Coding 101 57 (Transcript)

Father Robert Ballecer: On this episode of Coding 101 we’re going to finish our Arduino clock.

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Fr. Robert: Welcome to Coding 101. It’s the TWIT show where we let you into the wonderful world of the code monkey. I’m Father Robert Ballecer, the digital Jesuit and joining me today is our regular special guest co-host, Lou Maresca. He’s a senior software development lead from Microsoft. Lou, thank you very much for coming on to Coding 101.

Lou Maresca: Thanks for having me back and welcome coders.

Fr. Robert: Yeah, exactly. We wouldn’t have the show without the coders. Now at some point our super special T is going to put Lou on this back screen, but until then, Lou, there has been some interesting developments in the Java world hasn’t there?

Lou: Indeed. So a lot of people looking to start web development or application development on the web are looking to start now and they want to build now and they want to build large applications and they want to be able to build it on different platforms and devices. And that’s kind of the key is when you build on the web you can build it for the phone or the tablet or notebooks and it can snow up and render and be able to look the way you want it to look. And a lot of places now days teach object oriented programming. And we talked about object oriented programming in the past. Where objects are just ways to model real world things. Say I wanted to model a person object, you would have a bunch of attributes like height, weight and be able to perform functions like run or talk. And they teach languages like Swift, objective C, C++, Java, C Sharp. And these are all object oriented languages that allow developers to build really large scale applications. But if you use Java Script applications today, you’re aware that it’s really tough to build large scale applications. It’s a really tough thing to do.

Fr. Robert: Hold on here Lou, because when I think of programming languages for large scale applications, Java Script is not one of those languages that come to mind. In fact, Java Script is only lumped in with words like disease and virus and horrible and why is this still here? Is it just a bad rap? I know that from experience, one of the things about Java Script is that it very easily allows for really bad programming. But are you saying that we actually can safely and securely develop large scale applications?

Lou: Right, so that’s kind of where the evolution of Java Script is coming in. so there’s a new standard coming out. What they call ECMA Script 6. It’s just an acronym for European Computer Manufacture’s Association. But basically they have standards they’re building out, and they’re actually starting to evolve Java Script finally to be more like an object oriented programming language. What that allows you to do is organize your code, create objects, perform functions, group your code into categories, name spaces and modules, create classes, build objects off those classes. So it gives you the ability to really start to isolate the code and be able to create more complex applications without having to get lost in the code.

Fr. Robert: What specifically would I be looking for if I was looking for the advantages of using this ECMA script?

Lou: So ECMA script 6 has a ton of new features. New options and abilities. One of the biggest ones for me is the ability to just use the class ability. So to be able to use classes and – from class. And so I have a really fast example. So this a current example of side by side actually- this is the original Java Script over here, and this is the new version of it. And what I have here is I have a class that I call logo. And the class has a function that actually renders itself to the screen and also has a title. And this is a Java Script. This is not the original way of doing it. So if you look down here, I actually have another class called TWIT logo and it actually extends logo, which means it’s inheriting from logo, and then I render a different logo to the screen. And so the key here is, I have the ability to break apart these things, these classes and create objects from them. Which, they have different functionality and they have different properties, but they can inherit from each other because some of the things are the same. And so I can actually new it up, create a new instance of it, and then I can render to the screen. So when I actually do that, click the button render here, boom, I get a new logo. And so this is the key. So let’s do a really quick compare, side by side. This is the code over here that’s the original Java Script. And this is creating a module and it’s trying to create a function that’s called logo and its- all the conventions very verbose. And it creates confusion sometimes. So that’s where classes come in. and there’s a bunch of extra features that we probably should go into because there’s a lot of detail but there’s things like the new keyword called let. Which allows you to just scope your variables differently. There’s also what they call arrow functions where this function right here will actually turn into this really complex function over here were you have to build a function out and return this x times x and all this stuff. So this makes it a lot easier to write the code and make it very clean and make it easier for other developers to understand how it works.

