How to resize bitmap images using C++ [shorts #2]

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Since 2016, I’ve always returned back to my Macintosh Classic CRT build, constantly trying to refine the project and make it easier to reproduce my results. In my latest attempt, I used a Raspberry Pi to communicate with the monitor. While that method worked like a charm for me, others have reported a few problems they’ve encountered and possible solutions. In my next attempt to finally get this project right, I decided to go down another path. Without going into too much detail here, the new method required me to implement a simple scaling and dithering algorithm in C++. This short article discusses my image scaling solution in C++.

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Writing a Quick and Easy Thread-Monitor (Watchdog) in Python [shorts #1]

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A thread-monitor, often also referred to as a watchdog, is extremely helpful when building multi-threaded and reliable applications. In its simplest form, a watchdog should detect when one or more threads hang or crash, and it should restart the problematic threads if necessary. Depending on your use-case, you could implement this helper in a variety of ways, and you could add many more features such as a heartbeat function that allows each thread to report its progress to the monitor.

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Introducing nerdhut.de shorts

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As much as I love writing long and detailed articles about complex projects, those take a long time to finish. Unfortunately, I often end up procrastinating a bit more than necessary before I get some articles done. In those longer articles, I often discuss several topics that are relevant but not directly related to the projects themselves. For example, I sometimes discuss a power supply design or a software design pattern in one part of a longer series. However, to prevent me from procrastinating too much and to make it easier for you, new readers, and search engines, I decided to publish at least one short article each week. These shorter articles discuss a single topic in as much detail as needed using as few words as possible. I’ll keep working on longer and more elaborate projects in the meantime!

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 5

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In this part of the Arduino capacitive touch timer series, I discuss the final working version of the project and what changes I had to make to the previous revisions. Towards the end of the article, I’ll have a look at what lessons I’ve learned while working on this project.

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Getting started with the Seeedstudio XIAO

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This video takes a look at the Seeedstudio XIAO board. In it, I unbox the device, take a look around it, assemble it, and I also show you how to prepare the Arduino IDE to get the XIAO up and running in no time!

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 4

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The fourth part of the Arduino capacitive touch timer series discusses the case design of the project. It also outlines how to assemble the individual pieces of the enclosure and how I plan to improve the design in the near future.

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Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 3

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This part of the Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer series discusses the software that will make the capacitive kitchen timer come alive. It also talks about how I implemented the capacitive touch ring and some experiments I conducted to ensure good gesture detection and user experience.

Continue reading Building an Arduino based capacitive touch kitchen timer – Part 3