Category Archives: 3rd party

3rd party software for ASP.NET

Tweet images with Scriptr and IFTTT

Sev Trek

Looks like everybody is doing Twitter bots these days so I decided to try my hand on one as well. And it had to be something lighthearted – to let people’s mind off things for a while. Way back in early 2000s there was a funny parody comic of Star Trek called Sev Trek. Original site is gone now, but archive of images was saved at http://sevspace.com/stupidarchive/sevtrek.asp.htm. Images are numbered sequentially – ideal for automatic processing. My bot would tweet random images every couple hours.

To host bot’s script I decided to go with Scriptr which offers powerful JavaScript backend and multiple expansion modules. And IFTTT has a cool Twitter service, one that can tweet image from an URL. So the idea was:

  1. Code hosted at Scriptr generates URL pointing to an image at sevspace.com
  2. Code then call Maker service of IFTTT – custom service capable of accepting HTTP requests
  3. Maker service triggers Twitter service and passes URL of image it got from Scriptr code
  4. IFTTT Twitter service tweets the image

Continue reading →

Using FusionCharts in SSRS reports

Microsoft’s SSRS is pretty advanced reporting system with multitude of advanced features. SSRS also has charting capabilities, but it’s somewhat lacking compared to more advanced desktop or web charting suites

On the other hand FusionCharts offers very cool charting package with gazillion of chart types and very cool features. But it uses JavaScript engine and renders charts client-side only!

What if there was a way to marry the two technologies together – to render cool FusionCharts in advanced SSRS repots? Continue reading →

Simulating Pebble GPath in Rocky.js

RockyJS is a black magic voodoo from Pebble Dev team. It allows you to run your JavaScript code on the actual smartwatch (unlike PebbleJS that runs on the phone). When RockyJS debuted it ran as a simulation in a browser, but since then it matured and now runs in Pebble emulators and on actual hardware.

RockyJS changed drastically since that web release. It resembles C code less and takes more standardized JavaScript approach. During that transition some features were lost. One of them is Pebble GPath concept – a graphical object that consist of set of coordinates that you can freely move and rotate. In particular missing commands gpath_move_to, gpath_rotate_to and gpath_draw_outline that move, rotate and draw the GPath. When I was porting my first Pebble watchface to Rocky I used those extensively. You can read about that implementation complete with the source code here. But now the commands are gone and I needed a substitution. Continue reading →

Future Time – watchface for Pebble smartwatch

http://tinyurl.com/timefu

This is the face of the future.

Two faces actually – because you get both analog and digital face – and it’s up to you which one to use. You also get eight predefined color themes as well as ability to set each color individually. This face also provides weather and fitness tracking at your fingertips. And it just looks cool.

Key features:

– Digital or Analog face type selection
– Multiple color themes as well as custom color settings (or you can leave it on auto and the color will depend on battery level)
– Weather (powered by Forecast.io), Step Counter, Distance Walked, Sleep Hours
– Bluetooth Connect/Disconnect alert of configurable intensity with visual clue
– Battery level represented by percentage number as well as visually by outer perimeter of dots (also by watchface color – if in auto color mode).
– Visual step goals

$0.99

After installing watchface you have a 3-day trial period to explore all the features and different aspects. At the end of trial if you like Future Time and want to keep it – it’s just $1.50 USD via Kiezel Pay payment system, you will be prompted to enter code and follow few easy payment steps. Once purchased – the watchface is yours permanently, no matter what Pebble or what phone you use, as long as you keep the same Pebble account.

You will need to get free key for weather services at https://developer.forecast.io – this is one time procedure.

Design by Paul Joel http://www.pauljoel.com

CobbleStyle 2 – watchface for Pebble smartwatch

http://tinyurl.com/cobblestyle2

CobbleStyle is back! This time with THREE modes to display the time: analog, digital or BIG TIME! With complete customization on what information you want displayed. With pre-designed color sets and complete color customization. Make CobbleStyle 2 how you want it!

Key features:

– Three Ways to display the time: Analog, digital, or BIG TIME!
– Multi-language support
– Anti-aliasing text and graphics.
– Date / Weather / Bluetooth connection.
– GPS Location.
– Week number.
– Local time.
– Alternative timezones.
– AM/PM.
– Seconds counter.
– Pre-designed color sets.
– Custom colors.
– Custom text.
– Backlight when charging option.
– Bluetooth alert options.
– THREE weather providers – choose most reliable for your location
– Master Key weather provider control via https://www.pmkey.xyz – store all your weather API keys in one convenient location

Health Info:

– Step Count
– Live step goal bar.
– Custom step goal.
– Distance Walked
– Time Active
– Calories burned at rest
– Calories burned while active

Only $0.99 USD

After installing CobbleStyle 2 you will have a three days trial period to explore all the features and different aspects. At the end of the trial if you like CobbleStyle 2 and want to keep it, it’s just $0.99 via KiezelPay payment system. You will be prompted to enter code and follow easy payment steps. Once purchased, the watchface is yours permanently, no matter what Pebble or phone you use, as long as you keep the same Pebble account.