Fr. Robert: Okay Lou, but this is still an interpreted language right? it’s still going to run in a browser so how does this alleviate any of the security concerns for people who have been writing in Java Script and having being concerned about it being used for Malware?

Lou: It’s not necessarily going to alleviate any of that. I mean, a lot of times, the browsers, they build their Java Script engines to be what they call “sandboxed”. Meaning when you run your Java Script code it runs in a specific sandbox. A lot of browsers today, like some of the newer ones, especially the new browser called Windows 10, their Java Script, their application sandbox is very, very isolated. I mean, there’s not really any way to access operating system functionality. Like you know, calling into a Windows function, do something specific on your machine or installing an app. so these browsers really are kind of responsible for implementing their sandbox so that they don’t allow things to leak out. Especially through the Java Script language. So this is not really a way to secure it more. It’s more of a way to add new standards, abilities, new ways of doing things, new structures to it so it makes it easier for the coder and easier for the developer.

Fr. Robert: Alright. If people did want to start poking around with this language, what are the resources that we’ve got for them?

Lou: So I think one of the first ones, there’s a great website out there, we put it in the show notes, and it’s basically called, it’s on a GitHub, and it allows you to see which browsers have the different functionality of ECMA script. It’s what we call the compatibility table. But there’s also a lot of different ways- the application I was using was called web storm by jet brains. Really cool company that’s out there that’s creating IDEs to develop things. And they have a shareware version of it that you can check it out. Jetbrains.com. Of course they had to pay me to say that. It’s a great IDE. You can actually start using their examples for ECMA script 6 and basically an application framework compiler called tracer you. That allows you to basically build out ECMA script 6 type Java Script. And so the example that I have, I’ll give it to you. You can check it out. And you can start playing with it. I think that’s the key is just get your hands dirty and start playing with it.

Fr. Robert: Absolutely. Start playing with it, we’re going to make sure we include all that information in our show notes so you don’t have to re watch the episode a couple of times. Just jump into our show notes, find the links, and see if maybe that’s your next scripting language. Now Lou, we are going to have to take a break here in just a moment, but before we did that, I want to tease something. The last couple of weeks we have been speaking with Mark Smith. The guy from DefCon, the guy whose always in the hardware hacking village, and he’s been showing us some of the hardware and programming that goes into making an Arduino powered analog thing clock. Essentially what he did was he made a steampunk clock. Now we’ve got a great example of steampunk. This here is a laptop that Leo ordered. It took a while to get it but this is indicative of what you get when you start making steampunk. This is a completely custom, handmade laptop case. He took the innards out of a decent laptop and he put it into this beautifully appointed wood and metal and glasswork device. Now what Mark had done was he worked on the electronics, on the guts of a device, but then he left off the steampunk part to you. Now if you do want to start making stuff like this, that is beautiful yet functional, you’ve got to stick around because we’re going to give you the very last episode of our Arduino clock. But before we do that, let’s go ahead and take a break and thank the sponsor of this episode of Coding 101. When you think about programming, when you think about gaining knowledge in the world, you need somewhere you can go to ask questions. You need somewhere you can go to have all your maker, your DIY questions answered. And for us here at TWIT, that’s Lynda.com. Lynda.com is a one stop shop. A repository for knowledge. Both of new knowledge and knowledge that you just need a refresher course on. Lynda.com is an easy and affordable way to help you learn. You can instantly stream thousands of courses created by experts on software, web development, graphic design, and more. Lynda.com works directly with industry experts and software companies to provide timely training, often the same day you get the new releases on the new versions on the street. You’ll find new courses on Lynda. So you’re always up to speed. All courses are produced at the highest quality. Which means it’s not going to be like a YouTube video with shaky video or bad lighting or bad audio. They take all that away because they don’t want you to focus on the production, they want you to focus on the knowledge. They include tools like searchable transcripts, playlists and certificates of course completion, which you can publish to your LinkedIn profile. Which is great if you’re a professional in the field and you want your future employers to know what you’re doing. Whether you’re a beginner or advanced, Lynda has courses for all experience levels, which means they’re going to be able to give you that reference that place to go back to when you get stumped by one of our assignments. You can learn while you’re on the go with the Lynda.com apps for iOS and Android and they’ve got classes for all experience levels. One low monthly price of $25 gives you unlimited access to over 100,000 video tutorials, plus premium plan members can download project files and practice along with the instructor. If you’ve got an annual plan, you can download the courses to watch offline. Making it the ultimate source of information. Whether you’re completely new to coding or you want to learn a new programming language, or just sharpen your development skills, Lynda.com is the perfect place to go. They’ve got you covered. They’ve got new programming courses right now including the Programming the Internet of Things with iOS, Building a Note taking app for iOS 8, and Building Android and iOS apps with Dreamweaver CC and Phone Gap. For any software you rely on, Lynda.com can help you stay current with all software updates and learn the ins and outs to be more efficient and productive. Right now we’ve got a special offer for all of you to access the courses free for 10 days. Visit Lynda.com/c101 to try Lynda.com free for 10 days. That’s Lynda.com/c101. Lynda.com/c101. And we thank Lynda for their support of Coding 101. Lou, are you ready for a little bit of steampunk inspired Arduino clock action?

