Messages

126

Living Room / Re: Is it possible to work on two laptops from the screen of one of these laptops?

« on: January 18, 2021, 03:12 PM »

I was thinking a direct connection via a cable

-kalos (January 18, 2021, 02:40 PM)

Well, assuming both laptops have an ethernet connector (though that's less and less common for consumer laptops these days), you can connect both to the same router using a cat5e or cat6 cable and have the benefit of the high speed connection for both the connection between the laptops, and the maximum internet speed attainable. The only connection available that's (potentially) faster than ethernet (assuming you have a router with 1 GBit/s ports) is a Wifi 6 connection using 4 antennas on all equipment, but there are not too many laptops providing that kind of wifi setup.

127

Living Room / Re: Does this gadget exist? Physical light-up bulb with programmable triggers

« on: January 14, 2021, 10:06 AM »

Interesting concept

I think it will require at least 2 parts:

• Computer-side that's monitoring the chat, YouTube counter or whatever
• Hardware to switch the bulb

For the hardware, many ESP based devices are available, like Sonoff S20/S26 or Shelly, but it may need a firmware replacement as the regular API isn't that easy. I'm currently involved in the development of ESPEasy, that is very usable on ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices. With simple http GET requests you can control such device, but, some assembly required.

I know that a few years back, many developers set up lava lamps to show the commit pre-checks and build results of their CI/CD pipelines, not sure if that is still used much, as it requires physical availability of people to see the lights. Nowadays, with most of development wfh/remote there must be other ways

128

Screenshot Captor / Re: Can Settings be Exported to an ini File?

« on: January 10, 2021, 06:29 AM »

Settings for the regularly installed Screenshot Captor are saved in an .ini file, in directory C:\Users\YOURACCOUNTNAME\Documents\DonationCoder\ScreenshotCaptor, and is called, surprisingly, ScreenshotCaptor.ini
For a portable install it is normally written in the directory where Screenshot Captor is run from. (Unless you wrote in that file where to save the settings, but then you of course would know where that is )

So any normal backup of your Documents folder, or portable applications folder, should restore your settings (haven't re-done my settings in ages, they just moved with me on several computer replacements).

129

Living Room / Re: Does the right software and hardware exist to use two wifi connections simultan?

« on: January 06, 2021, 12:23 PM »

My laptop will need to dynamically use the two wifi connections for each thread.

-kalos (January 06, 2021, 10:28 AM)

Can you please elaborate on that? I'm trying to understand what you want to achieve.

130

N.A.N.Y. 2021 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2021 - Alternate Mug Design

« on: January 04, 2021, 12:29 AM »

I love the alternative mug designs, almost by default, but this is one you could love to hate
I do like it though

131

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« on: January 02, 2021, 05:22 AM »

Relipse scored his 100th post with his NANY 2021 entry!

132

Living Room / Re: My new project is now live: Co-op For Two on YouTube

« on: January 01, 2021, 07:31 AM »

It's scary having your face and voice out there in the public

-mouser (January 01, 2021, 06:52 AM)

Kudo's for the effort

(I've been avoiding doing that ever since that 'Internet' thing is happening I even hate it to show my face on Teams when in a team-meeting, so usually they just see my profile picture )

133

Living Room / Re: Show us a picture of your.. CAR!!!

« on: January 01, 2021, 07:25 AM »

Ah, yes, just over 3 years ago I showed the then new, used VW Golf 5 I bought to commute to my then new job.
Only a year ago, I traded that one in for a newer model, again used, VW Golf 7.
It has all kinds of luxury (at least a lot more than the Golf 5 ), like full leather interior, heated seats, adaptive cruise-control, key-less entry and go and a great audio system.

These are a few of the promo photo's from the garage I bought it from:



I've not been using it much since March, of course, so it'll probably stay in the family for a long time

134

Living Room / Re: Saying goodbye to the old year with a cheer!

