Tag: English Post

#Coding4Fun – How to control your #drone with 20 lines of code! (13/N)

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Coding4Fun Drone posts

  1. Introduction to DJI Tello
  2. Analyzing Python samples code from the official SDK
  3. Drone Hello World ! Takeoff and land
  4. Tips to connect to Drone WiFi in Windows 10
  5. Reading data from the Drone, Get battery level
  6. Sample for real time data read, Get Accelerometer data
  7. How the drone camera video feed works, using FFMPEG to display the feed
  8. Open the drone camera video feed using OpenCV
  9. Performance and OpenCV, measuring FPS
  10. Detect faces using the drone camera
  11. Detect a banana and land!
  12. Flip when a face is detected!
  13. How to connect to Internet and to the drone at the same time

Hi!

No code today, just some tips about a specific network configuration to work with the drone.

In 2 days I’ll share a session about how to do some AI with a Drone, and I just realized that I’ll be live doing this session. And, going back to my post 4 in this series, I realized that

My PC is connected to the drone via Wifi.

That means, I can’t connect to the Internet to host the session line.

In normal times, I’ll buy a couple of adapters and I’ll have everything in wireless mode. However this days, a simple amazon request may take a couple of weeks.

So, I analyze my home network and I realized that I can reuse some of my Linksys Velop nodes in my office. At home, I have 3 nodes to cover all the house, and I decided to move one of the nodes at my office and use one of the Ethernet ports to connect a network cable to my PC. So, my final configuration is something like this (sorry no visio installed)

Thanks to this port, I can be connected to the internet and host the session; and also be connected to the drone and have some fun !

More information about the event here

GlobalAI Community Virtual Tour, April 8th. Let’s code a drone to follow faces! Using AI, Python, containers and more

See you in a couple of days!

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

References

My Posts

#Event – #GlobalAICommunity Virtual Tour, April 8th. Let’s code a drone to follow faces! Using AI, Python, containers and more.

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Globa AI Community on Virtual Tour Logo

Hi !

On the 8th of April 2020 the Global AI Community is hosting a 30 hour live event across timezones in different languages. Mark the date in your calendar, subscribe to our YouTube channel and tune in.

We updated the agenda with an amazing set of great speakers, and super cool sessions. Take a look at the agenda and subscribe to the event here:

https://live.globalai.community/

And I realize that I forget to share details about my session, so here it is:

Let’s code a drone to follow faces! Using AI, Python, containers and more

You can control a drone using 20 lines of code. That’s the easy part. However, adding extra features like face or object detection and program the drone to follow and object or a face requires … another 20 lines of code!
During this workshop we will review how to connect to a drone, how to send and receive commands from the drone, how to read the camera video feed and how to apply AI on top of the camera feed to recognize objects or faces. We will use a simple house drone ($100) and Python. And, when we review some enterprise scenarios, we will use Azure Custom Vision in containers for some specific object recognition stories.
Let’s build this!

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

#Tutorial – Record a #Zoom conversation with #Camtasia and produce an Audio output for your podcast !

Hi !

Some time ago I wrote a post about how to use Camtasia and Skype to record an audio conversation and later create an audio file for your podcast. Today we live in Zoom days, so it’s time to update this post to perform the same task using Zoom and Camtasia.

Disclaimer: Zoom, in their free mode, provides the feature to host and record your meetings. With a limit of 40 minutes of meeting duration and the audio quality is decent, not so good, but decent. This post, is an option if you want to have more control over this.

The main premise to record this is

  • We will record the local microphone in one channel
  • We will record the input audio for the meeting in another channel

I use a Bose NC 700 connected via cable to my computer for the incoming audio, and a Jabra Puck for the microphone. (see references)

Disclaimer 2: I know, there are much better microphones. I even got a Yeti one, but, the Jabra have an amazing and quick mute button. That’s why I use it.

Zoom Settings

Let’s open Zoom and update some of the settings.

In Zoom settings, I have the following settings

  • Computer Audio goes out by monitor. And I have my headset connected there.
  • Incoming audio, aka microphone, is set to the Jabra Puck.
Zoom audio settings

And that’s it for Zoom, now it’s time to check Camtasia Settings.

Camtasia Recorder

Camtasia Recorder

Once we launch Camtasia Recorder, we need to change the following settings

  • Audio device: The same Microphone device you defined in Zoom. The Jabra Puck.
  • Check [Record system audio]. This will record the output of the audio in a different track, and this output will be the voice of the other participants in the Zoom Meeting
camtasia audio settings

You can also make this quick selection directly from the Camtasia Recorder interface. Remember CHECK THE [Record System Audio] OPTION

camtasia audio recording options quick

So now you can start the recording and have some fun!

Audio Output in Camtasia

Once you finish your recording, you’ll be prompted to save this recording. And also to edit the recording using Camtasia Studio. Once you drag the recorded file to the track section you will see both recordings.