Lou: Definitely. Looking forward to it.

Fr. Robert: Jason, if you would be so kind, press the magic button. Our code warrior, Mark Smith from DefCon. In the last couple of episodes we’ve shown people what Arduino is. We’ve shown what the IDE looks like. We’ve shown them how to get input in and how to get input out. But now we need to give them that final step. How they turn all of that into something like this. This has been our dream box the entire time. Can you show us some of the final steps?

Mark Smith: Sure, let’s do it. So on Know How we showed you how to convert one of- like a 15 volt panel meter into a one milliamp current meter. So go back and watch that episode if you haven’t seen it, because it’s kind of important. Because otherwise, if you try to hook these 15 volt meters up to the Arduino, it’ll only deflect.

Fr. Robert: It’ll do nothing. And the reason for that is because by default they’re set up to measure voltage but they do that by basically cheating.

Mark: It’s not so much cheating, it’s using Ohms law. Ohms law is a fact of nature. It’s important, we use it a lot. In fact, we’re using it here as well.

Fr. Robert: Right. And they just drop a resistor into a meter that would normally measure current, so that it will actually measure voltage. You just took that thing back.

Mark: Took it back out. Well, sort of. We took it out of the meter. And then we replaced it with the potentiometers on our circuit boards. And that allows us to adjust the voltage at which we’ll go to full scale.

Fr. Robert: Okay. Now show us, you’ve obviously hooked up two more meters, the same way that we did in the last episode, and you’ve adjusted the potentiometers the same way we did in the last episode. So that the minimum and the max would match on both ends. So we’ve got the hardware set up, but I’ve got a feeling that we’re not done.