« on: January 01, 2021, 05:28 AM »

Now that we've all made it into 2021: Happy New Year

135

N.A.N.Y. 2021 / Re: NANY 2021: Zever2TFT - Display solar production on TFT or eInk display (IoT)

« on: December 31, 2020, 06:18 AM »

(Reserved 2)

136

N.A.N.Y. 2021 / Re: NANY 2021: Zever2TFT - Display solar production on TFT or eInk display (IoT)

« on: December 31, 2020, 06:18 AM »

Installation: Hardware

• Obtain the ESP controller
• Connect it to the computer, you may need drivers for the USB to Serial bridge installed on the ESP...
• Download ESPEasy software from https://github.com/l...lit/ESPEasy/releases (pick the desired download from the Assets expander, ESP32 or ESP82xx)
• Unpack the zip file to an empty folder
• When on Windows:
• Run ESP.Easy.Flasher (yes, it requires admin privileges because of using the COM port directly)
• Select a bin with 'display' in the name (available since 20201227 release) and matching with the flash size (4M1M for ESP8266 or 4M316k for ESP32) For ESP32 pick the one with 'factory' in the name for initial upload, for later OTA updates use the one without 'factory'
• Flash to the device (ESP8266 will be set to flash-mode by the flasher, ESP32 must be set to flash-mode by holding the BOOT button, short press EN, then release BOOT)
• After flashing is complete: Connect to the ESPEasy accesspoint it provides, log in using password configesp it/when asked, and connect it to the desired Wifi accesspoint. Then the unit will reboot. It should display the obtained ip-address after connection, where you can point your browser at
• There are a lot of settings to be made, give it an appropriate name and unit number (Config tab), to have the current time by enabling NTP (Tools/Advanced, no time server needs to be set) it will fetch from the standard pool, based on the geo-location and DST set.
• Connect the display to the ESP, and optionally also the touchscreen when available
  

  Display	ESP8266/ESP32
  VCC	3V3
  GND	GND
  CS	D0 (gpio-16)
  Reset	D4 (gpio-2)
  DC	D8 (gpio-15)
  SDI/MOSI	D7 (gpio-13)
  SCK	D5 (gpio-14)
  SDO/MISO	D6 (gpio-12)
  Special:	.
  LED	VCC or D2 (gpio-4)
  Touchscreen:	.
  T_CLK	D5 (gpio-14)
  T_CS	D3 (gpio-0)
  T_DIN	D7 (gpio-13)
  T_DO	D6 (gpio-12)
  T_IRQ	n/c

• Add on the Devices tab a Display - TFT 2.4 inches ILI9341... or Display - eInk with Lolin ePaper screen...
  
  (I do not own an eInk display, so no example)
• Enable the display and set up according to hardware connections
• Optional: Add on the Devices tab a Touch - XPT2046 on a TFT Display... (Documentation for setting up can be found here)
• Optional: Add on the Devices tab a Generic - Dummy Device and set up like this:
  
• When the Dummy Device is setup, these names should be set in the zever2tft.json file: "espeasy_task": "Variables" and "espeasy_var": "LastTime", the script will save here the date of the data that is displayed

137

N.A.N.Y. 2021 / NANY 2021: Zever2TFT - Display solar production on TFT or eInk display (IoT)

« on: December 31, 2020, 06:17 AM »

