Structured logging with C# and Seq (Datalust)

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What is it? Structured logging is the practice of implementing a consistent, predetermined message format for application logs that allows them to be treated as data sets rather than text. (https://www.sumologic.com/glossary/structured-logging/) I wanted to have a good, like really good, but free, system to move my logs to. Over the years, I have used PM2, … Read more

Create and publish a phone app with Xamarin and Prism Forms

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What is is? Steps: Create Xamarin.Forms app from Prism template Modify the template to show a browser and load my webpage Build app Publish app 1. Create Xamarin.Forms app from Prism template 2. Modify the template Modify the template– Change splash screen image– Load only a webpage– Block all external webpage calls and navigation– Navigate … Read more

Use MediatR with FluentValidation in the ASP.Net Core pipeline

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What is it? For a while I am using MediatR to handle messages in my ASP.Net Core applications. (New to the Mediator design pattern, refactoring.guru has an exelent article about it)These messages (i.e. of type IRequest) need to be validated before the Handler processes them.In order to have this done, Fluent Validation is used and … Read more

Host multiple SPA’s with APS.NET Core

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What is it? Running a SPA (Single Page Application) on APS.NET Core is easy, it even comes out of the box. But I wanted to run two Angular SPA’s next to each other without having to setup a complete new ASP.NET Core project. Currently APS.NET Core does not support hosting multiple SPA’s on the same … Read more

Resizing photos on a multicore environment

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What is it? A while ago I created a simple application to reduce the size of images as I wanted more and more of them stored on my mobile phonehttps://timdows.com/projects/resizing-photos-to-have-them-all-on-your-32gb-storage-phone/ Using this application again, I wanted it to be running in dotnet core, but the System.Drawing library is not yet available on the dotnet core … Read more

Host a aspnet core webpage on a directadmin environment with pm2

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What is it? Hosting some aspnet core webpages, it made me realize that I never documented any of the actions needed to set it up. My servers run Debian with DirectAdmin, configured with apache and nginx. This post will show how my TimelapseMP4Webpage is published to https://vwp.timdows.com/timelapse. Configuring DirectAdmin as a user Upload the aspnet core webpage … Read more

Docker CE and Shipyard on a VPS with Debian 9

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What is it? For a long time I wanted to run my own Docker server. My first attempt was running it on a virtual box setup on my Windows machine. Next try I wanted to run this on a server environment. I tried Windows server 2016 with the container service, but I didn’t feel like … Read more

Raspberry PI web tvservice

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What is it? Having some spare monitor’s laying around (from the dumpster), I did already make some nice projects with them. In the Dual photo webpage with Angular project I added some nice tvservice magic. I thought it was worth having its own place. This project is nothing more than a webpage (not even a page, … Read more

Optimizing entity framework linq queries

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Nested linq expression My clientModel has a list of MotionDetections that contains a date. I want to get a list from the database where the min and max of this date are used. The first code looks like this: [code lang=”csharp”] // Get the existing values from this device between the clientModel dates var motionDetections … Read more

Dual photo webpage with Angular

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What is it? Having some spare monitor’s laying around (from the dumpster), I decided to make a dual wall screen project. The idea came from the magic mirror project, and was accompanied by a simple image webpage project. The hardware 2 x 19″ monitor with DVI connection 1 x Raspberry Pi 3 1 x Raspberry … Read more

Build a Chrome extension with Angular

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What is it? This project, called IdealistaManager, is a private project, used to search houses in Spain. The backend is a simple mysql database is accessible via a .NET Core WebAPI project. It is being served by Apache via a PHP proxy, I described that in another blogpost I made. The frontend is a Google … Read more

Raspberry Pi as a DNS ad blocker with pi-hole and LCD screen for stats

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What is it? For almost a year now, I’m running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 1 (yup, the first version) to block all ads and malicious domains completely. Installing and running Pi-hole doesn’t need any explanation, setup a Raspberry Pi and run the command as mentioned on https://pi-hole.net With the SPI enabled, I was able to get … Read more