Mark: We’re not done, we’ve got to do the software yet. Let’s go take a look at the software. So here is the software. It looks very similar to the software we’ve been looking at in the last several episodes. We still have the voltage pins for the RTC. We ended up not using those #defines so I just commented them out. We have to define buttons for the minute and the hour and the calibrate. So those are the pins. The pin numbers that those buttons are hooked up to. Similarly we are #defining the pins that the PWM outputs are using. So those are the pins that the analog voltage will come out of the Arduino to get to. And we also have to define what the maximum scale on our PWM is for calibrating some other things. We’ll get into that in a little more detail. And then PIN_LED 13, that’s something else I added in there for fun a little bit later. In our globally defined variable section we are keeping track of the last time that we went through the loop. Just like we did last time. We’re keeping track of the state of the minute button and the hour buttons. So the way pulse width modulation works is that there is a counter that counts really fast. And it just goes between 0 and 256 and it counts all the way up and goes back down to the beginning repeatedly. And then what you do is you say when that counter gets to a value, say 128, I want you to turn a pin on. So its counting up and the pin is off, off, off, it gets to 128, it turns it back on, it goes all the way to the top, 256, and then wraps around and turns the pin back off again. And that way, you have set it up so that the pin is on for half the time and off for half the time. And if you do this fast enough, it looks like a voltage that is half way between the maximum voltage and the minimum voltage. So this is called pulse width modulation. If I instead tell it to count up to 64, then it will be off until it hits 64, and then be on for the rest of the time up to 256. And so that will look like a three quarter voltage. Actually I think I’ve got the ons and offs backwards. Because smaller numbers are lower voltage, bigger numbers are higher voltage. So what we do when we say analog right, what we’re really doing is we’re telling it at what count point should it switch the output. So when it’s at zero, when we give it an analog write of zero it just never turns on. When we give it an analog write of 255, it stays on the entire time. I think there might be an edge condition in here that I’m missing. But basically, in those numbers in the middle. So we have 256 ticks of our clock that we can use. 256 doesn’t divide by 60 very well so we’re actually only using 240 of our ticks. Which makes use of most of our analog voltage. And gives us four ticks per second or per minute. Or per whatever.

Fr. Robert: Which is why you had to use the onboard crystal in the last episode because you need something that’s actually going to count down to that. The RTC can’t do that.

Mark: Exactly. The RTC only gives me one second resolution and I want quarter second resolution. And so, let’s go back to the code. That’s what the millisAtTopOfSecond is there. So the Arduino has a function called Millis which says how many milliseconds have I been powered on? And it’s a counter that just goes up from zero as it’s on. It just counts up the number of milliseconds since it’s been on. So if I take what that value is when we transition from one second to the next, then I can count up 250 milliseconds, that’s a quarter of a second. Another 250 milliseconds, that’s another, and so on. And then I only do that three times and then I look for the second. For the RTC to update to the next second so we’re not actually drifting out of order.

Fr. Robert: Now a quick note here is we’re using PWM to be able to drive a particular amount of current into the meters. Sort of.

Mark: SO we’re actually outputting an average voltage and then that voltage goes through a resistor to the current meter just like it was doing before except that we’re putting our own value of resistor in there, the potentiometer so that we can fine tunely adjust at what voltage the output of the Arduino makes full scale on the meter. That’s why it’s an adjustable resister. Because these are one milliamp resistors but I think this one is like 2.5 or maybe it’s a half of one. But it’s off a little bit. But every meter is different. So I don’t want to just put a fixed value there because it will changed based on how much current that particular meter needs.

Fr. Robert: Because I’m sure there are people out there who are like wait a minute, you removed a resistor and you added a resistor? I don’t understand why you just did that.

Mark: Because I wanted to change the value of that resistor.

Fr. Robert: Yeah. Another note about PWM is we’re using it for this application, so we’re pushing it into the meters, but PWM can actually be used as a communications bus. There are applications that will read the on and off states on the other side so you can have one device talking to another device via PWM. That happens all the time in quad captors.

Mark: For servos. Specifically. So servos use that a lot. Most other things use serial buses. You can get a lot more control. but if the servo, what you’re trying to do is get to about this value, and so it’s still kind of an analog value that you’re trying to send. And so PWM is a way of taking what is otherwise a digital output, its either on or off, and then kind of faking an analog value by turning it on and off really fast and taking the average of those two voltages. Back to the code. Alright, so that’s what the “millisAtTopOfSecond” is. So we’re trying to count milliseconds so that I can have these 4 ticks per second. And then “lastTicks” is another state variable that we use. Set up is very much the same. We are setting up our ins and outs just like we did before. We saw all of this last week so I’m going to fly right past it. Initializing our globally scoped variables. You never want to use a variable on initialize. Bad things happen. So let’s go into our loop. Just like before we’re doing an RTC.get. We’re getting the time, we’re breaking it up into time elements, just like we did before. We’re checking to make sure we didn’t get any read errors from our RTC. Then we have a section here for calibrate. We talked about this last time. Without going into too much detail on what exactly we were calibrating or why.

