So, my trusty-dusty Unify networks coupled with the amazing pfSense, are all working SUPER well. By allowing wifi for the guests at one of my clients has hosed another initiative – live streaming FROM that same facility. Note how those 2 things fight eachother? Options? None as it is located in a residential neighborhood and T1 bandwidth and any faster BW are not available. We are with the phone provider and the cable provider will give slightly better BW at twice the price (eg 1.1 the BW for 2x the price).  Therefore since we have pfsense, we need to learn about pfSense bandwidth limiting and scheduling.

So getting another Phone line adsl is an option for $620 / year, but lets BW limit the guest network first, and get some stats/quality metrics on the video streaming first as that is just a good idea. Here are 2 links – just follow them and add a 2nd IDENTICAL firewall rule for VLAN traffic, but it only kicks in when the streaming is going (always the same time each week) and put the limiting in place.

• limiting BW – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usi195rK35I
• scheduling – http://www.robpeck.com/2015/04/scheduled-throttling-with-pfsense/#.VqLK__EbJKE

Here are the steps and sample code I made to learn about getting the navisworks insertion point or midpoint of a component. I know how to find the component by its id (I am using AutoPLANT component id), now I know how to find the midpoint of that component or the location of that component.

Steps to find the navisworks insertion point

• Accessing the file units and location information using Navisworks .NET API
• A pdf primer on Navisworks basic objects and how those objects are related (key resource)
• I made some VBA to put pause points and look at objects as they went by. In short
  • start with a path object – in this code example – the currently selected objects (so select one to keep it easy!!!)
  • Pause points/Interest points are the Beep lines which might have been replaced with Debug.Print lines
  • In our example, I am looking for AutoPLANT components with a unique id that would similar to “AT_HSHF31AB_2Q7” (the 2nd set of strings is the doc id and the last part is the unique AutoPLANT part id in that doc)
  • look for through the code below for  *********** ANSWER *********** to get where we get the Navisworks Insertion or midpoint of our component

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There are a few “free” lists but there is also a few links of people’s favorites. I have a friend looking into this as well and here is the list we have come up with. I will be trying the ones marked in ** (Jing is too simple (really simple to use too!!). Then I tried Recordzilla and I didn’t try #3 – sadly – I got my work done with Recordzilla and the total full featured price is $43 – should I look further?) :

• Comparison of screencasting software (A GREAT TABULAR RESOURCE!!!)
• 37 Best Free Screen Recorder Software for Windows
• [Windows] Best free screen recording program (aka best free video capture program) [2nd Edition]
  • ** #3 I am going to try BB Flashback and choose the free Express version – the runner up since the best one has a steep learning curve. I have to have mouse highlighting and it be done “now” . I will use my Mac to convert from AVI if I have to do that (Handbrake for example)
• **#2 Recordzilla has a cnet review – one vote though. Other’s have rated it 3 stars (I give it 4.9/5 stars – the 0.1 was that I had to read some text to learn how to stop it – Shift-F5). I liked the demo as it seems very easy to use. $43 CDN … seems like a good deal to me.
• On softonic, the # 1 and 2 downloads were Camtasia (used to be open source – now $329 CDN!!!!!!)  but people really like it and Hypercam .
  • ** Jing #1 has no mouse highlight (I tried it) but it is the simplest thing I have used in a along time. Is made by techsmith and does have a link to buy Camtasia! It is not even on their products page but it is in a google search.

Hours of frustration. So I have all these great plans to develop my “click here and view in Navisworks” ideas. Dozens of good plans and I am thwarted by it only running once. Googling, there are other people with other apps that “only work once” when you are connecting to RUNNING instances of them via ActiveX.

Bottom line: when using GetObject “Navisworks.Document.10”) and ensuring you can connect to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. times, you have to choose ‘document.StayOpen’. This sets a special flat in the ROT table (keep reading) to tell it not to go away when you are done with it. You application wil LOOK like it is running and it is,  but the reference to it being ‘grab-able’ is gone. Microsoft applications have Application.UserControl = True, which does the same thing, this (on hour #3 of researching what was going on) inspired me to see if navisworks had anything. Nope, nothing – it didn’t work – EXCEPT for the StayOpen is not a property but a method that sets this flag to True. Holy smokes – it all works and every time now. I CAN COMPLETE MY DREAMS I HAVE IN MY HEAD NOW!!! The motivation, is that we have to give a presentation to the customer’s VP. No pressure 1 week before we are doing this. I will be working the weekend to impress the client’s VP and having a job for the next little while.

Links and learning  to follow – you can stop reading now if you wish.

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Someone who is in the know told me to keep these links handy

• google search term “Living off the Grid”
• homepower.ca (since I am a Canadian) and homepower.com
• goalzero.com

First, I got an email from Yoast and a friend (one of my web-clients too who does Short Term Missions Training and cross cultural training for businesses) asked me about keywords for his new website. I told him – “ask people who are your fans to tell you keywords. Ask your customers. You MIGHT know your keywords- but others will more likely know your keywords”. Well, after reading some books, I was correct – this is sound advice. Now – some links to help you ….

Here is my short list of instructions … I think my friend has a really good chance at rating high Continue reading →

http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/11/mac-wont-sleep-heres-how-to-find-out-why-and-fix-it/

I want to double click a “goto this P&ID page” block and … have it go there. The block has the filename (mostly) in the block’s attributes. This should be a nice tool to make people’s workday nicer and save time to focus on quality – not just getting the job done. Note I did not say – to reduce hours. Reducing hours only is not helpful to anyone – not the customer, not the engineering firm.

• About the Events in AutoCAD (VBA/ActiveX)
  • About Handling Document Level Events (VBA/ActiveX)
• Drive AutoCAD with Code

So about 4 hours of hacking and I FINALLY figured out how the whole thing is put together I want to drive Navis from Excel. Why? Because all engineers and managers use excel!. We are using Navisworks Simulate 2013 (or internally the com API is NavisworksAutomationAPI10). The key to understanding all we need to make this work is

• use the manual/by-hand find tool in Navisworks
• on that screen, there is an export button – look at the XML – the internal names are the key
• then – to understand how that XML stuff helps you decode/use the find in code be it the COM API or the .net API. Lets see how this all fits together.
• [UPDATE Jan 2016] Also, see my other post, save hours of time and know why Document.StayOpen is so critical when automating a live version of Navisworks Simulate.

I am using VBA – because that is native to Excel -put it in an add-in and everyone can enjoy without having to know or do anything – just click and “Trust Macros” and zoom to the part of interest.

Next, I knew one person online who seemed to ‘get it’ and use it successfully is Xiaodong Liang as well as a co-worker who worked with Navis who said – yes, look here and there (in the GUI interface). Next, know where the help files are Continue reading →

Well, I have made an XBMC plugin and am very familiar with it, but on a raspberry pi? Cool – lets go – but not without talking to a friend who has done this and demoed what he as done. Here is his 1,2,3’s to help get me started – I will share. This is not the newest raspberry pi, because they were all sold out before they were finished being made. This is for the model B+

1. Get one, I live in Calgary – so here is a local supplier,.an amazon.ca link for Canadians and amazon.com for the rest of you.
2. This changed since the first post. I need xbmc on my raspberry pi – so follow instructions below. Otherwise Load it with NOOBS load (New out of the box)
3. Use it … I don’t really have a step 3 but it sounds cool to have 3 steps.
   1. ok – add an xbox controller to the mix. OpenELEC xbox ctrlr discussion

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