iPhone 5 - ProClipUsa - AV cable adaptation

My wife listens to music from her iPhone 4 by docking it in the ProClipUsa cradle.  The cradle connects the iPhone to the AV cable and connects to the SUV sound system.  With the iPhone 5 the cable connections have change so I had to figure out a new configuration.

In order to avoid changing the existing iPhone RCA AV cable, I bought the iPhone 5 Lightning to 30-pin Adapter which converts output of digital to analog.  The problem I ran was that the cradles for the iPhone 5 were limited to the original power cable and non of the cradle at that moment will fit the AV cable required for iPhone 5.  The iPhone 5 cables had different width at the phone plug side, which made the fitting non-generic.

FYI - as I wrote this post, I found ProClipUsa  now has an option to buy a cradle which will fit the AV cable.  So no need to do this modification anymore.  But if you have the original ProClipUsa cradle for the power cable, then keep going to see how easy is to modify.

ProClipUsa - iPhone 5 cradles

• Original - Power cable
• New - AV Cable

Quick How To:

First get the tools for stripping the phone plug in the Lightning to 30-pin Adapter.  For this I used a vice-grip and a picker tool with a sharp edge.

With the vice-grips hold the phone plug close to the bottom so you have room on the upper side to break the protecting plastic coating.  Insert the picker in between the plastic coat and the other inner coating.  The idea is to insert in between and break the plastic by pressuring outward such that the cable doesn't get harmed.

This is how it looks once the plastic is stripped.

Now the cable is too thin for staying lock in the cradles opening.  Let's fix that!

 

Roll a little of electrical tape over where the plastic shield existed.  This will protect the cable plus give the thickness we need to keep the cable in place.

Insert the cable in the cradle and make sure it sits firm.  Then test the cradle a couple of times to make sure the phone plugs and disconnects smoothly.

Recipe - Coquito Boricua

The Coquito is one of the traditional Christmas drinks of Puerto Rico.  Usually this drink is compare with the American Eggnog.  There are many recipes in the web about how to do the Coquito, and even some debate about the drink having egg yolk or not.  Mine is yet another variation of this common recipe using Fat Free ingredients and "huevo-less" (Spanglish for no egg).

Recipe:

• 1/2 Regular can of Coco Lopez coconut cream
• 1/2 Large can of Borden Fat Free condense milk
• 3/4 Large can of Borden Fat Free evaporated milk
• 1 Regular can of Thai coconut milk
• 1 small spoon of Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 small spoon of Coconut Extract
• 1/4 cup of Bacardi Select spice rum
• 1/2 cup of Bacardi white rum
• Dash of Cinnamon
• Pinch of sal

This recipe is not an exact science and very easy to adjust to either sweeter or stronger.

 

Very Important: - Have fun with it!!!

Design Documents - My Cheat Sheet...

Design documents are something many of us as engineers write to express how business needs will be solved.  These documents are very important for the business because they are what drives the direction of the current development and explains how the goal will be achieved.  A design document is a very important worksheet which captures the requirements, the domain knowledge, the vision, and the implementation idea of what a team will be working to make a reality.

Unfortunately, I have seen through my career that the continuous process of the SDLC dims the importance of design documents for various reasons.  Sometimes is just time frame, others the people are not interested with the project, and in many of them the person writing the design just doesn't know how to express.  I think the latter is the most common one and my focus in this article.

A design is not expected to be perfect, but it should have the following:

• Express what the problem is and the business requirements
• Understand who are affected by the problem
• How will the problem be solved in a non-technical way
• Only include important technical details and don't code the design
• Try to interest your audience by expressing their focus, not yours

I decided writing about design documents after helping a teammate with reviewing his paper.  Below is a "copy / paste" of what I wrote to him.  Hopefully this helps others because writing documents is something that really has aid my career when presenting projects.  Remember, don't get stuck in making it perfect but instead spend the time in making it concise and attractive.

Letter to my teammate:

"In general, you should learn to organized your thoughts when expressing an idea.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but at least help the audience understand why is this important for them.  This is something I think we all learn as we progress in the career.  The sooner you master this, the quicker you will build professional documents.


