Articles

This page lists all articles in reverse chronological order. Use the Categories page to view the list of categories or Search to locate a particular article.

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• Outlook Windows Delete Empty Inbox Folders

  Posted November 18, 2023  in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Outlook
  Describes a free utility I published to automatically delete empty Inbox folders in Outlook on Microsoft Windows

• Eleventy Splitting Category Data Across Two Table Columns

  Posted November 18, 2023  in Eleventy
  

  The Categories list on this site is getting pretty long, so one of the things I wanted to do this weekend was migrate the Unordered List (<ul></ul>) the site used today into a two column table. I asked Bard and it generated relatively useless code for me; after three tries I finally got something that looked like it would work, but didn't.

• Using UDP Broadcast to Synchronize Actions Across Arduino Devices

  Posted November 5, 2023  in Arduino, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  With my Glowing Pumpkin Project Refresh my ultimate goal was to synchronize LED Matrix colors across multiple devices so I could place one in a pumpkin in each of the front dormers in my house. I finally got it all working and published the project yesterday at Glowing Pumpkin Sync UDP.

• Arduino UDP Broadcast Receiver

  Posted November 2, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT), Flutter
  I created an Arduino sketch that implements an UDP broadcast receiver which allows me to control multiple Arduino devices simultaneously.

• Read Pin State Between Two Arduino Devices

  Posted November 1, 2023  in Arduino, Internet of Things (IoT)
  As I worked on my latest Halloween project, I realized that one of the things I wanted to do was read the pin state from a different/separate Arduino device. My project used two Arduino-compatible devices for different purposes and I wanted to be able to send a signal from one to the other. I looked around for a while and found a bunch of Forum questions on this topic and answers for the most part, but I couldn't find a post that actually described it in detail. This post does that.

• Eleventy Date-only Filter

  Posted October 31, 2023  in Eleventy
  I noticed recently that the site's stats page displayed the first and last post dates with time information even though the values only contained dates. I created a simple Eleventy Filter to trim them to date only with the format I wanted. This post shows how I did it.

• A Better Arduino MicroFogger Controller Redux

  Posted October 30, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT), Arduino
  

  In my previous post, I demonstrated a better way to randomly generate smoke using the Vosentech MicroFogger 5 Pro from an Arduino sketch. That version was better because it didn’t block the main loop, instead it let other stuff while it generated smoke and waited.

• A Better Arduino MicroFogger Controller

  Posted October 29, 2023  in Arduino, Internet of Things (IoT)
  Describes a better way to control a Vosentech MicroFogger from an Arduino sketch. The example provided in the previous post blocked the sketch's `loop` function and this one doesn't.

• Controlling the Vosentech MicroFogger From An Arduino

  Posted October 28, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT), Arduino
  Describes how to use an Arduino device to control the Vosentech MicroFogger.

• Windows 11 Annoying Save As Dialog Categories

  Posted October 23, 2023  in Microsoft Windows
  In the Windows 11 browser download dialog, Microsoft categorizes the target folder contents based on which folders you accessed most recently. They did this, I think, in the mistaken belief that this is helpful for the user. I hate it, absolutely hate it, and I finally found a way to disable this.

• First Windows Copilot Experience

  Posted October 21, 2023  in Microsoft Windows
  I've been a GitHub Copilot user since the public beta; using GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code dramatically improves my efficiency writing code, especially for NodeJS or React Apps. This post explains my first experience using Windows Copilot

• All Things Open 2023 Session Materials

  Posted October 16, 2023  in Developer Tools
  Information about my All Things Open 2023 Presentation and link to the presentation deck.

• IoT Component Manufacturers Ignoring Mounting Needs

  Posted October 8, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT)
  I'm building some microcontroller-based projects and struggling to find a simple but secure mechanism to mount components in my project. This post highlights some of the challenges.

• American Airlines Poor Unsupported Browser Implementation

  Posted September 23, 2023  in Stupid Developer Tricks
  In the typical Stupid Developer Tricks approach, the American Airlines iPad app doesn't support rendering video content in Chrome, but still offers a Play button even though it knows it won't work. Sigh.

• Glowing Pumpkin Project Refresh

  Posted August 30, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  

  Years ago I published a several Glowing Pumpkin projects: Arduino Glowing Pumpkin and Arduino Glowing Pumpkin (Adafruit Feather). Both projects used Arduino compatible devices plus either one of the Adafruit multi-NeoPixel devices or a NeoPixel shield. The shield approach was easy because I just had to solder some male and female headers to the boards and press them together into a unit. My first project used the NeoPixel Ring which required soldering wires and running them into an enclosure where the Arduino device resides.

• Arduino ESP32 Web Server on a Processor Core

  Posted August 27, 2023  in Internet of Things (IoT), Arduino, ESP32
  The second article in this series, describes in detail how to run a web server in an Arduino project on the Espressif ESP32 microcontroller.

• Arduino ESP32 Running Tasks On Multiple Cores

  Posted August 25, 2023  in Arduino, ESP32, Internet of Things (IoT)
  This article demonstrates how to assign different tasks to separate processor cores using the Arduino platform and multiple core microcontrollers. I always wanted to learn how to do this, but the examples on the web are so full of ads that I wanted to publish a version with no advertisements as a super clean example.

• Gihub's Fake 2FA Warning

  Posted August 8, 2023  in Miscellaneous
  

  Why exactly is GitHub warning me that I must use 2FA for my account when I already have it enabled (and have had it enabled for years)? End of post.

• Simple RPN Calculator

  Posted August 7, 2023  in Mobile Development, Miscellaneous, Flutter
  I started a new project this weekend, a simple RPN Calculator project I'm writing in Flutter. The app will be free and advertisement free. My goal is to publish it on the app stores as well as a web application.

• Eleventy Category Images

  Posted August 4, 2023  in Eleventy
  Describes a solution I implemented in this site to add Category-specific header images to posts. I modified my eleventy-generate-category-pages module to generate additional properties for the header images and some shortcodes to add the image and attribution to the site's pages.

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