Fr. Robert: Essentially if you hit the button it’s going to give it a low state, it will go into this state which will allow you to set the max on the meters so that you can adjust with the potentiometer.

Mark: Adjust the potentiometer to read full scale. Exactly. So and then out of that now we’re down to the time setting, which is what we looked at last time as well. These have not changed at all. And then “see if the time has changed and print it if it has.” So this time is different from last time. The only thing we’ve changed here is we’ve added this “millisAtTopOfSecond”. So I want to see what the value of the Millis value from the Arduino when the second changes. When it changes from one second to the next. Because I want to reset my count of 250 milliseconds, 500 milliseconds, 750 milliseconds and so on. So I’m taking what the Millis is at the top of the second. And then here is our RT bug output just like before. And then set the analog outputs. This is the fun part. So the PWMs are 8 bit. So this is the part that I just described. The PWMs are 8bit. 0-255. But time is 60 second increments. So we’re going to use 4 ticks per second or minute, and that will get us between 0 and 239. And it uses most of the PWMs bandwidth and still allows us to have a relatively smooth movement. If you didn’t care about any of this and you wanted your meters to tick one second, you could go ahead and do that and remove all of this and just have it output the value. But the problem is, the meters, when they move too quickly, they kind of swing around a whole bunch. And so by having it move smoothly, it can move very smoothly. But if you have it go from here and then one second there, it doesn’t just go like this, it goes ---- and it’s very hard to read. So having a nice smooth movement across, it’s much easier to read. So that’s why we do it this way. So what we want to try to do is calculate how many ticks it has been since the top of the second, alright. So we’re going to go ahead and- the current Millis minus the Millis at the top of the second. So that will give us the number of milliseconds that have elapsed in this second and we divide it by 250. And that will give us how many quarter second ticks it’s been since the top of the second. If that value has changed since the last time we went through the loop, then we’re going to go ahead and update it, so we don’t just go through this if statement over and over again. And then we will set the analog output values. So I mentioned earlier we have an LED. There’s actually an LED on the Arduino board on PIN 13. And what I have it set doing right now is just tick tocking. So if the seconds ends in a zero, it will go to a low value, if it ends in a one it’ll go to a high value. So it just turns on for a second, off for a second. It’s just another output you can get that was easy to do in a single line. But we’re going to set the analog value for the second’s hand. So we’re going to take this Tn, which is the time element, we’re going to take the seconds out of there, we’re going to multiply it by 4 because there are 4 ticks per second, and then we’re going to add the number of ticks since the last second. So its ticks are quarters of a second. And so we’re calculating how many quarters of a second do we want to display on the meter. And then we just analog write that value to that PWM output on the meter. And that’s it. And then we go down and do the same thing for minute. 4 ticks per minute plus 1 tick for every 15 seconds. So ticks = minutes x 4 + tm seconds divided by 15. Which this is integer division so every 15 seconds you’ll get another one. And that allows the minutes to do a very smooth movement as well. Similarly for the hours. This one is a little more complex because the data structure represents it in 24 hour time. But I want to do a 12 hour clock. So I want to take the 0-23 modulo 12, so it goes 0-12, 0-12. And then we’re multiplying it by 20 because there are 20 ticks per hour. There are 12 hours in full scale, 240/12 is 20. So there are 20 ticks per hour. And then it is 1 additional tick for every 3 minutes. Because we want to take the 60 minutes of the previous one and divide it by 20 because we want to know how many minutes per tick between the hours. See it gets a little bit complex. It’s just math. It’s all in the comments.