Here are some tips:

• Start your paragraphs with functional description.  Forget the computer for a moment and explain what is needed and how you plan to achieve it.  Technical implementations come and go, but the concept of what we are trying to achieve is the core of the project. 
• Personally, I try defining an Outline of ideas..  What is needed?  Which bits and pieces are required to achieve it?  Any questions or gaps?  Dependencies to think of?  Possible blockers?  So far I have not talk in computer terms but project focus. 
• Once I have that outline, I try writing paragraphs explaining the bullet points and connecting the parts.  I go through several iterations myself...
• The good thing of writing all these functional paragraphs is that later you can go one by one and as you read them, you will get all the ideas and requirements for the technical sections of the document. 
• Another thing I learned with time is not to get hanged in writing technical information.  Why?...
• When you are the developer.  You know how to do it and you are better off writing it directly in code. 
• When you it hand off to an experience developer.  In this case the experience developer knows the tools and knows the system.  Usually they want just the different technical points.  They benefit more from understanding the idea and not how to achieve it.  Actually too much details becomes two cooks in the kitchen… 
• When the developer doesn’t know the technology.  At that point giving them the code and technical details will not solve anything for them.  They will need guidance and is better to don’t even give them code so they can’t copy / paste it blindly.  And yes, I have seen that happen.  I think the best approach here becomes train and code.  Where you as the designer need to do some code work with the developer so they can learn from you.

Hope you find this helpful.
"

Geronimo 3 - OracleConnection unwrap AbstractMethodError - JDBC4

I will update and post more information about this later...

But meanwhile I will  post links to the forums I wrote to resolve the problem.
TranQL - https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/TQL-31?focusedCommentId=306715#comment-306715
Spring - http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?129311-Cast-ConnectionHandle-to-OracleConnection
Geronimo - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GERONIMO-6383

If you are going through the same and need some help, just post a comment.

Related Errors:

java.lang.AbstractMethodError: org.tranql.connector.jdbc.ConnectionHandle.unwrap(Ljava/lang/Class;)Ljava/lang/Object;

java.lang.ClassCastException: org.tranql.connector.jdbc.ConnectionHandle cannot be cast to oracle.jdbc.OracleConnection

Spring - Making a self configurable project

In my projects I prefer having self configurable solutions and avoid any additional involvement for deploying an enterprise application (EAR file).  For example, if the project needs to call some web services but the host address depends of the environment where the deploying is occurring (i.e. DEV, QAT, UAT, PROD).  Or you might need specific settings in each environment like DEV where you want to have more traces and debug information.  Imagine having to configure each setting every time you deploy...  plus this is prone to errors.

So how to make the solution self configurable?

In my case I use a combination of the JAVA env variable and Spring.

Set ENV Variable

Configure the JVM which hosts your application and set the vm argument:  -Denv <name>.

For example if using Geronimo application server, I will set this in the Launch Configuration where the VM arguments are configured.

-javaagent:"$(GERONIMO_HOME)/lib/agent/transformer.jar" -Djava.ext.dirs="$(GERONIMO_HOME)/lib/ext;$(JRE_HOME)/lib/ext" -Djava.endorsed.dirs="$(GERONIMO_HOME)/lib/endorsed;$(JRE_HOME)/lib/endorsed" -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Dorg.apache.geronimo.home.dir="$(GERONIMO_HOME)" -Dkaraf.home="$(GERONIMO_HOME)" -Dkaraf.base="$(GERONIMO_HOME)" -Djava.util.logging.config.file="$(GERONIMO_HOME)/etc/java.util.logging.properties" -Dkaraf.startLocalConsole=false -Dkaraf.startRemoteShell=false -Denv=dev

Spring - ENV Configuration

I use Spring Framework to handle many of the dynamic characteristics of the project.  With Spring I can read the JVM env variable and do the following inside the applicationContext.xml file to achieve a self-configurable solution.

Spring - ApplicationContext.xml

This file is used by Spring to configure the application being loaded.  In the configuration I list two files:  application.properties and application.${env}.properties.  Notice the property files are bundle in the compiled JAR, so they are not easily visible nor accessible.  Plus you don't have to worry about the physical path since the files will be in the classpath.  The reason for having two files is that I can use one for all the general properties and another for environment specific settings.  Be careful that the order of the property files is important in the applicationContext.xml for how values are overridden.

    
    classpath:com/jonnazario/myapp/properties/application.properties
    classpath:com/jonnazario/myapp/properties/application.${env}.properties
    






    
    
    

For my preference I have a SystemProperties class which I load with values that are important for the application (i.e. Version, DevModeEnabled, HostName). For this I pass the property values as arguments to the constructor and if they are not defined in the property files, I still set the default values within the applicationContext.xml file.

Properties file

These are example values for the general and environment specific application properties files.  See how some properties are overridden while other are not defined at all.

