ASN.1 - what is it ?

ASN.1 stands for Abstract Syntax Notation One, a standard protocol from ITU, is heavily used in telecommunication, for example in ISDN.

There is a lot of literature about ASN.1, books, white papers, online tools, etc. so I'm not duplicating here what already exists "out there" but I just sum up few things I think are interesting.

Set Raspberry Pi as Bluetooth slave

Some notes about how to connect a Raspberry Pi 3 via Bluetooth to an Android phone.
These notes shows some suggestions about how to connect an Android phone to the Raspberry set as Bluetooth slave.
Android side I'm using an off the shelf app.

Artifactory - what is it ?

Today many projects are based on different libraries and code.
Usually the code on a project is stored in some repository, like github, but usually a lot of stuff is not stored in the github for a project.
For example, in order to create your project you need to have a compiler, libraries, modules, tools, etc.
Most of them are usually available on the net but ... but there are some limits.
What happens if you want to build your project in the future ?
How can you be sure to be able to find what "now" is easily available ?

Good bye GitHub

Just a quick note.

Because the acquisition of GitHub from Microsoft, I decided to abandon it.
Gradually I'll migrate all my projects on Bitbucket and eventually, time permitting, I'll create my git repository with GitLab as final destination, but for nowon Bitbucket will be my repository management.

So for a while my public repositories will still be accessible on Github, however they will not be updated and they will be eventually removed when they will be on Bitbucket.

New projects will be on Bitbucket.

Backup/Sync system

Ok, time to organize a backup strategy involving the Drobo unit.
The idea is to have Drobo having all the data around  the network copied on the Drobo unit, i.e. different machines do backup on Drobo.

MSP430 - reading a TSL2561

The TSL2561 is a chipset capable to read IR and visible light intensity and is the chipset used in the iRis project.
This article give some suggestions about how to use this sensor.

Using PiBackery - my FAQ

April 2019 - Update !
PiBackery is a nice tool to prepare SD cards for the Raspberry Pi.
One of the annoying problems to work with Raspberry in embedded world, is the need to have it connected to a wired network, monitor HDMI and keyboard for the first initialization.

Developer tips - Android studio

Bluetooth RFCOMM connection problem

If you like me are trying to set up a simple Bluetooth RFCOMM connection and you end up having connection errors, especially : read failed, socket might closed or timeout, read ret: -1
is possible the problem lies in a changed default assignment for the socket.

NiRis - the New iRis - the plan

Waiting could be sometime a good thing when designing something.
Like the iRis project I started years ago.

Even if I never posted recent articles about iRis, I did reach a nice stage of development, involving 3D printing design, electronic development and firmware development on different platforms.

iRis project - mechanical support

The support for the mechanical iris and the servomotor that control it, is important as the electronics.
After many experiments, it was 3D printed a support using Tinkercad.