Fr. Robert: You’ve actually seen code like this. This is the same thing as writing to screen. No matter what language we covered, there’s always some sort of function that lets us write out to screen. The only difference here is that instead of writing out to the screen, we’re writing out to a pin. Which is connected to a physical device. So the math is the math, but it’ll be in the show notes. Otherwise this is actually quite simple.

Mark: Very simple. So you’ve got a little bit of math, just take modulo 12 to make it a 12 hour clock, multiply by 20 to get 20 ticks per hour and then 1 additional tick for every 3 minutes. And that ends up being a very smooth time movement for the hours.

Fr. Robert: What I would suggest is they go ahead and write this in a simpler way and just let it tick up per minute. See what the meters do and you’ll find out why he did it this way. Because he likes the smooth motion so that the meter isn’t constantly bouncing back and forth. Now if they’re going to start to do this, they’re also going to have to think about a project box. We’re not going to cover that here, we might cover that in Know How at some point in the near future.

Mark: The other thing we’re not going to cover is the artwork on the panels. Because these are reading 0-15 volts. You actually want them to read hours, minutes and seconds like they are over here.

Fr. Robert: Right. So you’re going to have to do that on your own, figure out a YouTube. We’re going to show you the hardware and software you would need to make something like this, but Mark, this is fantastic. Obviously I asked you to create something with Arduino, with an embedded processor, that would leave with a project that they could do. I think you’ve done that. But let me ask you this. Let’s say they get through this and say wow, this is nice, and I like this. I like being able to program something that has an effect in the real world like this. What resources would you suggest for our audience? What would you tell them to try next?

Mark: That’s one of those things that I would have a hard time saying because I don’t know what they need in their life. So the project that works best for you is the project that you will be motivated to do. So find something in your life that you want to make. Whether it’s something crazy stupid like an analog panel meter clock, that’s cool but doesn’t really serve a real function. You can buy a clock for a lot less money than you’ll spend on all of these parts. But this is just a fun project to do. Either something like this or something functional where I think my refrigerator is failing. And so I want to put it on the internet so that I can measure the temperature inside of it and graph it over time or something like that. Find something in your life that you want to do that you think something like this could do for you. Those are the best projects to do. if you are thinking of learning a new technology, be it Arduino or a new programming language or anything else, I personally have a very hard time trying to learn something new if I’m doing it just academically. If I’m not doing it practically. The far easier way for me to learn something is to have a project, a goal in mind, I need to accomplish this, whatever this is, and I want to at the same time learn a new programming language or learn how to use Arduinos or whatever. And so rather than just saying I’m going to go through this coursework that has these exercises on how to learn Python or C for an Arduino or whatever it is that they give you some code that might teach you the subject matter but don’t really do anything useful, that doesn’t sink into me. Whereas if I say I’ve got a goal, I’ve got a thing I need to build, let me learn the bits and pieces I need to do that, that sinks in way better than just the random exercises.

Fr. Robert: Just listening to you, there has been one project I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and that’s the Arduino controlled blinds. And actually, it’s a fantastic analog. Because we’ve got switches, and we know how to deal with switches and take that input. I could replace that with a photo cell. So whether or not the photo cell is getting lit or not. And then the output is very easy to connect to a relay that can connect to a motor either in a high or a low condition. When there’s light, open up the motor that lets it close the shades, when there’s not, reverse that.

Mark: I was going to go even better and say have vertical blinds or Venetian blinds and use a servo to adjust.

Fr. Robert: The possibility is really limitless. And now that you’ve seen a very good example of taking inputs and pushing outputs, the sky is the limit. Mark, thank you very much for doing this project. This is so much fun. We’re going to have you back at some point. I don’t know if I can ask you about the fish tank. Can you bring the fish tank at some point?

