Posts

Posted on

Share a new Angular module with multiple standalone components

// material-components.module.ts
const modules = [
  CommonModule, 
  MatAutocompleteModule,   
  MatButtonModule, 
  MatCardModule,
  MatDialogModule, 
  MatFormFieldModule, 
  MatInputModule, 
  MatListModule, 
  MatSortModule, 
  MatTableModule
];

@NgModule({
  imports: modules,
  exports: modules
})
export class MaterialComponentsModule { }


// home.component.ts
@Component({
  selector: 'app-home',
  standalone: true,
  imports: [MaterialComponentsModule],
  templateUrl: './home.component.html',
  styleUrl: './home.component.scss'
})
export class HomeComponent {
Posted on

Home Dashboard V2

I’ve updated the touchscreen dashboard to have larger buttons, and I’ve completed the Hydrawise Sprinkler integration. Everything is fully functional now!

Posted on

Home Dashboard

This web application is hosted on my local IIS server and is displayed on a Raspberry Pi w/ touchscreen. It’s 100% custom, using Angular Material with a dotnet backend. It communicates with several IoT APIs, including:

  • Philips Hue
  • Samsung SmartThings
  • Hydrawise
  • OpenMeteo
  • Roku

Posted on

Error: [/usr/share/dotnet/host/fxr] does not exist

When

Occurs when running dotnet publish --configuration Release or dotnet run

Cause

conflict between the microsoft and ubuntu package repository when dotnet was installed

Solution

Remove all installed dotnet packages

sudo apt remove dotnet* aspnetcore* netstandard*

create a dotnet preference file in /etc/apt/preferences.d with a name like dotnet.pref

Package: *
Pin: origin "packages.microsoft.com"
Pin-Priority: 1001

reinstall dotnet 

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y dotnet-sdk-6.0
Posted on

Set static IP in linux

determine the name of your network interface

ip a

make a backup of the netplan configuration

sudo cp /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml.backup

edit the config file

sudo vim.tiny /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml

make the following changes, replacing “interface_name” with the intended interface

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    interface_name:
      addresses:
        - 192.168.1.101/24
      nameservers:
        addresses: [8.8.8.8]
      routes:
        - to: default
          via: 192.168.1.1

try the new configuration

sudo netplan try

If all is good, press ENTER

Posted on

Lego Deals

This application displays the current prices of Lego sets at major retailers. Every hour, a scheduled task scrapes 29 retailer websites for their discounted Lego sets, and those prices are saved to a database. I started collecting the hourly price history in December 2022 and it continues to run today. I’m able to set alerts via Telegram when the price of a particular set drops below a given threshold. The application also keeps track of which sets I already own, which ones I am interested in, and which ones I never want to see. I can switch to a view that only shows sets I care about.

Lego set details, like number of pieces, are pulled from Rebrickable’s daily dataset. Once per day, a scheduled task downloads the latest Rebrickable dataset and adds the new entries to my database. MSRP is scraped from the Lego website and the BestBuy API. BestBuy just happens to have the best API of all the retailers. And it’s FREE!

Another page in the application displays Ebay buy-it-now, free shipping listings. Due to inconsistency with Ebay data, these prices are not tracked in my database. Ebay deals are displayed on a totally separate page from the retailer listings; however, the Ebay page can be filtered by the same criteria.

The backend, dotnet API and Angular application are hosted on a local IIS server. Several scheduled tasks, like MSRP updates, Rebrickable datasets, alerts, etc. run on the same server. The MySQL database is hosted on Bluehost.

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Disable the Windows “Shake” feature

Shaking the mouse while dragging another window’s title bar minimizes all other Windows. The UI to disable this “feature” is no longer obvious and I was able to disable it by making the following registry change. Note: This worked even on a gpo machine since it only modified CURRENT_USER.

registry location

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Add the following DWORD key with value 1

DisallowShaking
Posted on

Angular pipe to replace characters in a string

Generate a new pipe using the Angular CLI

ng g pipe pipes/replace

Code inside the new pipe (pipes/replace.pipe.ts)

...
transform(input: string, from: string, to: string): string {
   const regEx = new RegExp(from, 'g');
   return input.replace(regEx, to);
}

Usage

// page.component.html
// replaces underscores with spaces
...
<span>{{ myString | replace:'_':' '}}</span>
Posted on

Mock a non-singleton Angular service in a component unit test

describe('MyComponent', () => {
  let mockService: jasmine.SpyObj<MyService>;

  beforeEach(async () => {
    mockService = jasmine.createSpyObj<MyService>(['download']);

    await TestBed.configureTestingModule({
    ...
    }).overrideComponent(MyComponent, {
      set: {
        providers: [
          { provide: MyService, useValue: mockService }]
      }
  }).compileComponents();

  beforeEach(() => {
    ...
  });

  it('should create', () => {
    ...
  });
});