[Blackpool] Saturday 23 May

[Arthur Garlick]

Thanks Mike,
You all get two weeks of peace.  I am still decorating this weekend, and next week is Manchester Girl Geeks thing. First week in June is my birthday so if we have a meeting then there will be cake.
 
 
I have done little hobby wise over the last week:
 
I have some of the switchable 5v/3v3 enhanced Arduino Pro Mini clones  http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Enhancement-V2-Pro-Mini-8MHz-3-3V-5V-adjustable-MEGA328P-Arduino-Compatible-/321413432145?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4ad5bbc351  works as advertised and replaced the Teensy for chatting with ESP8266 very easily.  The ESP8266 needs 3v3 logic of course and so does the Pi, so having a cheap 3v3 Arduino in the box for odd tasks makes sense.  I've been hit and miss using the cheap logic level shifters from eBay and I have fried an ESP8266.
 
 
I've bread boarded the 3v3 Arduino with a L298 dual H-Bridge driver to control 2 small motors (for the 1:350th scale model warship). I've planned to use the L298 for a long time and built a speed controller out of one with a PIC micro ages ago.  However the L298 is a 5v logic device, datasheet says it wont work with my 3v3 Arduino but I'll try it...
 
 
I would like to finish the Bob Robot project off completely in time for the Girl Geeks thing.  'Finished' means a Bob that is controlled via a website running on the ESP8266.  This all hinges on whether everything in Bob will run off the 3v3 Arduino.   
 
 
This weeks Windows 10 build is much more stable for me than the last, it has the new Edge browser (was called Spartan).  I used it on an intranet based app I developed at work based on jQuery mobile.  This app looks consistent across Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox and IE.  However it has quite a few issues in Edge!, well it is a preview - we'll see.  The biggest positive about Windows 10 for me is that the tablet mode interface is fantastic on my VAIO Flip it is completely useable - unlike in Windows 8.1.
 
 
I am very interested in this preview for use on the MacBook:  https://code.visualstudio.com//  I use various Eclipse setups for messing around with programming languages, I particularly like LiClipse for Python development, but I don't use Eclipse enough to feel totally comfortable with it.   This Visual Studio Code IDE looks like it'll do what I use Eclipse for but suit me personally better.  I wonder if it is a good IDE to teach Python with to the advanced teenagers... It's free works on most platforms and has some of the whizzy bits of a proper IDE without being too crazy complex.  I haven't looked at Python within Visual Studio properly yet as it's not fully implemented in 2015 Community (last I looked).
 
 
Regards
 
A
 
 
 
 
 
> From: mikehull2008 at hotmail.co.uk
> To: blackpool at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 22:51:23 +0100
> Subject: [Blackpool] Saturday 23 May
> 
> Tyldesley Road open from 10am as usual on Saturday
> 
> Hope to see you all,
> 
> Mike Hull
>  		 	   		  
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