DEV Community: Fernando Zablah

Advice needed... How is your Software Development Process/Cycle?

Fernando Zablah — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 17:10:40 +0000

Hello, I'm a software engineer student, I started a small software consulting/developing company almost two years ago, we started as 3 partners who did the programming and designing of the products our clients asked us for (mostly web apps), but as we received more clients we started hiring more people.
We are 6 persons in the team, the problem is that we have problems in the software development methodoly, since we dont have something well established, we define features and we have 1 week to deliver one feature, (like a scrum sprint), then we have a meeting about the progress and the next steps. But we dont document what is it really what we are going to do... like tests, components, interfaces, this makes the quality of our code and delivery times look bad. I started learining devops to help automate the development to production process, and started investigating how to integrate QA in the process, but I feel lost I dont know how to integrate it all together, how to document all the project before we start to coding. In my univesity classes they teached me UML for modeling classes, components, case uses, etc.. But I feel that they are used for other technologies, like php and java apps. Where we work mostly with React web apps with an Express js REST Api and a MySQL database.

So my question is: How do you organize/apply all of the software development process in your work/bussiness/professional life? Do you have any recomendations on courses/book for this type of area in the software development business.

Thanks.

Change websites colors for better navigation with Stylus

Fernando Zablah — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 23:28:16 +0000

Why?

So the other day I was coding a game in Unity, I was getting some headache but it wasn't a lot of a problem because i have the dark theme in Unity and also a night theme in Atom for coding the scripts. The problem appeared when I saw this on my screen:

I think this was more or less my reaction:

All that white background was giving me more headache that I had initially, so I googled a solution for my "problem".

Stylus

So I found this magnificent extension for my web browser (Chrome), called Stylus.
With Stylus you can search for css themes that its community codes and uploads to their site. So after I found GitHub Dark everything was okay for my eyes again.

Installation

First we need to install the Stylus for your web browser:

Their installation is pretty straightforward, as any other extension/add-on for your browser.

Themes

Once you have installed Stylus on your web browser, its time to get some themes!
Stylus themes are available here.

To add them just click on the style you want and click the "Install Style" button:

And here is how Chrome shows GitHub:

Now my eyes can concentrate in the commit's messages and not the killer white background.

Here are some other cool themes I installed:

YouTube Dark Theme by Arczi008TV

Amazing Google by Random guy

Clear Dark Facebook by Nicholas Buk

Dark Whatsapp Theme by Vednoc

Bonus

Global Themes

I liked a lot these themes, but I don't want to download a theme for every website! Stylus has a fix for that, they have "global themes" which are generic themes that should work on all websites.

I installed Global Dark Style by stormy.

The results are something like this:

As you can see the results are not perfect, but in my opinion, it gets the job done.

Adding Exceptions

There might be websites that you dont want to apply this global theme, or you already have othere themes for those websites that just looks better. You can add exceptions by clicking the Stylus icon on your browser and clicking on the manage/administrate button (the left one). Select your global theme, and go to the bottom of the page to add the exceptions websites.

As you can see I deactivated the global theme for the websites where I already have another theme, as sometimes, there are conflicts between multiple themes.

I hope this post helps some people to have a more "easy to look" web experience.

Voice Controlled Lights From Anywhere with Jason app

Fernando Zablah — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 22:58:28 +0000

Description

Jason is a voice controlled assistant app that I coded for Android devices to control the electrical state of an AC appliance, until now it can control lights. You can control the lights from anywhere in the world as long as you have internet connection. This is possible by using an IoT broker, in this case we are using Ubidots.

To use it you need to build the hardware module that connects to the light bulb, (which instructions are in this tutorial) and you will also need to create an Ubidots account.

So let's get started...

Components

NodeMCU
NPN transistor
Solid State Relay 5V (can be a mechanical relay)
Switch (Can be an electronics hobby switch, like a toggle, or a wall switch)
1k Ohm resistor
2.2k ohm resistor
Breadboard
USB-A to micro-USB cable
A/C Light Bulb
Light Bulb Socket
Power Cord
5V Phone charger
Jumper wires

Software and Services

Ubidots Account

The first thing you need to do is go to the Ubidots for Education website and create an account. You can sign in directly if you already have a Twitter, Github, Google or Facebook account.

When you have already created your account you will have access to your token, bu clicking on your username at the top right corner and clicking on API Credentials. Save your token, as we are going to use later on.

Jason App

The app can be downloaded from the Play Store, it is available in english and spanish.

Copy your Ubidots token into the app, by tapping the settings tab, pasting it in the Ubidots key field and tap the save button.

Making the Hardware

Safety First

In this project we are working with mains voltage (A/C voltage) which is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, be very careful. NEVER touch ANY part of the circuit or work with it if it is connected to the wall power. If you don't know what you are doing, stop right here or get some help from professionals.

I am only posting this educational tutorial and I am by no means responsible for any injuries or damage you may cause.