Design and Art Direction by Paul Joel – http://www.pauljoel.com

API keys for weather providers

Many apps and watchfaces for Pebble smartwatch provide weather information and many of them require you to have your own key, unique for each weather provider. Here’s how to obtain API keys for 3 major most popular weather providers:

  1. For Forecast.io register at https://developer.forecast.io/ – and at the very bottom of the page there will be long string of letters an numbers – that’s the key.
  2. For OpenWeatherMap register at https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys and you will see a form create your API key there
  3. For WeatherUnderground go to https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api, click LOGIN button, fill the form to create account, go to “Key Settings” in menu and generate your API key there

It is *highly* recommended once you get your keys – save them at https://www.pmkey.xyz service. Then all you have to remember to get them is simple 5-digit pin and more and more watchfaces (CobbleStyle 2 being one of them) use this service for easy key retrieval.

Full control of your Limitless LED/Milight bulbs from Amazon Echo

Limitless LED Limitless LED offers full color RGBW light bulbs that you can control over Wi-Fi/4G from your computer, phone or smartwatch. They’re an inexpensive alternative to Philips Hue and they look really cool.
But I, being lazy ass that I am, was wondering if you can control the lights from Amazon Echo by voice commands alone. Out of the box Echo and Limitless LED don’t recognize each other. Amazon can see and control Hue, but not Limitless LED. Fortunately geniuses of BWS Systems came up with a really cool piece of software – home automation bridge “HA-Bridge”. It’s free and written in Java so it can run pretty much in any environment under any OS. What it does – it emulates Philips Hue API so other devices on your network – like Echo – can see and interact with it. Continue reading →

Pebbles, rectangles and stack overflow

UntitledWhile working on my Pebble watchface “Future Time” I have encountered persistent annoying problem – watchface would run for a while and then crash – and not only crash, but actually restart the watch. What made this even more frustrating – after 3 restarts in a row Pebble would revert to recovery mode and complete firmware reinstall was required (did I accidentally write a Pebble virus?).
When I dug into device logs I found out that every restart was given reason: “Dangerous Stack Overflow”. Which is kinda strange – I don’t have any recursions nor deeply nested function calls nor large local variables. I tried lots of things – including extreme ones like declaring all local function variables as global or static – nothing helped.
Finally Christian form Pebble developers forum shed a light. He pointed out that I use a lot of GRect constructs which is basic rectangle building block for pretty much anything from defining layers to graphics functions. I used GRect inline directly inside function calls, which I thought wasn’t a big deal, after all “everybody does that” – including Pebble in its examples. Well, as Christian pointed out those GRects are kind of local variables, and either memory is not reclaimed fast enough when they go out of scope or they spring memory leak.
Keeping this in mind I created a global GRect variable and when needed to use a GRect in local function, first I’d assign it’s value to the variable and then use variable in the function.
So something like this:

static void layer_update(Layer *layer, GContext *ctx) {
   //...
   graphics_draw_rect(ctx, GRect(10, 10, 30, 30));
   //...
   graphics_draw_bitmap_in_rect(ctx, bitmap, GRect(20, 20, 40, 40));
}

Becomes thus:

GRect temp_rect;

static void layer_update(Layer *layer, GContext *ctx) {
   //...
   temp_rect = GRect(10, 10, 30, 30);
   graphics_draw_rect(ctx, temp_rect);
   //...
   temp_rect = GRect(20, 20, 40, 40);
   graphics_draw_bitmap_in_rect(ctx, bitmap, temp_rect);
}

That’s it. This simple change cured the plague, no more crashes, restarts or recovery – just smooth sailing.

Unblock my heart, i mean, iPhone for Pebble geocoding

Cobblestyle I’ve recently updated code for Cobblestyle Pebble Watchface to take advantage of very cool geocoding service called Nominatim by Open Street Maps.

Nominatim is used in two places: Direct lookup is used in watchface’s config page to lookup coordinates of a place by its name for custom location setting; reverse lookup is used to lookup location name by its coordinates to display name on actual watchface.

It was working fine – on Pebble watches connected to Android phones. It was failing miserably on iOS, so iPhone Pebble users were getting neither location nor weather updates. And it was pretty puzzling for a while until I obtained logs from running watchface thanks to invaluable help from Robin.

Turned out iPhone Pebble app was plain simple blocked by Nominatim service, every attempt to retreive location resulted in message being sent back “You have violated acceptable policy”. Which was kinda surprising since I just started using the service. When I contacted Nominatim support, they told me that apparently some Pebble app running from iPhone abused the service pretty badly, running hundreds of requests per second. And since the only way they can detect requesting app is by it’s User Agent string – all apps spotting iPhone Pebble UA were blocked.

Support suggested to set UA string specific to the app so it could be easily identifiable. Standard approach to set headers on xmlHttpRequest object is .setRequestHeader(..). Unfortunately by many browsers and clients it is considered unsafe to spoof UA via request headers. Fortunately iOS allows that, so all I have to do is catch and ignore erros in other clients. Basically this line of code solved the issue:

try {xhr.setRequestHeader("User-Agent", "Cobblestyle Pebble Watchface");} catch(e){}

Thanks to this as of version 2.19 Cobblestyle watchface correctly displays weather and location information. Yay.