[TriEmbed] Learning Curve

Sat Apr 25 14:08:03 CDT 2015

Chip,

What you need to do is exactly what I do for a living. I agree with you
about the Ruby/Rails combination, but any software stack has a fairly steep
learning curve. I use Python/Django which I feel is easier than the
Ruby/Rails combination. The thing is that if you think your site will have
more than maybe 10 to 20 users you will need a software stack like a Ruby
or Python one to handle concurrency issues. Using canned development
platforms won't cut it in the long run they will probably not give you the
the customization features you may need.

OK, so the upshot of what I'm saying is that if you are doing this for a
business then you need a professional site built. There are so many gotchas
that you may miss some that are critical. The first thing that needs to be
done is to wireframe out the site on paper or power point etc. Starting by
writing code will almost never get you what you want.

What I can do for you is help you pull together what actually needs to be
built, then later on you can decide how or what you want to do. I'm not
expecting any remuneration, and this offer is open to anybody that finds
themselves in a similar situation. The web today is not what it was 10 or
15 years ago, it has become a complex maze to navigate, so I'm here to help.

Carl

On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Chip McClelland via TriEmbed <
triembed at triembed.org> wrote:

> To all,
>
> I have been heads down for the last month finishing a project that I have
> put off for some time.  I have enjoyed building my trail sensors and using
> them to collect data in our Raleigh area parks.  What I had neglected we
> writing the software that could upload those datapoints to my laptop and
> perform the analysis.  I knew I was going to have to learn some new
> language(s) and, for some reason, a pure software project is just not as
> appealing as writing embedded code.  Well, I finally bit the bullet and
> wanted to share a few things I learned and ask for a little help as well.
>
> First, here is what I wanted to accomplish:
> - Build a web-facing application that anyone who uses my sensors could
> access
> - Provide a clean, simple interface that would not require much
> hand-holding
> - Upload a text file with a specific format defined by the firmware on the
> sensor (5 line header and each row holding a date/time value)
> - Parse the file and find the last recoded data set
> - Preview the file so folks could see what was in it and allow for
> trimming to take out “noise” from placing and retrieving the sensor
> - Refine the results with the ability to add historical weather data (rain
> can cause false datapoints) and some basic filters for “noise”
> - Produce a report that the user could print or store
>
> After some false starts (Ruby on Rails - too painful) I decided to use the
> current favorite - JavaScript / HTML / CSS.  I used CodeAcademy
> <http://www.codecademy.com/learn> - an awesome free service - to learn
> these languages.  I learned that I also needed a framework to simplify
> making a professional page, the CodeAcademy courses use the Bootstrap
> <http://getbootstrap.com/>  framework (free thanks to Twitter) and an
> extension to JavaScript called Jquery <https://jquery.com/>.  There are a
> huge number of frameworks and JavaScript extensions out there and I looked
> at many of them but, I can recommend this as a solid combination.
>
> If you have ever taken a CodeAcademy course, you will come to love their
> interactive interface.  I wanted to use something similar in my development
> work.  I wasted a fair bit of time looking at professional tools such as
> Eclipse, WebStorm, Sublime - all great for some folks but I wanted that
> integrated and real time experience and found JSBin. Here is a simple
> example  <http://jsbin.com/lozudo/3/edit?html,css,js,output>that you can
> play with showing how JavaScript, HTML and CSS work together to create an
> interactive site.  There are others such as JSFiddle but JSBin is the only
> one I found that includes a console (where error messages go) and I planned
> to make a lot of mistakes.
>
> There are a number of non-intuitive things about JavaScript and the
> CodeAcademy courses got me started but, more often than not, I would run
> into a problem and need a specific answer.  That is where StackOverflow
> <http://stackoverflow.com> came to the rescue over and over again. Their
> process helps float credible and relevant answers to the top of the heap.
> I owe the folks who volunteer their expertise to this site a huge debt and
> I hope to provide answers to questions there myself someday (once I am
> allowed to - you have to earn that right by building your reputation).
>
> Also, there are a ton of free and open APIs that make things like getting
> historical weather (WeatherUnderground
> <http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/>) and tables and charts (Google
> charts visualization
> <https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/index>) as well as
> methods for file upload and parsing.  I took full advantage of these in
> this project.
>
> JSBin has a method to “host” your site and I wanted to ask a favor.  If
> you have a few minutes, could you please try the following exercise?
> - Download a sample data set from here
> <http://triembed.org/blog/?attachment_id=1059>.
> - Using Chrome or Safari (not sure if Firefox will work), Go to this site
> <http://chipmc.jsbin.com> where I am hosting the application
> - Find the file on your hard drive (select local time) and see if the flow
> from preview to refine to repot is intuitive.
> All comments on usability, clarity, look and feel are welcome.
>
> I would also be interested in any advice or assistance in looking at my
> code.  I am sure I have done many things wrong in this first project you
> can see the code behind this project here
> <http://jsbin.com/qidela/1/edit?html,css,js,output>.  Also, if there are
> any JavaScript gurus or groups I can ask for help, please let me know.
>
> If you made it this far in this long note, thank you.  If you can provide
> me with any feedback, I would very much appreciate it.  Now, with this
> project done, time to get back to something that requires soldering!
>
> Thanks,  Chip
>
>
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> TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org
>
>

-- 
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Carl J. Nobile (Software Engineer)
carl.nobile at gmail.com
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