Schematics

Power the NodeMCU by connecting VIN to VCC (5V) and GND pin to GND.
Connect D8 to one end of the switch and to a 2.2K Ohm resistor conected to GND.
Connect the other end of the switch to 3.3V as the NodeMCU can only handle that - voltage in its I/O Pins.
D1 to 2.2k Ohm resistor to the base of the NPN transistor
Negative DC of the relay to the colector of the transistor.
Transistor emitter to GND.
Positive DC of the relay to 5V.
Negative of light bulb to one AC pin of the relay.
Positive of bulb to AC Live (AC Positive).
Other AC pin of relay to Neutral (AC Negative). NOTE: VCC 5V is going to be supplied from an usb cable connected to a simple phone transformer charger.

Breadboard

The switch that I used has double throw, we only need one, so I connected its pin 1 to 3V of the NodeMCU and pin 2 of switch to NodeMCU pin D8.

The power supply is going to be a phone wall charger of 5V with a stripped usb cable.

By controlling the ground connection with the relay we can control the AC status of the light bulb

Code

Before you use the source code, you need to download some libraries:

Arduino core for ESP8266 (Read the "Installing with Boards Manager" step)
Ubidots ESP MQTT

Note: If you don't know how to add libraries to the arduino IDE, you can follow thiseasy tutorial.

Set your development board to NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module).

You need to change some variables in the code:

Your SSID (Name of your home Wi-Fi network)
Password of your Wi-FI network
Your Ubidots token


//Include Libraries

#include "UbidotsESPMQTT.h"

//Define Constants

/*Replace the empty string
with your Ubidots TOKEN*/

#define TOKEN ""

/*Replace the empty string
with your ssid, eg: "MyHomeNewtwork"*/

#define WIFINAME "" 

/*Replace the empty string with your
wi-fi password, eg: "mypass123456"*/

#define WIFIPASS "" 

/*Replace with any random string,
Ubidots requires it to be unique*/

#define MQTTCLIENTNAME ""


Ubidots client(TOKEN, MQTTCLIENTNAME);

/**********************
  Auxiliar Functions
 *********************/

/*NOTE PINS ARE FROM THE 
INTERNAL ESP8266 MODULE 
NOT THE DIGITAL PINS FROM THE 
NODEMCU, MORE AT INFO: 
http://www.electronicwings.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-gpio-with-arduino-ide
*/
int outputs[] = {2,4,5,12};
int inputs[] = {13,14,15,16};
int btnStates[] = {0,0,0,0};

//This is called every time we 
//receive an update from the Ubidots server
void callback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {
  //Print the topic (pin) and its server state
  Serial.print("Message arrived [");
  Serial.print(topic);
  Serial.print("] ");
  for (int i=0;i<length;i++) {
    Serial.print((char)payload[i]);
  }
  bool reading = true;
  int count = 20;
  String topicPin = "";
  String payloadState = "";
  Serial.println(" ");
  while(reading){
    if((char)topic[count] != '/'){
      topicPin += (char)topic[count];
      Serial.print((char)topic[count]);
      count++;
    }
    else{
       Serial.println(" STRING: " + topicPin);
      reading = false;
    }
  }
  for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    payloadState += (char)payload[i];
    Serial.print((char)payload[i]);
  }
  //Apply server value to pin
  int ledpin = topicPin.toInt();
  int state = payloadState.toInt();
  digitalWrite(ledpin, state);
  Serial.println();
}

/*********************
 Main Functions
 **********************/

void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  client.wifiConnection(WIFINAME, WIFIPASS);
  client.begin(callback);
  //Subscribe to all of out Outputs pins
  for(int i=0;i<4;i++){
    char b[2];
    String str;
    str=String(outputs[i]);
    str.toCharArray(b,2);
     //Insert the dataSource and Variable's Labels
    client.ubidotsSubscribe("esp32",b); 
  }
  //Set all of our pinModes and save button states
  for(int i = 0; i<4; i++){
    pinMode(outputs[i], OUTPUT);
    pinMode(inputs[i], INPUT);
    int buttonState = digitalRead(inputs[i]);
    btnStates[i] = buttonState;
  }
}

void loop() {
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
  if(!client.connected()){
      client.reconnect();
      //Subscribe to all of out Outputs pins
      for(int i=0;i<4;i++){
        char b[2];
        String str;
        str=String(outputs[i]);
        str.toCharArray(b,2);
         //Insert the dataSource and Variable's Labels
        client.ubidotsSubscribe("esp32",b);
      }
  }
  //Check if switch has changed state
  //If it did chnage, change the light state and save it to array
  for(int i = 0; i<4; i++){
    int buttonState = digitalRead(inputs[i]);
    if(buttonState != btnStates[i]){
      digitalWrite(outputs[i], buttonState);
      btnStates[i] = buttonState;
    }
  }
  client.loop();
}

And finally upload your code to the board.

It works! If you have any questions or suggestions please leave them at the comments section.