Software, hardware and everything that makes me engaged http://dlacko.org with examples - Overview I’ve been developing a prototype for a library that offers some type annotations and does post processing of instances of annotated types, and I was suprised that, in spite of the ample blog posts/articles that describes TypeScript decorators, how hard is to find some simple examples that explains both... Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2020/09/27/typescript-marker-decorator-cheat-sheet/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2020/09/27/typescript-marker-decorator-cheat-sheet/ the big-canvas experiment - Overview In this post I’d like to share my experiments with PureScript. For one of my ongoing projects I needed to develop a JavaScript component, a kind of infinite canvas, that enables to scroll and zoom in/out on arbitrary big drawings. I wanted my app to run in a browser,... Fri, 16 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2018/03/16/purescript-canvas-event-handling-with-state/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2018/03/16/purescript-canvas-event-handling-with-state/ an SMD Footprint designer DSL - Overview Juicy-footprint is a domain specific language written in/for Java and Scala to design/reconstruct SMD footprints from the Recommended PCB Layout of the datasheet of an SMD component. Recommended PCB Layouts are usually given as engineering drawings where the distances between the parts are relative to each other. Most EDA... Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2018/01/10/scala-smd-footprint-designer-dsl/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2018/01/10/scala-smd-footprint-designer-dsl/ kinematics with rotation compensation - The most important thing to deal with in v-plotter software is the coordinate transformation. Descartes coordinates must be converted to the coordinate system of the plotter. In the most simple case, when the strings meet at one point of the carriage, this is a trivial task, straightforward application of the... Sun, 04 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/06/04/v-plotter-math-coordinate-transformation-rotation-compensation/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/06/04/v-plotter-math-coordinate-transformation-rotation-compensation/ with measurements - Overview This is the log of my recent experiment on the viability of solar powering of an IoT device in a semi-indoor environment (indoor, but bright enough to enable a plant growing, e.g. by a window). I basically wanted to find out what is the absolutely minimum power that can... Sat, 04 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/03/04/indoor-solar-energy-harvesting-experiment/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/03/04/indoor-solar-energy-harvesting-experiment/ with a square-wave signal generator - Overview In this post I explain a capacitive proximity / touch sensor for Arduino based on a square wave generator rather than charge time measurement as the popular CapSense library. This design results in very stable sensor readings and it also works from a battery. It is compatible with virtually... Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/01/08/arduino-capacitive-proximity-sensor-with-signal-generator/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/01/08/arduino-capacitive-proximity-sensor-with-signal-generator/ Overview In this post, I would like to summarize my recent experiments with different frequency counting approaches using the Arduino platform. My original goal is to develop a small, capacitive proximity sensor, that is more reliable than the default charge time measurement based one (and just as importantly, works on... Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/01/04/arduino-frequency-counter-experiments/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2017/01/04/arduino-frequency-counter-experiments/ with breadboard and perfboard diagrams - One of my ongoing projects is a very low-power electronics device that supposedly runs on a single-cell Li-Ion or Li-Polymer battery for a very long time, hopefully many-many months. In my idea, the battery actually could be a rechargeable one, e.g. LIR2032 or LIR2450 button cell, and I might also... Sat, 17 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/12/17/breadboard-perfboard-diagram-mcp73831-lipo-charger/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/12/17/breadboard-perfboard-diagram-mcp73831-lipo-charger/ Just a quick post on some Markdown rendering issues I recently ran into on Hackage. They were very annoying as the markup was properly rendered on github, and I could not spot any obvious problems. 