Feb 22 2013
WORK BLOG
Posted by kll · In Journal · 
while i worked for money ( as most of us have to do )
i sell, designed, configured, tested, trained on
DCS Distributed Control Systems ( or Process Control Systems )
for many years, in many countries, living in dirty hotels and work on horrible construction sites, training
- ex rice farmers to run a chemical production plant.
- and electricians to do instrumentation, computer and networks
- and windows game specialists to keep the computer system running.
but the engineering work i loved, so now retired i found i still do the same work,
just as a hobby.
ok, the computer equipment is smaller / from room size to palm.
micro controller:
in this political and economic hard times still sometimes can see a development to the good.
while for micro controller ( in the price range 1 .. 10 US$ ) the development system
you needed to configure them was some thousand $,
now a easy and cheap ( learning ) entry is possible.
ARDUINO
the controller on a board with many ways to expand hardware,
incl. free development software for linux and windows, just connect by USB
starts with USD 16 at original arduino store!
for detail of my projects with arduino, but also other controller stm32, max32
and even SBC Single Board Computer Raspberry PI
see more about at article and download section.
most projects or tests use arduino and some shields ( add on boards )
but may also include a little bit electronic, like opamp amplifier...
i also build my own arduino boards,
just go from breadboard test
to prototype board ( with copper stripes on the back ),
as all this is far from production, never need more than 2 of them, i don't make PCBs.
working with arduino IDE:
sketch sharing
using a old desktop ( and sometimes the new laptop ) i installed google drive (5GB space) software,
both look same google account.
i adjusted the arduino preferences to a path in ( local) google drive, the google drive
software does the sync with the google drive in cloud. when i use the other computer
its local drive is also synced and i have always the newest sketch version to work on.
so actually the file is stored in 3 places and working offline / when i am with the laptop at a beach restaurant without WIFI / also possible. cloud only stored solutions are not so good,
( instead of google also can use UBUNTU ONE (5GB space) . -- finished 2014)
for a current teamwork in the test phase of a project i can share a copy / path with collaborators.
startproblem IDE:
recently i had problems with arduino IDE, got the error msg "Launch4j"
- i first updated a older and the newest arduino by delete and unzip .
same
- then i found out there is no JAVA on that laptop
* install JAVA
same
- because its win 7 64bit i learned that i have to install
* JAVA 32 AND JAVA 64
same
then i found the info that i have to delete the file /Arduino/preferences.txt
the path for this you do at the very first start.
OK
i still don't know what had happened, i remember last week was a
JAVA update, what possibly went wrong???
i can only recommend to change Arduino setting for editor font.
the "lL10Oo" with the default i not see the difference of 1 and l,
what easy leads to typing errors.
-1- close IDE
-2- copy ?/Arduino/preferences.txt to preferences.txt.org
-3- edit preferences.txt
-- line 11 editor.font=DejaVu Sans Mono,plain,14 //or other font or size
-- line 78 editor.antialias=true
-- save
-4- start IDE and check editor window.