  • One track for your voice
  • One track for the Zoom meeting

Camtasia studio audio options are good enough to make some good audio improvements. If you right click on one of the tracks you can select the [Edit audio] option and

  • Enable volume leveling
  • Enable noise removal
  • Mix to mono

You can also [Add audio point] in one track to manage the volume in the track. In example: You can add a background music in a new track, and volume down the music using audio points, once the track for the Zoom Meeting is added into the mix.

image

Finally, once you are happy with your project, you can create an audio file. To do this, you must select the option [Share // Local File] and select the location for your M4A file.

And that’s it! Now you can record your Zoom conversations using Camtasia.

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

References

#RaspberryPi – Raspberry Pi Imager, super cool imaging utility. Bonus: source code included !

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Hi !

It’s time to setup a Raspberry Pi so my kid can learn a little Python with some local projects at home. And, it’s also time to test one super cool tool from the Raspberry Pi family: Raspberry Pi Imager, a new tool to image microSD cards with Raspbian.

Until today, I mostly used Balena Etcher, and it works amazing. However let’s give this one a try.

First step is to download the tool from the official Download page (see references). Lucky for us, we have the application with versions for Windows, macOS and Ubuntu. The install process is very fast.

raspberry pi imager setup process

Now we launch the app, and select the OS to install.

raspberry pi installer, welcome screeen

This time Raspbian is the one for me. I really like the chance to have other SOs here to select

raspberry pi imager select Raspbian OS

And, I will go even further and select the full version of Raspbian.

select raspbian full

Next step, is to select the target microSD Card, Device. F: for me.

select sd card, disk F

Now we are ready to write the image to the SD Card.

Ready to write the image.

Important: depending the selected image, writing process may take some time. The Full Raspbian version is +2.5GB and it needs to be downloaded in chunks. before starting the write process.

As usual, after writing, let’s verify !

raspberry pi imager verifing step

A couple of minutes later, the process is done !

write process complete

Bonus

And a couple of notes as a bonus. The tool is open source, and this is great! (see references). And, a video is much better than my posts !

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

References

#Event – Resources used in the #devdotnextdigital session around Anomaly Detection #devdotnext2020

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Hi!

I had an amazing time with the Dev.Next team in a virtual session. The agenda was great, I joined a couple of session and it was great ! Take a look at the full set of contents here. Recording sessions soon !

Important: the event was postponed to August, and you can more information here.

Slides

Source

Updated source code soon !

Reference Links

General

Machine Learning.Net

Cognitive Services Anomaly Detector

Azure Machine Learning

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

#Event – #GlobalAICommunity Virtual Tour, April 8th. A full virtual day with sessions around AI

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Globa AI Community on Virtual Tour Logo

Hi !

On the 8th of April 2020 the Global AI Community is hosting a 30 hour live event across timezones in different languages. Mark the date in your calendar, subscribe to our YouTube channel and tune in.

We updated the agenda with an amazing set of great speakers, and super cool sessions. Take a look at the agenda and subscribe to the event here:

https://live.globalai.community/

And as usual, a video is much better

Again, take a look at the agenda, say thanks to the organizers and we will see each other on April 8th !

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

#MSTeams – #SnapChat lenses on Microsoft Teams ! (Why not? and #ToiletPaper as a bonus)

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Hi !

Let’s go with a fun off-topic for a Friday, and let’s use some SnapChat lenses in our camera feed in Microsoft Teams.

Disclaimer: This is not a very useful post, but in this Covid-19 days, you can get some fun with this in all the virtual meetings.

So, simple steps

  • Close Teams App
  • Download the SnapCamera lenses apps for Windows or Mac from https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/download/
  • Perform the installation wizard, 30 seconds later is done!
  • Open the App and select your favorite lens. An toiler paper hat !
  • Open Microsoft Teams and go to Settings
  • In the Devices section, you will see a new camera available: Snap Camera. Select this one.
  • And that’s it ! Now your camera in Teams will have a lot of amazing features.
  • Something like this !

You can change filter on the fly, in SnapCamera app, and it will be reflected on the camera feed. Also, you may need to close all apps before install SnapCamera, in order to allow the apps to detect the new camera. Normal Windows stuff.

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

Resources

#dotnet – .Net Core Uninstall Tool !

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Hi !

I’ll hold my drone series to basically repost an amazing news for today:

Announcing the .NET Core Uninstall Tool 1.0!

This is amazing! Mostly because .Net Core versions are a “not-happy experience” to manage. If you work with them a lot, you probably find yourself going to “Add and Remove Programs” and spending from 5 minutes to 3 hours, manually unistalling all the non-required versions.

So, we have a new tool that will allow us to to this, but with an amazing set of commands. And, it works for Windows and Mac !

Let’s take a look. In example, to check my currently installed sdks, I can run a command that we already knows

dotnet --list-sdks

and the result is this one

So cool! And there are several very useful commands to see dependencies, SDKs required by Visual Studio and more (see references). I like the WhatIf version, so in example the following command

dotnet-core-uninstall whatif --all-below 2.2.301 --sdk

Shows the result of a dry run of removing all .NET Core SDKs below the version 2.2.301:

Again, check the documentation for all the possible scenarios. And, as I said, so cool !

Happy coding!

Greetings

El Bruno

References