Monthly Archives: April 2015

Mask Effect for EffectLayer for Pebble

I’ve written before about EffectLayer library for Pebble smartwatch I’ve been working on. The idea is – user places the layer over screen and that layer applies an effect to screen content.

I’ve started with a few basic effects (invert, mirror) but since then several more developers joined the project adding more cool features. Ron added 90° rotation, zoom and lens effect. Gregoire Sage added cool blur effect. LeFauve not only added FPS effect, but also optimized the library to run the effects in a very efficient way: now effect can be defined as a function (even user defined function!) and that function passed as a parameter to effect_layer_add_effect method along with parameters for that effect.

I, for my part, contributed “mask” effect. What it does is essentially lets you show parts of background image thru user defined mask, creating a feel of transparency. Continue reading →

Cancel long running SQL Command in ASP.NET WebForm application

It’s an all too common scenario when your ASP.NET page takes too long to load and the culprit is slow, long running SQL query. It shouldn’t come to this, you should optimize your DB stuff to minimize delays, but if you’re trying to decode feline genome or find alien live in the neighboring galaxies – that’s unavoidable. So the page is running and at some point you decide enough is enough and decide you need to cancel it. But you want to do it gracefully, for example slow page is in an IFRAME and you want to remain in the parent page and you don’t want to close/reload the whole thing.

There’s a way. The idea is, every time you create an SqlCommand – you add it to static (shared in VB.NET) list. If command runs successfully – you remove it from the list. But if it takes too long – you can issue an AJAX call from client page to cancel the command stored in that list.

Thanks Arsalan Tamiz for posting this solution to my question on StackOverflow. His demo project was in C# (you can download it from the above link). but since most of my projects are in VB.NET – I did a conversion with some adjustments.
Continue reading →

Universal access to Pebble framebuffer on Basalt and Aplite via coordinates

Rotate Effect on Aplite In my previous post I described how you can access framebuffer of Pebble screen via familiar X,Y coordinates. To reiterate: you capture framebuffer as a bitmap, and access bitmap as 2-dimentional matrix:

#define WINDOW_WIDTH 144
GBitmap *fb = graphics_capture_frame_buffer(ctx);
uint8_t (*fb_matrix)[WINDOW_WIDTH] = (uint8_t (*)[WINDOW_WIDTH]) gbitmap_get_data(fb);

After that you can access specific pixel on the screen via coordinates, e.g. fb_matrix[120][60] will represent pixel and coordinates Y = 120, X = 60

This works fine on Pebble Time (Basalt platform) where every pixel represented by a byte. But what about classic Pebble (I think this term is becoming quite popular, but to avoid confusion I will call it Aplite platform). On Aplite every byte in the framebuffer represent 8 pixels and the above approach doesn’t work.

Fortunately there’s a universal solution.
Continue reading →

Simplify access to Framebuffer on Pebble Time

Pebble smartwatch SDK offers a very extensive graphics library. And if that is not enough – you can access graphics memory directly for pixel-precision manipulation. For example this code

GBitmap *fb = graphics_capture_frame_buffer_format(ctx, GBitmapFormat8Bit);
uint8_t *fb_data = gbitmap_get_data(fb);

captures Pebble screen as a bitmap and consequently as raw uint8_t data you can manipulate. But the problem with this approach – you access the data as 1-dimensional array, which is very inconvinient when you’re dealing with 2-dimensional screen.

Fortunately due to magic of casting this problem can be addressed. Consider following addition to previous code:

#define WINDOW_WIDTH 144  
uint8_t (*fb_matrix)[WINDOW_WIDTH] = (uint8_t (*)[WINDOW_WIDTH]) fb_data;

Using this, you can access screen data via familiar coordinates. For example if you need to set pixel at coordinates Y=120, X=60 to black color, all you have to do is

fb_matrix[120][60] = 0;

And now we can rewrite InverterLayer from previous post to a simpler form. First in layer callback we create bitmap matrix and call effect function:

static void effect_layer_update_proc(Layer *me, GContext* ctx) {
  // getting layer coordinates
  GRect layer_frame = layer_get_frame(me);  
  
  //capturing framebuffer bitmap into 2-d matix
  GBitmap *fb = graphics_capture_frame_buffer_format(ctx, GBitmapFormat8Bit);
  uint8_t (*fb_matrix)[WINDOW_WIDTH] = (uint8_t (*)[WINDOW_WIDTH]) gbitmap_get_data(fb);
  
  //callig effect function
  effect_invert(fb_matrix, layer_frame);

  //releasing framebuffer
  graphics_release_frame_buffer(ctx, fb);
  
}

And actual inverting function becomes much simpler as well, simple loop thru layer pixel, inverting colors:

// position: x,y,h,w of the layer  
void effect_invert(uint8_t (*fb_a)[WINDOW_WIDTH], GRect position) {
  
  for (int y = 0; y < position.size.h; y++)
     for (int x = 0; x < position.size.w; x++)
        fb_a[y + position.origin.y][x + position.origin.x] = ~fb_a[y + position.origin.y][x + position.origin.x];
  
}

You can see this approach in EffectLayer library.

Original Pebbles are getting TimeLine! (with special offers)

Original Pebble Steel with TimeLine Pebble Corporation is very well know for its visionary ideas. Ideas that kept its incredible smartwatches Pebble and Pebble Steel relevant on the market years after their release. They key to such longevity is regular software updates that bring new features to existing hardware. Multilanguage support, actionable notifications and many other fetures delighted Pebble users to no end.

This worked amazingly well so far. But now Pebble is finally on the verge of releasing new hardware as well. Color Pebble Time is scheduled (as of this writing) to be released in May and a shinier version – Pebble Time Steel is to be shipped in July. Both are getting brand new OS with time-oriented Timeline interface that will streamline the way you interact with the watch.

But what about users of existing Pebbles? Are they doomed to use obsolete devices? Continue reading →