Syntax Highlighter for Blogspot

As you may have noticed, the previous post has some snippets of highlighted code in different languages. For that, I used SyntaxHighlighter.

Here are the instructions for Blogspot:

1. The latest SH's source code is in GitHub. You'll need to download and compile it as instructed in README.md This will give you a pkg folder containing 2 subfolders: scripts and styles. Note the .js and .css files in those folders. 
2. You'll need to store the compiled files somewhere and change the Blogger template to reference them. If you have a hosting site, great! If not, use GitHub Page like I did. 
In short, simply follow the instructions there to create a public Page repo, and load the files up there. Now, you may wonder why you can't use raw view from the SyntaxHighlighter repo directly, for example, this. There are two reasons for that: (a) that repo just doesn't have compiled .js and css files, and (b) GitHub has long disabled "hotlink" to javascript files from there. 
3. Finally, modify your Blogger template to reference these files. Just follow this. In short, include a bunch of <script> and <link> tags to key javascript and css files, then call SyntaxHighlighter.all(). After that, you can use <pre> to indicate your code blocks.

Arduino and Mac OSX communication through serial port

I have been digging around to find a simple working example of Arduino and Mac OSX communication. To my surprise, it turned out to be not easy! There is an example for working with a serial port with Mac, but I found it overwhelming to grasp all the concepts there. Not to mention the confusion of working with Arduino (confess: I am an Arduino noob).

So here is a really, really basic sample.

Concept:
You'll need to communicate with Arduino through a serial port. Just read/write operations. If you want to do any fancy task like reading from/controlling a sensor/camera, you'll need to handle them in your Arduino sketch.
Code:
So let's get started. First, create an Arduino sketch to write to a serial port:

int randNumber;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  randomSeed(analogRead(0));
}

void loop() {
  randNumber = random(65,128);
  Serial.write(32);
  delay(1000);
  Serial.write(randNumber);  
  delay(1000);
}

So this sketch just writes random numbers to a serial port, interlaced with a space character. Load to Arduino and open the Arduino Serial Monitor (Tools/Serial Monitor) to see the outputs. You should be able to see random characters separated by space.

Now move on to the Mac. First, you can read the input with this Python snippet:

(You'll need to install the pySerial package, also remember to use the right serial port for your environment).

 
import Serial
ser = serial.Serial('/dev/tty.usbmodemfd121',9600)
while True:
      print ser.read()

Ok, now the real stuff with Mac. Forget about the SerialPortSample for now, all you need to do is to just open that port and read it.

     int main() {
     int fd = open('/dev/tty.usbmodemfd121', O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK);
     if (fd!=-1) {
        int rsize;
        char buf[100];
        memset(&buf,0, 100);
        while (true) {
            rsize = read(fd,&buf,1);
            if (rsize>0) {
                for (int i=0; i < rsize; i++ ) {
                    printf("%d ",buf[i]);
                }
            }
        }
     } else printf("Unable to open the serial port\n");
}

That's it!

One

Well, this is really not my first blog post, but it has been a while since I posted. I am going to use this blog as a place to put my thoughts,  snippets of code that I deem simple but useful, even powerful, or just any such solution for that matter. I am a big fan of simple but elegant designs/solutions, and like Steve Jobs once said: simple can be harder than complex, so those could be hard to come by.
I am from Vietnam, so you would find some posts in Vietnamese, and those would most likely apply to only the Vietnamese audience.