How to build a low-cost GSM door opener

In the last days I once again tinkered a bit. Certainly more bad than good, but where are no professional tools, there won’t be high quality. But the ultimately goal was not a professional product, but rather a simple and cheap solution. But what is it all about?
The product of my tinkering is a low-cost GSM door opener. That is simplified a small device, that opens your door when you call it and may bring the costs next to nothing. And now a little about the implementation …
Anyone who wants to get an overview about the project, can view the following video, which I made from the final product.

To build a similiar application you need the following components:

Nokia 6230i
12V relay (a 5V relay would be better, but I had none)
Connector strips
A few wires

First I disassembled the phone and removed the vibration motor. To the now vacant contacts on the phone board […]

How to solve representation/encoding errors in C# Winforms applications

Posted by Raffael on 01/14/2013 Posted in C#.Net, Tutorials Tagged Arial Unicode MS, C#, C# encoding, c# representation error, c# unicode characters, setcompatibletextrenderingdefault, setcompatibletextrenderingdefault c#, test

I know the title of this post hurts, but I wasn’t able to describe the problem with fewer words. But let us get to the point. As part of the development of my cloud downloader I encountered (among much others) the following problem. Korean characters were displayed as blank boxes, even though they were shown in the source code editor correctly. Those of you, who wonder now, from where you can get the Korean characters on your keyboard, should just stop by Google Translate. (The screenshot below illustrates the problem once again. Please click to enlarge the image.)
Koreanische Zeichen falsche Darstellung
On the Internet I found only very few solutions. And almost all were, in my opinion, rather suboptimal. In most cases the following solution was proposed:
It is recommended that you call the SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault() method with the parameter true. In […]

How to transfer Facebook contacts to Google Plus

Posted by Raffael on 01/13/201301/13/2013 Posted in Google, Tutorials, Web Tips Tagged Facebook, Facebook export, Google Plus, Google Plus import, Google+, Google+ import, how to export facebook contacts, how to import facebook contacts to gmail, how to import facebook contacts to google plus, how to migrate from facebook to google+, how to transfer facebook friends to google+

At first there was Facebook. But now there’s Google Plus. And yeah, I like it. But what is a social network without contacts? Probably nothing. But who thinks, Facebook contacts can be easily transfered to Google, is on the wrong way.
For a short time there was this plugin for the Chrome browser, named Friend Exporter, which has taken over the job very well. However, this was quickly blocked by Facebook. But there is another way that I want to show you below.
How to export your Facebook friends and import them in Google Plus
The workaround to import the contacts works with the help of Yahoo mail. If you have no account there, then you can just create one here. It’s free and takes less than 2 minutes.
You have a Yahoo mail account? Then you can just go on with […]

How to save user input in C#

Posted by Raffael on 01/09/2013 Posted in C#.Net, Tutorials Tagged C#, how to save user input c#, how to save user settings c#

On request of a reader, I’ll show you today some C# basics. After I had posted a little snippet for dealing with the AppSettings, I was asked how we could now actually save user input on a GUI with help of this snippet. Here comes the solution.
For clarification, I have a created a little C# WinForms project in Visual Studio. The WinForm got a label and a textbox on it. Also the above mentioned functions for loading and storing values in the AppSettings will be used.
If you have created the project and added to the controls, your Application should look similar to the left-hand picture.
Next, you two need to add event handlers. The easiest way is via the “Events” window. (This is the one that is marked red in […]

Tutorial: How to create a simple HTML5 JavaScript based progress bar

Posted by Raffael on 01/08/2013 Posted in JavaScript, Tutorials Tagged HTML5, html5 javascript progress bar, html5 progress, JavaScript, javascript progressbar, progressbar, Tutorial

Since I needed a javascript based progress bar for a Web project and I could not find a component that meets my expectations, I decided to write my own progressbar.
The project was implemented in JavaScript with help of the HTML5 canvas element. The progress bar gets along without any image files, as it is usually the case with other JS / CSS progress bar solutions. By default it can handle 100 states (0-100%) and input errors will be caught and visualized.
Since I like to share my developments I present you the progressbar of course. I’m always open for criticism, praise and suggestions.
For a demo / example click here. The source can be found over here: pbar.js
Below I will show you quickly how to use the progressbar.
At first you have to embed the progress bar […]