Configuration - General

# -- General Properties
app.Version=2012.07.01.00
app.devModeEnabled=false

Configuration - DEV

# -- DEV Properties
app.Version=work.in.progress
app.devModeEnabled=true

Configuration - PROD

# -- PROD Properties
app.hostname=www.myapp.com

Hope this helps.

Android WebTop - CarPc Setup

For a while I have been working on integrating my phone into the car.  I thought about doing a full CarPC project like the ones in mp3car.com, but the reality is that I am cheap plus I want something "maintenance" free.  Well really.. what project is maintenance free?....  :)

The easy route to accomplish my goal was to use my aftermarket head unit display (Avic Z110BT) mixed with Motorola Atrix Webtop.  When I connect my "rooted phone" to the HDMI, the Webtop application takes over and I can see the Android screen in the head unit and the phone becomes a mouse and keyboard.  This allows me to take advantage of the Android applications like:  Google Maps, Pandora, Trapster, etc..  For aid, I use Vilingo to read text messages and voice commands.  Another future I like a lot is remote desktop to my in car notebook for running car diagnostics.

Too much talk...  Let me just show it and ask.  :)

Connection:

In this clip I show how the connection occurs between the Android WebTop and the the car's console.  For this project you need a head unit with video / audio input, hdmi to rca converter, power supply for phone and converter, phone mount.

Apps:

In this clip I show a basic idea of the apps. Something I missed recording is the usage of Vilingo for aiding in the hands free solution.  Also Vilingo developers.. please make the activation voice command to be always listening for "Hey! Vilingo" instead of only when app is open....

Car Monitoring:

In this clip I show how I monitor my car from within my phone.  I have a separate notebook computer which boots when car is on and hibernates when car shuts down.  From the phone I use WiFi AdHoc tethering so the PC and the phone can communicate wireless and I can remote desktop in.  The program shown is RossTech Vag-Com which is an OBDII monitoring tool for Audi.

My Car:  (Love Audi!)

Major progress:

• Fix resolution of the rendered screen by updating Webtop X11 config
• Hardwire the notebook computer used for monitoring the car
• Setup tethering between notebook and phone (automatic)
• Setup remote desktop and aspect ratio to be manageable from phone
• Configure the remote Windows machine to have bigger icons, fonts, etc...

TODO:

• Automatize the expansion of Android screen in head unit upon Webtop connection
• Use something like Tasker which starts / stops Android apps upon detecting head unit bluetooth (just for knowing I am in car and is ON)
• Better hands-free automation

BIRT 3.7 - Dynamic connection profiles

The other day I used BIRT 3.7 Report Engine Runtime for generating reports over the web.  The reports creation and access will occur from different clients using technologies like .Net, JAVA, etc...  And the report design will use web services as the data source for populating the report information (data, images, etc..).

Something I had a little trouble when making the dynamic report was how to specify the data source connections dynamically?  In my case the solution is self-configure through having an environment variable which identifies the system as DEV, QAT, UAT, PROD.  All the different projects could be built one time and deploy to different environment without any configuration change.  I wanted the same for the reporting solution.

The ideas I read for making dynamic connections required to:

1. Define the connection profiles pointing to the data sources
2. Pass the connection profile name in the URL

This solves most of my problems, except when I found out that refreshing the web service WSDL schema will failed due to not knowing the connection profile to use.  For this I made a simple scripts which always defaults to the development connection and overrides when the connection profile parameter is passed in.

var profName = "DEV-Localhost.conn";

try { 
    profName = params["connProfileName"]; 
} 
catch (err) 
{  /* continue... */ }

reportContext.getAppContext().get("birt.viewer.resource.path") 
    + "/report/config/" + profName;

Putting it all together...

1. Create the dynamic web project to host the BIRT report engine runtime.  In my setup I have "birt.viewer.resource.path" pointing to the WebContent folder.  So I just need to point the report designers in <path>/report/design/ and the connection profiles in  <path>/report/config/
   
2. Define a connection profile for the data source.
   
3. Define a report parameter for the connection profile name.
   
4. Duplicate the profile connection file and edit the URI address to the data source.
Dev-Localhost.conn


5. Go back to the data source and add  in the property binding section the connection profile store script from above.
   
6. Test the report by passing as an argument the different connection profiles in the report generation URL.

http://localhost:8080/WR/frameset?connProfileName=DEV-Localhost.conn&__report=report/design/MyReport.rptdesign
http://localhost:8080/WR/frameset?connProfileName=QAT-Server.conn&__report=report/design/MyReport.rptdesign
http://localhost:8080/WR/frameset?connProfileName=ETC-Server.conn&__report=report/design/MyReport.rptdesign