1. First header is rendered as the original markup You get ### Synopsis instead of... Thu, 03 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/11/03/markdown-rendering-issues-on-hackage/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/11/03/markdown-rendering-issues-on-hackage/ with working prototype in C# - Overview Approximating bezier curves by circular arcs, in spite of how useless it sounds regarding modern drawing APIs, has (at least) one raison d’etre. The G-Code language used by most CNC machines, and also adopted by most 3D printers, can deal with linear interpolation (lines) and circular interpolation (circular arcs)... Wed, 19 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/10/19/approximating-bezier-curves-by-biarcs/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/10/19/approximating-bezier-curves-by-biarcs/ It is one part of a bigger project I have been thinking about for some time now, a remote controlled turret for my kids. A video is worth 1000 words, so let’s see the result first: The design is straightforward, harnesses centrifugal force with a specially designed rotor: The 3D... Sat, 25 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/06/25/3d-printed-mini-ball-launcher/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/06/25/3d-printed-mini-ball-launcher/ reverse enginering a Silverlit Falcon Nano controller - Overview My kids received a Silverlit Falcon Nano toy helicopter for Christmas. It is a fantastic contraption, but it is certainly not for small kids, especially that there are no spare parts available. Long story short, it went broken before they actually learned how to fly it properly. The actual... Thu, 17 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/03/17/recycling-toy-model-ir-transmitters-silverlit/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/03/17/recycling-toy-model-ir-transmitters-silverlit/ Update: Intel Edison was discontinued on June 19, 2017. Overview I have been thinking a while about moving from Arduino to a platform with more computational power. I want something more powerful, but having real time capabilities in the same time. My first candidate was a Raspberry Pi, it is... Sun, 21 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/02/21/intel-edison-mcu-interrupt-performance/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/02/21/intel-edison-mcu-interrupt-performance/ Introduction Mr. Stitson has an ultrasonic sonar mounted in the front. namely a HC-SR04; it is inexpensive, and ubiquitous, but unfortunately not quite reliable. I have a single reason for having a sonar installed, I want to keep away my boys playing the “bumping” game, what is, according to some... Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/01/24/remove-impulse-noise-from-ultrasonic/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/01/24/remove-impulse-noise-from-ultrasonic/ AKA Mr. Stitson - Dad, it is almost as super as a train Overview This is the second version of my robot car. The first version had some problems, most importantly the power distribution was ill-designed (more precisely, it was not designed at all). What’s new With this second version I fixed most of... Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/01/01/mr-stitson-robot-car-with-lego-platform/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2016/01/01/mr-stitson-robot-car-with-lego-platform/ I acquired an Intel Edison recently as part of my plans of moving from Arduino to a platform with more computation power. Edison has enough power to enable writing the software of my future robots in a dependently typed language, and it also has an MCU for the real time... Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/12/13/how-to-install-ghc-on-intel-edison-poky/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/12/13/how-to-install-ghc-on-intel-edison-poky/ Update: This robot car has a new version, Mr. Stitson Overview The first version of my robot car went broken in no time, the acrylic chassis was a way to fragile for my kids. Fortunately, all the other parts survived, only the acrylic parts were needed to be replaced. There... Sun, 06 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/12/06/robot-car-chassis-with-lego-platform/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/12/06/robot-car-chassis-with-lego-platform/ about open source insulin - I was 6 years old when Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1983. I was completely unaware of that historic moment, and, obviously, I couldn’t have cared less anyway. I was 14 when Linus Torvalds started to work on the Linux kernel. I was just finishing up the... Fri, 27 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/27/the-third-wave-of-open-source-insulin/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/27/the-third-wave-of-open-source-insulin/ first approach - Note: This robot car has a new version, Mr. Stitson Overview This was my first independent robotics project. After I finished the delta robot, I felt confident enough to create something from scratch instead of following instructions. I was very hyped and I thought a robot car wouldn’t be much... Sat, 21 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/21/kid-friendly-robot-car-first-approach/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/21/kid-friendly-robot-car-first-approach/ Part 2 - Note: This article was originally published on TallComponents.com In the previous article (Part 1), I had introduced a prototype of a monadic framework for generating formatted output (e.g. source code) from some complex, hierarchical set of data (e.g. Abstract Syntax Tree of some input language). This second part picks up... Mon, 16 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/16/monadic-templating-in-csharp-part-2/ http://dlacko.org/blog/2015/11/16/monadic-templating-in-csharp-part-2/