcher_Changed(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)
{
    txtTodoList.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new NoArgDelegate(loadTextBox));
}

Another interesting thing was relearning where stuff was again. Screen.Width was moved and a this.Handle.

Here is some of the OnLoad code. As you see, to get a window handle, you have to use the WindowInteropHelper. To fetch your screen size, use SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth. The SystemParameters has a ton of other items in it too on top of just screen size.

var helper = new WindowInteropHelper(this);

Win32.SetWindowPos((int) helper.Handle,
                   Win32.HWND_BOTTOM,
                   0, 0, 0, 0,
                   Win32.SWP_NOMOVE | Win32.SWP_NOSIZE |
                   Win32.SWP_SHOWWINDOW);

Win32.HideFromAltTab(helper.Handle);

Width = SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth;
Top = SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight - Height;

Another head turner was the lack of a NotifyIcon in WPF. The easy workaround is to include the System.Windows.Forms dll and then reference it in. Also means you need to manually create your ContextMenuStrip which is a tad of a bummer. Adding in the code below will gain you a notify icon along with an exit button.

private NotifyIcon notifyIcon;
private void createNotifyIcon()
{
    notifyIcon = new NotifyIcon {Text = "ToDo", Icon = new Icon("report.ico"), Visible = true};

    // have to use the Forms version
    var contextMenu = new ContextMenuStrip { Name = "contextMenu" };
    var exitToolStripMenuItem = new ToolStripMenuItem {Name = "exitToolStripMenuItem1", Text = "Exit"};
    
    // contextMenu
    contextMenu.Items.AddRange(new ToolStripItem[] { exitToolStripMenuItem });
    contextMenu.Size = new Size(155, 114);
    
    // exitToolStripMenuItem1
    exitToolStripMenuItem.Size = new Size(154, 22);
    exitToolStripMenuItem.Click += exitToolStripMenuItem_Click;

    notifyIcon.ContextMenuStrip = contextMenu;
}

void exitToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    notifyIcon.Dispose();

    Close();
}

Once I got past doing stuff the new way over the old way, I have to say, WPF has some really powerful stuff built in. I love how it forces you to think multi-threaded too right off the bat!

Video of me riding (kind of)

Clint — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:59:29 GMT

My dad is going to love saying “I told you so”

Clint — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:04:05 GMT

I see now why Dean Kamen’s designed the segway with handlebars. So tonight I finally got the ~~balls~~ confidence to ride the skateboard. I have to say, is a rather scary thing since if I hurt myself, I’m semi screwed since I lack a roommate in my current apartment.

By using a chair stool, I can keep myself stable enough to slide back and forth. I haven’t tweaked the PD values enough to really feel safe enough to let go however for more than a split second. It works though.

One big issue I’m seeing already is the chains in the gearbox dither too much. What exactly does that mean? Since there are 2 gear reductions, it has 2 chain belts. Since there is a very small amount of extra slack in the chain, it causes too much give. I can feel the extra jerk from the chain drive when moving.

The ironic thing is my dad warned me about this problem. Good thing he doesn’t read my blog if he doesn’t if there isn’t a Google alert on me. Bad thing is I think it needs to be solved so I’ll have to give him a jingle. This has to be a solved problem already. Hell, bikes have solved this issue if you think about it …

I’ll post a video of me hurting myself shortly.

Using the force sensors Luke

Clint — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:54:26 GMT

Code added/fixed tonight (or if you view 4am morning instead of night…):

Data Logging is now optional
Force sensors are added in
Is board in a safe area to start
Removed I for the PID control loop
More compact interface
Turning code added but not “enabled”

Tomorrow:

Verify Force sensor code works
Verify board safety code
Video tape me running into walls.
Tweak PD control loop
Get turning tweaked in

Yet another simple function. This one is for verifying if the board is safe to start riding. Who knew making something safe could be such a pain in the ass?

private void prepBoard()
{
    var isUserPrepped = false;
            
    const int safeAngle = 5;
    const int safeGyro = 5;

    while (!isUserPrepped && IsUserOnSkateboard())
    {
        var data = imu.GetImuData(PiDividedBySix, PiDividedBySix, PiDividedBySix);

        var angle = data.AccelerationCorrected_X;
        var gyro = data.GyroCorrected_X;

        isUserPrepped = (angle < safeAngle && angle > -safeAngle) && (gyro < safeGyro && gyro > -safeGyro);
    }
}

Best of all, my book chapter is done (I hope, right Dan, right?)