Microcontroller Programming

If you are writing a code that links to wxWidgets library, you can use these command to compile the code

g++ `wx-config --cxxflags` `wx-config --libs` myapp.cpp

I’ve succeeded compiling wxWidgets (2.8.7) for Windows (Vista) with the simple things below.

Download:
wxMSW - installer for Windows
then extract it to anywhere i.e., C:\wxWidgets

Run:

C:\Program files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat

to get the environment variables set

Change directory to build\msw. Type:

nmake -f makefile.vc

If it succeeds, you will get

lib\vc_lib

AI seems to fictitious story. When I think about what project should we do with AI, we sometime have no idea. Recently, there is a development of AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) which is applicable to chatbot. I have tested chatting with a chatbot like A.L.I.C.E. I’m amazed, it work very well (as we never have it before). I think that AIML is a frontier AI technology that can be applied to a real-life application. If you don’t know where to start with AI, start with learning AIML. So am I.

Programming AI using standard programming languages, e.g., C/C++ or Java is not a good idea. It’s too general purpose language. I’m considering to select between (Common) Lisp and Prolog which are particularly designed for AI. Finally, I choose Lips as my main AI programming language. I have no reason why Lisp but I know that I like it concept and syntax. Lisp stand for List Processor. There are many Lisp implementation nowadays. I select CLISP because it’s free and open-source under GPL and it work on both *nix and Windows. I installed CLIPS on Windows through Cygwin. I run its setup file then browse Devel. Finally, we will found clips and install it. We can call clips shell with command clisp in cygwin command prompt. Now everything is set up. Next, learn Common Lisp language. I recommend a online free book:

Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation by David S. Touretzky

I’m using Fedora Core 5. I don’t like window manager both KDE and GNOME. It consumes too much resource. I removed gnome and kde by using add/remove programe (Pirut) and also gdm.
Then I go to http://www.xfce.org and download xfce 4.4 beta 1 graphical installer. After finishing installation, I create .xsession file in /home/mydir/ directory and add this line

exec /usr/bin/startxfce4

where this is the path to your startxfce4. Every time I login by x desktop manager, it will automatically start xfce by default. I think xfce4 desktop manager is compact than gnome or kde.
For more detail, see
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=451197

I use tv card tuner FlyVIDEO 2000 which is Phillips saa7134 chipset.
And I also use Linux Fedora core 5. I have already updated to kernel 2.6.16 downloaded from its website. The tvtime work properly with clear picture but no sound. This problem can be resolved by creating a file let say saa7134 in /etc/modprobe.d/ an then add this line

options saa7134 card=3 tuner=2

The tvtime now work well, clear picture and sound. For more detail, please consult
http://linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.php/Saa7134-alsa

Note: Kernel 2.6.16 which is installed from rpm package supports saa7134 and saa7134-alsa already.

For someone who have trouble with add/remove program (Pirut) come within Fedora Core 5. Pirut program can not work without internet connection. If you want to add/remove program with your cd/dvd, I have a way to resolve this problem. First change to su and then

cd /etc/yum.repo.d/
mv *.repo /some/directory #(if you have internet connection, skeep this)

Create new file, say dvd.repo and add these lines

[dvd]
name=Fedora Core5/dvd
baseurl=file:///media/disk
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

Where baseurl=file:///media/disk is mounting point of your Fedora dvd.
Now you can use add/remove program normally. Pirut will detect *.repo, if it found enabled=1 line it will search the rpm package in baseurl.
The gpgcheck=1 is need for some package required gpgkey.

For more detail, please consult
http://arindamlahiri.blogspot.com/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=428924

Now a day, the most popular of numerical based software in science and engineering is Matlab. However, it comes with very expensive price. So, we need to find alternative software for replacing this software. The choice is Python and Scientific Python. Here is the suggestion for setting up Python software package for Scientific works.
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Python is a powerful object-oriented, interpreted, and interactive programming language. It is a free software and open source. That means we can free use and redistribute it. Python is also widely used in scientific computations. Here is starting point on learning Python language.

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GNUARM is a set of open source GNU compiler for ARM microcontroller. The toolchain consists of the GNU binutils, GCC compiler set, Newlib and Insight, the graphical user interface to GNU debugger for Windows and Linux. This article will guide the building process of GNUARM toolchain only for Linux users. For Windows users, there have the installer executable EXE files already. www.scienceprog.com has a tutorial on setting up this tool on Windows environment.

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