Mark: I don’t think I can bring it. It’s awfully heavy. 55 gal is a lot of water. But we can talk about it and I can show you some of the technology that I used and I can probably take some videos at home so you can watch the sunrise and sunset that my fish have.

Fr. Robert: Or we can just buy a fish tank. Could you tell the folks at home where they can find you? Because this is a lot of work and I really appreciate it. I want them to be able to follow you and see what you’ve been putting together.

Mark: I usually tweet about my projects and escapades on @smittyhalibut on twitter. I don’t really have a whole lot to plug, but you can find me there on twitter. Show me your cool stuff. If you have been inspired to make something by this show, please tweet me and let me know what it is you’ve done. I’d love to see it and I’d love to see how excited you are and the cool stuff that you’ve built. Even if you don’t think it’s cool, whatever, I don’t care. If you made it, it’s awesome. That’s what I want to see. Please show me.

Fr. Robert: One last note, he is a fan of both ham nation and Steve Gibson. So coders out there, if you can throw a note to both of those shows, to Steve Gibson and to the folks of ham nation and tell them they need Mark on the show, that’d be fantastic. Until the next time, we’ve got an Arduino powered unit, that’s been Mark Smith, I’m father Robert Ballecer, and now we go back to me. That project was a lot of fun and I’ve already repurposed a lot of that hardware. I’m not sure if I told you about this, I talked about this on Know How, I hooked up the same 3 leads to the tri-color leads on one of those strips of LEDs and it just changes the color of the clock throughout the day. It’s very fun. Once you actually understand how the hardware works and how the software integrates with the software, the sky is the limit. Lou, have you done any work with Arduino?

Lou: I’ve done a couple projects around detection and infrared sensors.

Fr. Robert: We’ve got someone in the chatroom asking if you could recreate one of those ticks’ clocks. You couldn’t do it directly by connecting one input to every LED, but you could use a combination of relays with different pins in order to achieve the same effect. We’re definitely going to do more of these crossovers. And speaking of crossovers, if you’re watching these episodes of Coding 101 with the Arduino clock, that’s the last 4 episodes, you’re also going to want to watch the last episode of Coding 101 and the next 3 episodes of Coding 101 because we go farther into the hardware on that show. This is supposed to be a crossover so if you’re watching one show make sure you’re watching the other show so you get the entire picture. (I think he means Know How, not Coding 101 there) Lou, do you want to leave the audience with any parting shots about you, what you do, you’re here our code warrior and now you’re our guest host, I really love having you on. I want people to know more about where they can find your work.

Lou: On Twitter, @LouMM, and about me, Lou MM as well. And all of my work during my day job at Microsoft is at crm.dynamics.com. And Loumm@outlook.com. Feel free to do that. I am sending you my email because I am so confident that the new tools that we have on there are going to be able to filter it out for me. So send me an email.

Fr. Robert: Get out there and send email to Lou. Until then there is some information that we need to let you know. We know that this is a lot of information and we want to make it easy for you to follow along on the projects. So we’re going to make sure that in our show notes we’ll have links to the places you can buy the individual pieces as well as where you get to download the Arduino IDE and a few helpful hint sites so if you want to move ahead in the class, you can do that. But in order to get that information, drop by our show notes page, at twit.tv/code. You can find our entire back catalogue of episodes which is important because it’ll let you download entire modules if you want to learn what we did in C Sharp or Perl or PHP, it’s all right there. It also gives you a place where you can use that little dropdown menu to get every episode of Coding 101 automatically downloaded into your device of choice. We make it easy because we love you. You can find me on twitter, @padresj. If you follow me you’ll find out what we’re doing each week for Coding 101. I always announce out topics and guests and you’ll see what I do in-between shows. Also, we do this show live every week. Now it’s at 2:30 pacific time on Mondays. You can join us at live.twit.tv. And as long as you’re watching live, jump into our chatroom at irc.twit.tv. Until next time, he’s Lou Maresca, I’m Robert Ballecer, end of line!