George White stonehippo

My CircuitPython Libraries

I am developing or maintaining these CircuitPython libraries:

CircuitPython_QwiicTwist - driver for the SparkFun Qwiic Twist, an I2C/Qwiic/STEMMA QT indexed RGB rotary encoder breakout
CircuitPython_QwiicButton - driver for the SparkFun Qwiic Button Breakout, SparkFun Qwiic Button - Red LED, and SparkFun Qwiic Button - Green LED, a series I2C/Qwiic/STEMMA QT pushbutton breakouts
CircuitPython_Trill - driver for the Trill series of I2C capacitive touch sensors

All of these are based on the [Adafruit CircuitPython Library Cookiecutter](https://learn.adafruit.com/creating-and-sharing-a-circuitpython-library/creatin

Web-based Augmented Reality (AR)

AR Quick Look (Apple iOS & MacOS)

Cross-platform Frameworks

Over the past few years, the old "write once, run anywhere" mantra has gotten a refresh. The broad adoption of mobile devices has increased the need for solutions that allow developers to write core application code and UI in a single framework, and package that code for deployment. The following are some of the more popular cross-platform, modile-friendly frameworks for various languages.

Some of these solutions are hybrid frameworks, which provided containers for non-native app code and integrations with native features. Others compile to native code.

For a good rundown on the architecture and considerations in using hybrid platforms, take a look at Comparing Cross-Platform Frameworks.

Javscript

Python on microcontrollers

Python is a great language for development. Microcontrollers are wonderful for physical computing. What's better than either one alone? Both together!

The good news is there's growing support for using Python on microcontrollers, both as programming language off-board and directly interpreted on embedded hardware.

CircuitPython

Based on MicroPython, CircuitPython was created by Adafruit for its boards, and is intended to provide a easy to use, consistent interface across multiple microcontrollers. It also has an extensive library/driver bundle.

Node Event Service Demo

I created a simple Node.js server that emits events, then uses a socket to publish them, as well as very basic client for listenting on that socket to consume the events.

This demo server was created as part of a POC for a broadcast system that required timestamp-based synchronization of events across multiple streams.

Ramda.js Data Tinkering

I'm messing around with manipulating a data structure in Node.js using Ramda.js . Mostly I'm trying things like turning some data into a unified table based on a series of arrays (sort of like a database denormalization), and with some alternatives to the pre-packaged zip functions in the library.

Javascript 3D Libraries

I am looking into working on some web-based 3D graphics, so I'm collecting notes on the topic here.

Some popular libraries

Programming language version managers

Keeping up to date with a program language installation isn't always easy. In particular, juggling the latest and greatest,legacy versions needed to maintain compatibility, keeping several versions of a langauge installed, or needing admin acess can be a real pain. The package manager included with your operating system, such as dpkg/apt or yum might help somewhat, but they usually cannnot handle multiple versions, typically want you to be an admin, and often do not have the most recent version available in their repos.

So what's an enterprising dev to do?

One answer is to install a dedicted tool for installing a managing a program language. These tools operate a bit like a language-specific package manager, with tools for installing, managing and swapping versions of a language. They operate by adjusting your path, often via a 'shim' pointing to a local install. They typically leave your system-installed versions alone. All in all, these tools are a huge boon

	class Base {
	constructor(x, y) {
	this.x = x
	this.y = y
	}

	get point() {
	return {x: this.x, y: this.y}
	}
	}

	// A quick tutorial on object destructuring and Javascript functions
	/*
	note: I'm using var here because I'm going to refactor the example
	function several times. You should not do this with real code!
	*/
	// To start, we'll create a simple function to make a rect tangle
	var makeRect = function (height, width) {
	return {height: height, width: width}
	}