LenCode Blog

Robotics and computer projects. Blog run by Shyaam Ramesh

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Why you should stop using Google as your search engine

I switched from Google (pretty much completely, more on that in a later blog post). Many people use Google, I don’t... anymore. Currently google dominates the search engine market, but I kind of hope they don’t or they should make some changes. Here are some reasons that compelled me to switch :

Privacy

Google protecting your privacy, HA nope ! They rely on your data...

A common rule of thumb is anything in which you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. Google, as a whole, tracks your location, records your search data, reads your emails, logs your browsing history, keeps your purchasing records. You can reclassify all this as stalking, snooping, following and its criminal as well as psychotic. I think all this doesn't need any further explanation

Manipulation

We all know that instant answer feature of Google right, you put in your search query and you instantly get an answer. Well ... Google stole that feature from DuckDuckGo. And they're doing this whole instant answer thing wrong. Instant answers should be only for information that is factual, historical, calculations, biographical facts, etc. Everything else should be left to search results.

When i typed in “is google evil“ on both Google and DuckDuckGo, here’s what came up

Google is clearly misleading you with their answer box. In the box it brings up a Wikipedia article about Google’s old motto (back when they respected your privacy)

Stack Overflow

This is a tech blog, I write about tech because I’m a developer and generally interested in tech. So Stack Overflow is my alternative Reddit for development.

DuckDuckGo has integration with Stack Overflow. Enough said, I’m convinced

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The Apple Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a community made up of living organisms and nonliving components such as air, water, and mineral soil.

An Apple ecosystem is a community made up of “luxury” devices and “necessary” components such as air pods, icloud, and Apple pencils.

Apple is a purely Eco-systemic company, they rely on having an ecosystem. For example:

Say you bought an Apple watch, well then you would need an iPhone.

If you bought an iPhone, then you may need an iPad. Why? Well because if you already have an Apple device buying other devices would just become a must have purchase.

Okay now that you’ve bought an iPad, then what. Oh ! yeah a macbook. “Well because I already have my mobile devices all Apple, it would be great to have a macbook too!“

Finally we have made our way up to computers (well laptops). “Lets finish this deal and get an at home computer, i can use the macbook while traveling”

Lets complete this ecosystem, so you’re going to need : an icloud subscription, an apple pencil, an apple TV, and an iPod.

Why are people frivolously spending on these products, well its because of the ecosystem that Apple provides. All of their devices work so well with each other. Once you’re in an ecosystem it seems hard to get out. I own an iPad Air 2 ...

Because we have an iPad we may want to buy another Apple device but the urge was not strong enough. Part of that is the feature lock. Features such as Facetime, Airdrop, Find my iPhone, Screen casting, etc. are only available on Apple devices. So if people around you have one, well you’re going to need one not to be left out.

This is my theory as to why people buy from Apple.

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Make a cross platform app with web technologies (PhoneGap)

There’s a common problem with app development.

Say you want to develop for Android you use Java or Kotlin, for an iOS app you use Objective-C or Swift. These are called native apps that are built with their native SDKs.

However this method is expensive since it requires more developers for each different platform. A better way is to build a cross platform app, this is where Apache Cordova comes in. Cordova lets you use web technologies (HTML, JS, CSS) to create an app for iOS or Android and even Windows Phone.

Cordova is the bridge for interacting with native features of the device.

We use PhoneGap for compiling web code and use Cordova plugins to make our app.

Lets make an app with PhoneGap

This is not a full tutorial of the web coding part, just how to build web pages into apps. Download the source code to follow along, from this git repository.

Download the source code (here). This source code has a few web pages to demonstrate some basic features. Which are :

HTML, CSS, JS

Input

Multiple pages

Buttons

Alert

Prompt

1. Go to Phonegap Cloud Build

2. Click “Get started”

3. Choose the free plan

4. Sign in or Register with your Adobe ID

5. Click “Upload a .zip file”

6. Choose the source zip file

7. Click “Create”

Done, now you can scan the QR code or download the app files.

If you have any problems you can contact [email protected]

I would love to see what apps you make with PhoneGap, @ramesh_shyaam is my twitter. Tweet to me.

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Easy Web AR With Playcanvas-ARtoolkit

There are very few ways to create an Augmented Reality application that can work on mobile devices.

Playcanvas lets you create AR for free, without coding anything, on the web.

A very popular method is to use Vuforia as a plugin along with Unity3d, a game engine. However this method is super expensive. Just take a look at these ridiculous prices !

To be fair these prices are that high since Vuforia is the market leader and from experience I can tell you that Vuforia has some of the best marker tracking in the industry.

During the summer I took an internship at my fathers company. Here I worked on a few computer vision projects and also an augmented reality project. I used AR to create a 3d model and place it on a paper. The paper was a marker, in this case a floor plan for a gas station (not an actual plan, just a random image). So somebody could point their phone at the plan and have a 3d model of the building.

Enough rambling, lets start talking about Playcanvas. Playcanvas ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ... is a free (mostly) and open-source game engine for the web. AR toolkit is a “plugin” that lets you make your own AR web apps without any coding.

Here is how to do it :

I’m going to assume that you already have a Playcanvas account

2. Fork this project

2. Give it any name

3. Edit the project

4. Select the first scene

You’re done with the basics, now its time to customize it to fit your needs.

How to change the object displayed :

1. Expand the parent marker object by clicking the +

2. Select the “Orange Box” object (or blue) and delete it

3. Drag and drop your object (obj, fbx, etc.), or upload it (add asset > upload)

Now you should see your object has a .json file along with the .obj (the original file type) along with any other files needed to render the object.

4. Drag and drop the .json file under the “Parent Marker”. This will make the object become a child for the marker.

5. Click on the child object to bring up the object editor, where you can change the objects shape, size, etc.

That’s how you do it !

How to change the marker :

Lets generate a .pat file

1. Create an image of your marker. It shouldn’t be anything fancy, however it should have defining features and a specified rotation design. I made my marker in MS Paint.

2. Print it out (on an A4, as big as possible)

3. Download this .pat generator from here (just use IE to open the swf)

4. Point your webcam towards the marker on a flat surface.

5. Save the newly generated .pat file

6. In the Playcanvas editor, upload your pattern file

7. Select the parent object “Parent Marker“

8. In the entity editor, drag and drop the .pat file in the pattern slot

Now you have a different marker !

Although Playcanvas AR is somewhat of a new thing, it seems promising as more people contribute to the project and more people are using it.

Playcanvas itself is looking good too, as it’s been acquired by Snap inc. Snapchat’s parent company.

I would love to see what you make with AR, @ramesh_shyaam is my twitter. Tweet to me.