NANY 2021 Entry Information

Application Name	Zever2TFT
Version	0.9
Short Description	Display Zevercloud solar day-production on a TFT or eInk display
Supported OSes	Script: Any OS Supporting Python 3.x, ESPEasy (TFT/eInk/IoT)
Web Page	This page (for now)
Download Link	(Soon to be) Attached
System Requirements	OS Supporting Python 3.x (Windows, Linux/Raspberry Pi, Mac, ...) Additional Python modules: pytz, requests ESP8266 or ESP32 IoT controller unit (Wemos D1, NodeMCU, ESP32 DevkitC, etc.) TFT Display: ILI9341 based tft display (SPI connected) eInk display: IL3897 based e-paper display (SPI connected) Some wires and light soldering skills to connect stuff together (Hardware can be obtained from your local supplier, eBay, Aliexpress, Banggood, etc.) ESPEasy software from https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEasy A PC (Windows/Linux/Mac) with USB port to flash the firmware onto the ESP controller (I'm using Windows)
Version History	v0.9.0: Dec. 2020: Rework to use changed Zevercloud API v0.1.0: Aug. 2020: Initial version
Author	Link to Author's Profile page

Description
Having installed a solar systems a few years back, using a ZeverSolar inverter and connected to Zevercloud for easy overview of generated power, and an interest in IoT, I found ESPEasy, and the rather affordable ESP controllers, I thought it would be nice to combine these.
The availability of very affordable TFT display (I bought a 4.3", 65k colors unit), and the requirement for the Zevercloud web interface to re-login every 30 minutes or so to be able to view the current production graph, I searched for, and found, an API to retrieve the graph data in json format.
Now to turn that data into a nice graph... enter: Python
I've only sniffed a little at python a few years back, but never actually done anything serious with that, so I took this as an challenge opportunity to learn a few things:
- Python programming
- Turning a bunch of data into a graph
Hence this script was crafted

NB: Some assembly required! And command-line skills required! (that should fit with the average audience here )

Features
Fetch data from the Zevercloud API
Present that on a TFT (or ePaper) display, connected to an ESP controller
Scale the graph, based on the max available value, so the display is nicely filled

Planned Features
Fix the login issue with the revamped API (No thanks, Zevercloud )
Support other Solar power aggregation platforms
Any interesting features I, or other potential users, might think of
A, probably 3D printed, housing for the device

Screenshots


Result of a nice day of solar production

Usage
Installation: Hardware
See next post

Installation: Script

• Install Python 3
• Install required python modules: pip install pytz requests
• Unpack the script and run it once, this will fail, but create an initial settings file: zever2tft.json
• Retrieve the API key, APP Key and APP Secret values (more details are in the script documentation)
• Add the values to the settings file, and set up other, display related, settings like size etc. (more details in the script documentation)
• Run the script, and it should draw the graph of today, or provide a yyyy-mm-dd date as first argument for displaying the graph for that day
• When all settings are filled, a second run of the script will only update the extra data, not yet sent to the display, unless the scale has to be adjusted

Using the Application
Run the script on a regular basis, f.e. using a scheduler, like cron on Linux (Raspberry Pi?) or Task Scheduler on Windows.

Uninstallation
Stop the scheduler if set
Remove the script
Option ally remove the Python install if no longer needed

Tips
Set the scheduler to run every 5 minutes for a regular update
Setup a display timeout and add a button to wake the display, to extend the display's life expectation
As ESPEasy now also supports the XPT2046 touchscreen, mounted on the TFT unit, this can be configured to wake the display on touch (example to be added here)
Best to get an ESP controller unit that supports micro-usb for power supply and has 4 MB of flash memory, so a) it's easy to connect, and b) ESPEasy can be updated OTA (over the air) from it's web interface

Known Issues
Unfortunately, because of the recently changed API url and lacking any documentation, the login for the new API is not fully tested yet, as the new APP key and APP Secret are yet undefined how to fill (to be resolved asap)

Download will be attached ASAP!

138

Screenshot Captor / Re: Quick-Capture Bar Will Not Display -- [FIXED] [possible suggestion?]

« on: December 27, 2020, 10:15 AM »

You can switch to the beta version without worries, as it just as stable as the regular version. It just has some features that are somewhat less tested
In the beta version I think that it solves the issue of 'hiding' windows on non-visible screens.

139

Screenshot Captor / Re: Disappearing Text and text box

« on: December 27, 2020, 04:20 AM »

What is the font size? If the font is too large it won't show...