Count timelapse photo’s on my Synology

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I’ve got a cronjob running to sync the images from my Raspberry Pi Timelapse project. The cronjob does nothing more than calling rsync. [code lang=”bash”]#!/bin/sh if [ "$(pidof rsync)" ] then echo "process already running" else rsync –remove-source-files -chavzP –stats pi@10.0.0.27:/home/pi/capture/ /volume1/projects/VWP\ Timelapse/timelapse\ construction fi[/code] Now I want to export information regarding the amount of … Read more

Using Raspberry Pi3’s serialport via an Electron app

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I hit my head two times on this, getting serialdata via an Electron app, time to put the taken steps on paper. Demo project I found this demo project and used it aswell: https://github.com/johnny-five-io/electron-serialport I implemented some changes to push the data to a table. The project code can be found on my github pagehttps://github.com/timdows/webpages/tree/master/ElectronSerial … Read more

RaspiCam-Timelapse (rev3)

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What is it? A follow up on my old project https://timdows.com/projects/timelapse-camera/, this project is going to capture the construction across my apartment. You can see this as rev3 of this project. In this project I’ve upgraded the Raspberry Pi 1 to a 3, eliminating the wireless issues that I had, and gaining more overall processor power. Starting … Read more

Doce uvas (Twelve Grapes) bell and led bolls

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What is it? In Spain the typical celebration at new years midnight is to eat twelve grapes, one at every strike of the bell. Wiki even has some pages of it https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doce_uvas and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Grapes In order to achieve this celebration in places without a big bell in the square or TV, I have created this … Read more

From F, due to CVE-2016-2107, on SSL Report to A

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On my VPS, running Debian with DirectAdmin, I noticed I got an F on the SSL Server Test After applying the steps from https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=1 it changed back to a nice A. It took me around 15 minutes in total to find the steps to complete and execute them: Note to self: check your server’s configuration … Read more

Sinterklaas surprise on an ESP8266 with Arduino IDE

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What is it? For the Dutch Sinterklaas surprise (like secret Santa or invisible friend), I had to create something new. I found https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino a while ago and decided this was a perfect opportunity to work with it. This project lights 8 led’s red upon booting, spawns an WiFi access-point and hosts a website. The website … Read more

Disable LinkedIn auto-playing videos

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I didn’t find how to disable the autoplay of video’s on LinkedIn on the first page on Google. As I’m so annoyed by this and I can’t remember seeing a good video, I just spend 2 minutes to disable it via the Firefox plugin Stylish. Disaster avoided  

Angular2 templates with ASP.NET Core Razor

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What is it? My objective consists of two parts, load the Angular2 template while it is being served by Razor and also apply lazy loading of the template itself. I followed the post from Victor Savkin on https://vsavkin.com/angular-router-declarative-lazy-loading-7071d1f203ee Lazy loading speeds up our application load time by splitting it into multiple bundles, and loading them … Read more

Secure tunnels to 127.0.0.1 with ngrok

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What is it? The guys from https://ngrok.com have done some great work. Their slogan: I want to expose a local server behind a NAT or firewall to the internet. Don’t constantly redeploy your in-progress work to get feedback from clients. ngrok creates a secure public URL (https://yourapp.ngrok.io) to a local webserver on your machine. So … Read more

DenS Game

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Table of contents What is it? C# and javascript code How does it work the players perspective How does it work the quizmasters perspective How does it work the Dennis and Sandra’s perspective What could be better What is it? This webpage is a simple question game based on the MJAGame. All normal players can … Read more

Air humidifier

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What is it? When we first used this device, a Medisana Humidifier AH 665, around the house, you could notice the increased level of humidity. I guess it was really needed as I did not really measure the humidity before that good. After using this humidifier for a couple of days, it woke us up … Read more

