Electronica v7

Electronica was originally an experiment to get my feet wet with Android development. It’s been very educational for me, as a programmer; but it was meant to be a short-term stepping stone to other projects. I’m not abandoning it, mind you. I’ve gotten very positive feedback from people about it, and I’d like to keep adding stuff to it.

However, I’m finding the time I have spread out a bit between this and other projects, and when I do work on it, the “creepy feature creature” kicks in and I wind up making plans for all sorts of crap to add in, and I’m simply getting off track. I made a list of things to add into v1.5, but it just keeps getting longer. There’s a handful of things done and ready to go, but there’s still more to knock off the list that I’ve made for the next version.

So, I started thinking about it. Instead of doing the traditional incremental version numbers, I’m just going to use the internal version code that all apps use. The next release (just pushed out to the Marketplace) will be v7. And I’ll just push out one or two things — small updates. That will remove the pressure that I put on myself to do as much as I can in a small amount of time, and hopefully get new content pushed out more often.

What’s new in v7? Just expanded the data on 555; considering putting a calculator for easily picking resistors and caps for it. Also, I moved the NES port pinout to a new ‘video games’ sub-section. It’s all by itself right now, but in time it’ll have friends. :P

Electronica 1.4 arrives in time to solder together your heart strings

Apparently dogs and elephants can be friends.  Perhaps, even more than friends.  (Try not to think about that one.)  Likewise, cables on the Electronica Wildlife Reserve can get along, too.  Just don’t expect Apple’s 30-pin dock connector to wait patiently outside the house while the USB cable recuperates from a spinal injury…

What’s New:

  • New cable: USB
  • New cable: PDMI (Portable Digital Media Interface)
  • New cable: Apple 30-pin Dock Connector
  • New cable: Nintendo Entertainment System Controller
  • Cables menu no longer shows “IC’s”.

Electronica 1.3 is out!

It’s out there. Thinking.  Breathing.  Waiting…for you.

What’s New:

  • New Section: Charts & Tables
  • All-new resistor color decoder! (Whew, finally!)
  • Removed distracting \”graph paper\” from Series/Parallel Resistor calculator.
  • Optimized file sizes on graphic assets

(Already found a bug; just after I published it, of course.  Nothing huge, the title of the “Charts & Tables” cable page says “IC’s” instead of “Cables”.  Not a huge deal; will save a fix for next time.)

Electronica v1.3 Update

Working on the next release of Electronica.  Thanks for all the feedback, so far!  The next release is taking a little longer than expected; within next day or so, I’m aiming for.

Finally cleaned up the resistor color decoder tool; that thing was damned ugly.  I tried to use only the stock Android views, you see.  It works, technically speaking, but really, it was rather unenjoyable to use.

Hopefully the new interface makes it quick and easy to look up your parts with a minimum of fiddling.

Also forthcoming in v1.3: a new “Charts & Tables” reference section with pinouts of common, popular IC’s and cables.

If you have any suggestions on what tools you might find useful, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.  Remember, I’m not an electronics expert (I’m still a noob, myself), so what’s useful in your own day-to-day tinkering may not be immediately obvious to me. :)

Welcome!

Moved the entire site over to WordPress this morning. Literally this morning. Start to finish. I’m stunned. Such a great platform for getting content up and going; not to mention awesome on a code level.

Anyway, I’m starting to get traction coding for the Android platform. It’s lit a fire under my ass, motivating me to work. (And it feels great!)

The first app for Android is actually my second project for the platform: Electronica. It’s a sort of portable reference tool and utility for electronics and more. It’s starting off pretty bare bones, but I’ve been adding to it every couple days.

Also, coming soon, is “Cammy“.  That’s an app for easily monitoring multiple webcams; be it a series of traffic cams along the highway, or random webcams from around the world. You’ll be able to watch them in a grid, or full screen individually. You’ll be able to quickly save snapshots, and more. With all I’ve learned from Electronica, I’ll probably be sending Cammy back for a facelift now that I’m quite a bit more comfortable with Android.

More to come.