Category Archives: Programming

Stop Visual Studio from wrapping lines

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As an ASP.NET Developer I find myself working with html in Visual Studio a lot. One thing that is really annoying (for me at least) is the default setting to wrap lines at 80 characters. This means that visual studio chops your html tags in half with a new line character. I am not sure why they enable this feature by default considering you can get Visual Studio wrap lines to the window (no new lines added).

Luckily if you go to the Tools Menu and select Customize you can then turn the option off as in the screen shot below:

Devsta Challenge 2008

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For the last week I have been working on my entry for the Devsta Challenge 2008. For the theme of ‘Old School/New Cool’ I made a DTMF phone tone generator for Windows Mobile that allows you to dial your outlook contacts by holding an analogue phone to your mobile device’s speaker. You can check out my entry here. Assuming we are allowed to I will post the application when the competition ends.

Sorry all those waiting on updates to the Virgin Mobile Gadget, The Devsta Challenge ran for only 200 hours and 8 minutes (to promote Visual Studio 2008 – Which rocks, so if you haven’t tried it you should) so I had to devote all my spare time to it.

Solution when cannot FindControl in EditItemTemplate in ASP.NET 2

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If you get this ASP.NET error message then you need to call ‘FindControl’ from your GridViews ‘DataBound’ or ‘RowDataBinding’ event methods/subs. This is because the controls within the template are not created until the row of the gridview is databound.

Eg. If you are trying to call ‘FindControl’ from ‘PageLoad’ then the controls from the template cannot be found as they do not yet exist.

Program a PIC 16F690 with the DIY Kit 150 Programmer

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My friend and I bought some PIC16F690 microprocessors. However we didn’t realise that our DIY Kit 150 programmers did not support the 16F690. Luckily a new firmware and software update is available (Beta) which supports the 16F690. Read on to see the process I used to upgrade my programmer and program my 16F690.

You will need the following:

  • DIY Kit 150 programmer
  • DIY Kit 150 ICSP Cable/Break Out
  • Bread board (the electronics kind)
  • 1x PIC 16F628A
  • The version of Micropro that works with your KIT150 programmer
  • Beta Version 26 MicroPro and firmware pack
    • This is lurking around on the web, I downloaded it here. Distrubution of the beta was stopped because some company in the US was ripping off kitsrus.
  • Test program/hex file for the 690

The DIY Kit 150 programmer has a firmware chip (a pic16f628a) which can only be used with the corresponding verison of Micro Pro. In order to upgrade to the new version we must program and install a new firmware chip to use with the new version of Micro Pro.

Upgrading your programmer:

  1. First we have to program a new firmware chip for your programmer. So ensure you have your current version of MicroPro installed and working.
  2. Next unzip the Beta Version 26 MicroPro and firmware pack, and install it. It should install into a different directory (mine was c:diypgmrt) from your current/old version of Micro Pro.
  3. Now plug in your programmer and fire up your old version of Micro Pro, insert the PIC16F628A chip into the programmer.
  4. Load k150.HEX from the folder of the new Micro Pro installation. This is the new firmware.
  5. Program and then verify the 16f628a with the new firmware.
  6. Remove the newly programmed 16f628a and label it ‘V26’.
  7. Completely power down and disconnect your programmer and close the Micro Pro application.
  8. Remove the existing 16f628a from your programmer (the one that is part of the programmer components) and label it with your programmers current version number.
  9. Now install the newly programmed 16f628a with the V26 Firmware in place of the one we just removed.
  10. Now open the new version of Micro Pro and check that your programmer works. Make sure you keep the old 16f628a with your old firmware as if this does not work you will need to swap it back to get your programmer working again.

Programming your 16f690 via ICSP:

  1. Place your 16F690 into the bread board so that each pin is on a seperate track.
  2. Plug in your ICSP break out cable and plug each wire into the track of the corresponding pin as per the diagram below:
    • Note: ignore the colours in Micro Pro they do not match properly.
    • Note: the LOW pin is not used.
  3. Load the NEW Version Micro Pro and select ’16F690-I’ from the chip list.
  4. Load your test .hex program (must be for 16f690)
  5. Program and then verify your 16f690!

 

How to install Virtual Box Additions on Ubuntu

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If you install ubuntu as a guest on virtual box, you need to do a couple of things to install the virtualbox additions:

  1. Mount your ubuntu cd/iso from the virtualbox GUI.
  2. Install GNU Compiler and header files (use the command uname -r and substitute it with KERNELVERSION in the command below)

    sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-KERNELVERSION

  3. Now mount the VirtualBoxAdditions cd/iso from the virtualbox GUI.
  4. Run the VirtuaBox installer:

    sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run all

  5. Restart the virtual machine and you are all done!