MysensorsInformation

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Table of contents What is it? Setting up the Arduino NRF24Sniffer Running the ASP.NET Core 1.0 website Install .NET runtime if you are not on Windows Download and run the application Configuring the settings Explanation of the data on the NRF24Sniffer page Explanation of the data on the MysensorListener page Understanding the raw package information … Read more

Outside temperature

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What is it? It is a very easy way to measure the temperature outside of my apartment. The protoboard is placed in a tupperware style box to protect against the rain and placed in the shadow part of my balcony. In my Vera3 environment this looks like Eagle layout Most of the projects I use … Read more

Heater fans

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What is it? My radiators are all equipped with a measuring device, making it possible to measure the used heat by a single radiator and once per year device the costs between different apartment owners. This device measures the temperature of the radiator, and compares it (with some kind of formula) with the room temperature. … Read more

MJAGame – Game of Gods

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Table of contents What is it? How does it work from the players perspective How does it work from Martens perspective C# and javascript code Small hacks to get it working Database What could be better What is it? This webpage is a simple question game. All the players, except for Marten, can answer a … Read more

Install Android 6.0 on a Samsung Galaxy S3

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What is it? A small tutorial how to get Cyanogenmod 13 (Android 6.0) on a Samsung Galaxy S3. The steps taken were described at https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_i9300 Steps to perform Boot the phone normally and upload the cm13.zip package to the internal storage. I used cm-13.0-20160110-NIGHTLY-i9300.zip from https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=i9300 Download and extract Meimdall Suite from http://glassechidna.com.au/heimdall/#downloads In the … Read more

Housedb

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What is it? This small webpage is used by some of my domotica projects. For now, it contains a small database that holds information for my 7Segment power meter. Created in Symfony2, it also holds a command that is executed every 5 minutes to refresh several caches. By doing this there is no need to … Read more

Wifi button controller

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What is it? The wifi button controller project is a button pad / slider controller for some of the lights around my house. Every button (in a 4 by 4 grid) represents a light source around the house that can be controlled via my Vera3. Upon a button press, the 100mm linear motorized sliders will … Read more

WS2801 projects

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What is it? This project is used a couple (mabye around 10 times) in my house. It makes sure I can controle a WS28xx ledstrip via the mysensors environment. I have called the project WS2801, but I have to agree that most of the ledstrips I use are WS2812 versions, still I refuse to change … Read more

7Segment power meter

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What is it? Every 10 seconds my smart home power meter sends out data, this can be captured by a simple serial connection. This project aims to get the latest data from my Vera3 via wifi. Every 10 seconds a webpage is requested, this page returns a json object with all the information of my … Read more

SMS receiver

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What is it? In the remote connection / VPN world, RSA tokens and other two-way authentication methods are used to increase security. Sometimes a sms (text message) is send with an one-time-password. This box is able to receive these smses and display them over a telnet session, making it unnecessary to find that one specific … Read more

Wall-mobile (In progress)

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What is it? With a couple of dozen sensors and actors around my apartment, I found the need to create an app that runs on a mobile hanging in my entrance. I found a nice place, between two doors, to place a mobile (I did some tests with the Touch Display Scene Controller project from … Read more

Timelapse camera

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What is it? Across my apartment a demolition is going on. I took this opportunity to start a timelapse project of the demolition. The rev1 was a simple setup with a bash script making a picture every 5 minutes. After a while I found it hard to get the camera positioned good (I had to … Read more

The orangebox

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What is it? This box, called the orangebox, was created to solve a simple problem: Find which pin of a cable is connected to which pin on the other side of the cable. The cables involved typically look like DB9 to RJ45, but can come with some other connectors as well. An example schema of … Read more

Scankoffer

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What is it? In the remote connection / VPN world, RSA tokens and other two-way authentication methods are used to increase security. At my work we have a box full of these tokens laying around. I had an old scanner laying around, and decided that it would be a good project to create someting that … Read more