140

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screen resolution changes when using minimized toolbar to capture selected area

« on: December 11, 2020, 09:11 AM »

Have you adjusted the Compatibility/ Change High DPI settings, in the shortcut to the executable?

141

N.A.N.Y. 2021 / Re: PaintedGlass (decorate your desktop)

« on: November 30, 2020, 05:00 AM »

if I made them "click-through" then you wouldn't be able to resize/move them.

-GrumpyCoder (November 30, 2020, 03:01 AM)

Maybe you could enable/disable that by flipping an option (Edit mode?) in the Systray context menu?

142

Screenshot Captor / Re: Getting just a copy ...

« on: November 14, 2020, 05:01 AM »

On the 'Post-Capture Options' preferences page, there is the 'Copy to clipboard' combobox with a choice of what you can copy to the clipboard. I've set it to 'Image bitmap' myself:

143

Screenshot Captor / Re: switching between captures with and without special effects possible?

« on: November 07, 2020, 03:13 AM »

Well, that sounds kind of a correct assessment.
Mouser has been promising a revamped key-mapping feature in SC where all available (menu)options would be available for mapping to a hotkey (when SC is focused), but that isn't available yet.

You could craft up an AHK or AutoIt script that finds and opens the SC settings and toggle that setting for you, though.

144

Coding Snacks / Re: A script for a black screen

« on: November 06, 2020, 12:18 PM »

You will have to experiment with tools to find something that might work. You can try to control the monitor via DDC using this tool: https://www.majorgee...ickmonitorddc,1.html (select a MajorGeeks download)

It is very likely the combination of some software on your system that wakes it up every so much minutes, and a monitor that has a very poor power-save implementation.

(Edit: Changed url, original site isn't reachable)

145

Coding Snacks / Re: A script for a black screen

« on: November 06, 2020, 12:36 AM »

You still need to develop your google skills
Tools like this exist since the beginning of Windows (well, since around the Windows 3.x releases)
Just an example:

https://www.bleeping...eature-with-new-app/

146

Living Room / Re: When rubber (computer mouse) gets old and sticky, what can you do

« on: October 28, 2020, 11:19 AM »

If the fading rubber is the only problem the mouse has, of course.

-Shades (October 28, 2020, 09:32 AM)

My experience is that once the external of the mouse is (severely) deteriorated, than the internals aren't that good as well.

Recently replaced a switch on 3 Logitech M705's, where they started to double-click 'for free', but on 2 of the 3 I also need to replace the other switch, it seems. And it isn't a bad batch either, as the ages of those 3 are quite different (youngest being < 1 yr old when it started failing, second ~5 yr and oldest > 7 yr before it failed).

147

Living Room / Re: When rubber (computer mouse) gets old and sticky, what can you do

« on: October 28, 2020, 01:27 AM »

Most likely the plasticizer in the material is breaking down, so eventually the surface will get less rubbery over time. Nothing you can do about it, AFAIK, except of course replace the entire mouse. Had quite a few of them doing this, over time, usually after many years of good use though.

148

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual desktop tools?

« on: October 24, 2020, 01:49 PM »

Sounds like you are using it for personal use, so Dexpot, as suggested in the link you provided, sounds like a very good candidate.

The last update for mDesktop was in 2018, and the support department hasn't been around/active since 2014, it seems , so I'd not even have tried it, would I've been in your shoes...

149

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« on: October 20, 2020, 12:32 AM »

Note : the display don't go off in safe mode...
Is normal this function don't go in safe mode ?

-Contro (October 19, 2020, 03:49 PM)

In safe mode most applications aren't running.

150

General Software Discussion / Re: Manage the display in the laptop

« on: October 19, 2020, 01:15 PM »

Close all active programs, also the ones in the system tray, one by one, and wait after you close one if the screen goes off. That should find you if one of your programs is causing this phenomenon.