Riyas P.K-Fab Academy 2016

Principles and practices, Project management

The assigngment for this week had two parts. First we had to plan and sketch a potential final project. Then we needed to build a personal site in the class archive describing ourselves and our final project. We were advised to look examples in an archive from a past course. We also needed to try, but not necessarily master, several web development software tools. This included HTML editors, picture file size compression tools, and Git to upload the results for the world to see.

Installing Git

Fab Academy uses a website version control software called Git. This software allows the hundred or more students and instructors involved with Fab academy to edit the same global archive. This software keeps track of who makes changes to the archive and makes backups of all changes, etc..

I followed our remote instructor Francisco Sanchez's excellent tutorial on installing Git on Ubuntu, which can be found here.

Install git:To install git type the following code in terminal.

sudo apt-get install git

Add SSH key to the system:For this create a fablab account, and login to to this adress(http://git.fabacademy.org/)using this credentails.This is a gitlab account of fablab.Generate the key using ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "riyasbeten@gmail.com".Detailed instruction of adding ssh key can be found here.After generating the SSH key copy and paste it to the 'My SSH Keys' section under the 'SSH' tab in your user profile.

Clone the repository:Repository can be clones using following code

cd ~ git clone REPLACE_THIS_WITH_GIT_SSH_ADDRESS

Configuring git:Git needs to be configured before using it.

cd ~/folder_name # replace this with your repository folder

git config --global user.name "yourname" #set name for commits

git config --global user.email "youremail" #set email for commits

git config --global push.default simple #default push only the current branch

git config --global pull.rebase true #rebase rather commit automatic merges

git config --global fetch.prune true #locally prune branches that are remotely deleted

git config --global core.editor atom #set the editor

Uploading files to archive:

cd ~/folder_name # go to the repository folder
git pull # pull other students changes
git add --all # add your changes
git commit -m "message" # write a meaningful message
git push

For Windows users

Download and installgit.
During installation you have two options to run git, either from Command prompt or from Git bash.Its up to you.
Generate ssh keys using the command in cmd/git bash: ssh-keygen -t rsa
Copy the ssh key using the command: clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and add it to your gitlab account.
Rest is same as ubuntu.

Pointers-

Clear browser cookies if the changes are not seen in web after pushing.
Dont make changes to another persons directory or from another persons directory.

Problems faced

Installing and using git can be for the first time can be somewhat confusing, especially for those new to linux OS.There can be multiple problems faced. The main problem i faced was during 'push' operation. When i tried to push the file to the repo, the push operation was rejected.

The problem was that before i pushed the file, i did not pull from the archive. For one to push files to the archive, he needs to have the same contents of the archive in the computer.If someone has has added files to the repo that is not present in the local drive, the push operation will be rejected. This can be easily fixed by pulling the files from archive/repo to the computer. Once the contents in the computer are upto-date, the push operation can be done succesfully.

Adventures in website design

One of our assignments for the first week was to create a website to use to document and share our ongoing Fab Academy progress and observations.I have no previous experience in website creation.I started out as suggested by looking at webpages that students created for previous years.After some research i found the best resources for information on HTML and CSS (webpage coding) are Code academy and W3Schools.

Once I had an idea what I wanted my website to look like, I started experimenting with several suggested packages for website editing and development. I looked at LibreOffice, SeaMonkey,Microsoft Word, Google Chrome, and FireFox.I used 'gedit' text editor for coding html and css.For a better look of webpage I used a template from html5up.net.The best part of web page coding is that it can be tested in any browser at any point.

HTML code (on the left) and resulting webpage (on the right)

Final project idea

Modular Wireless speaker

The idea is to create a portable modular wireless speaker system.The idea was inspired by the annoyance caused by my creative 4.1 system which has so many wires, always making tangles difficult to seperate.

It has a main speaker(the sub),and can have up to four side speakers(satellite).Together it will form a Hi-fi speaker system.Also the satellite speakers can use invidually.System and speakers can controlled from wireless devices such as smartphones,PC,tablets etc.Each speaker has rechargable battery that makes it portable.Since i have less knowledg about bluetooth and wifi communications,i am researching on it.

Update

Due to time shortage I had to change the project idea.My new idea is to make a music rhythm box.The idea is to make a led lighting box which can be connected to a music or speaker system.The led will react to the audio and will rythamically blink with the music.The design will also be able to be added to a speaker system.The design used will be same as that of the first proposed sketch.

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