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WPF Data Binding to physical objects (updated)

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I had some spare time tonight, so I thought I'd have a go at controlling a small servo I had lying around using an Arduino Uno . That was pretty easy (it is explained on the Arduino website over here ), so I decided to take it a step further. What about writing a .NET application that can control the servo? Right, Windows Forms? Nah... boring... WPF! And to make the code nice and shiny, let's use data binding. Here is a picture: And a video! What does this take? A little bit of code on the Arduino that listens for commands to change the servo position on the serial interface. A .NET class that represents the physical servo, which has a "Position" property (to which we can data bind) and which sends out a command on the serial port when the position changes. The Arduino sketch: The servo class in C#: Let's now use this class to data bind the position of a slider control to the position of the physical servo: The XAML: Side note: for some reason my littl
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Recap: "An introduction to Windows Azure"

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In December I did a presentation titled "An introduction to Windows Azure" for some Microsoft Student Partners in Brussels. A lot of MSPs could not attend and my not-so-well-rehearsed presentation was a bit chaotic, so I have decided to publish most of it in the form of a blog post . It has been a while, I have been quite busy (exams, thesis, work...), so sorry for the delay in posting this. The Azure poster displayed above is a nice overview of what Azure has to offer (you can find a full size version over here ). I have marked what I will discuss in this blog post with green rectangles: cloud services (a web role and a worker role, with a queue between them) and blob storage. This blog post is by no means meant to be a comprehensive overview of what these services have to offer, but rather a fun example of a common use case. By the way, if anyone knows where to get a printed version of that poster, I want one! So, what could we make with Azure Cloud Services?
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TypeScript Bundle Transform for ASP.NET

Last week, Microsoft announced TypeScript, a superset of Javascript that adds strong typing, interfaces, classes, modules and lambda expressions. If you have not heard of it, their website has a tutorial and playground. If you have some more time, there is a very good video overview by Anders Hejlsberg on Channel 9 (embedded below). The response to this new language seems to be mixed. I largely agree with the opinions expressed in this article: Thoughts on typescript . An interested fact about the open source TypeScript compiler is that it is written in TypeScript. This compiler translates TypeScript to plain Javascript. When I first read about TypeScript (yesterday), I immediately started looking for an IBundleTransform implementation that runs the TypeScript compiler. I did not find any implementations, so I decided to write one myself and put it on GitHub and NuGet . The only available compiler is written in TypeScript itself (so you can compile it to Javascript) and
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Third place at AppsForFlanders hackathon

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Last week, I went to the AppForFlanders hackathon with some friends. At this event, students were invited to build apps with government data. More info about the event: The event website The IBBT blog  - and a little nod to the author for providing me with the pictures in this post Alexander, Tom, Nicolas and I have build a little online game (or rather quiz) about biodiversity. We called it "berenleren!", which is Dutch and could be translated as "bear teaching". I take no responsibility for this name whatsoever ( Miet takes the blame). Berenleren combines biodiversity data with images and descriptions from Wikipedia and book titles from boek.be. The application, built in a couple of hours, is buggy at best (and ugly at worst), but available at http://berenleren.apphb.com/ (it is written fully in HTML/JS/CSS, so feel free to grab the source). And oh, forgot to mention: it got us a third place (500 euros and a ticket for iMinds ), which is nice. S
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A week of student entrepreneurship events in Ghent

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I am a bit late to blog about this, sorry for that! Last week I was invited to two events for student entrepreneurs. Not that I would call myself an entrepreneur, but apparently I match some people's definition of the phrase. On Monday I attended Student Ghentrepreneur, an event that was collectively organised by Ghent University and two university colleges. The event took place on the top floor of the Artevelde Hogeschool building (Campus Kantienberg, for the locals). They have a view on Ghent that makes me jealous! After all the presentations and activities, there was a reception where about 40 students had a poster showing off their "company". I had this poster about vikingapps.be , which is off course ridiculous, but I could hardly refuse a one meter high poster, now could I? Anyway, while I did have some interesting conversations, my general feeling about the event is that the three institutes are trying way to hard push their respective student entrepreneurship
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Presentation at Students to Business Day 2012

My presentation at the Students to Business day 2012 in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium. Keywords: RIA development, client, HTML5, Javascript, CSS, jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery mobile, Twitter Bootstrap, KnockoutJS, SignalR. jquery.com jqueryui.com jquerymobile.com twitter.github.com/bootstrap knockoutjs.com signalr.net
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My review of the Nokia Lumia 800

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Click here to get a PDF version of this review. A couple of weeks ago, Nokia has given me a Lumia 800 device to try. The only condition was that I had to share some feedback. So here it goes… The Lumia 800 is Nokia’s new flagship smartphone running Windows Phone 7 Mango. It has been almost a year since Microsoft and Nokia announced their partnership . Nokia still is the largest manufacturer of mobile phones, but their smartphone department was not doing well. The Lumia 800 has been available for a couple of months in several countries and seems to be doing quite good so far. In Belgium it is available since February 1st for 499 euro. Reviewing this device was not an easy task. I have done my very best to do it as good and as complete as possible. Should you buy it? Is Windows Phone mature enough? Does it work properly? Read on to find out what my opinion is. Disclaimer : I am writing this as an independent consumer, gadget-enthusiast and app developer, not a Microsoft or Noki
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