How to Write a Simple Android Wear OS Hello World Application

Posted on by nerdhutblog

A few months back I treated myself to a new watch, and I decided to finally try a smartwatch. I haven’t thought that I’d use it as much as I ended up doing, but I noticed that the Android device lacks a few features that I’d previously found on the Apple Watch, most notably a native stocks app that helps keep track of my portfolio. Granted, I don’t know why I’d like to see my life savings disappear in real-time, but I decided to try and write a simple stock tracking app for Wear OS devices just for the sake of it. However, this article discusses how to get started with writing a custom program for Wear OS devices.

Continue reading How to Write a Simple Android Wear OS Hello World Application

How to get the current time from an NTP Server using an Arduino, ESP32, or ESP8266 [shorts #4]

Posted on by nerdhutblog

Arduino-based clock projects are a staple in the maker and DIY community, and I’ve built a few ones myself. Such projects typically incorporate a real-time clock (RTC) module that keeps track of the time. However, once the battery on the RTC module runs flat, it forgets the previously set time. Another option involves adding a few push buttons to allow users to set the time. The Arduino itself keeps track of the time as long as it’s plugged into a power supply, and it forgets the settings once you disconnect it from the power source. This short article discusses a third option that allows you to make your clock projects much more user-friendly by automatically setting and adjusting the time when necessary.

Continue reading How to get the current time from an NTP Server using an Arduino, ESP32, or ESP8266 [shorts #4]

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

Posted on by nerdhutblog

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++.

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

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

Posted on by nerdhutblog

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.

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

Simple Swinging Power Lines and Ropes in Unity

Posted on by nerdhutblog

I wanted to create dynamic power lines for a game that I’ve been working on in Unity for the last few weeks. I couldn’t find a solution that satisfied my requirements, and so I decided to implement a custom solution, which I wanted to share with you.

Continue reading Simple Swinging Power Lines and Ropes in Unity

How to program an arcball (orbiting) camera in Unity using spherical coordinates

Posted on by nerdhutblog

A while ago, I wrote this article about a simple implementation of an Arcball camera in C++. In it, I described how that could get done without using Quaternions, spherical coordinates, or a lookAt function. Anyway, just out of curiosity, I decided to create a minimal implementation of an orbiting arcball camera in C# using spherical coordinates.

Continue reading How to program an arcball (orbiting) camera in Unity using spherical coordinates

Functional-Style Operations in Java with the Stream API

Posted on by nerdhutblog

I discussed Java Lambda Expressions quite a time ago in another article. Those were not the only new thing that got implemented in Java 8. Besides Lambdas, Type-Annotations, and Default methods in interfaces, version 8 of the Java API added support for functional-style operations. Because I think that this is quite a rarely discussed feature, I decided to write this short introduction to the Java Stream API and how it can be used for basic functional-style programming in Java.

Continue reading Functional-Style Operations in Java with the Stream API