Tag archive for: Windows 10

How to make applications on your Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of your webcam

One of the demo stations in my office needs to run applications that receive video and voice from the user. Since we have several Windows 10 laptop lying around, we decided to use one to run the applications.

Given that the Windows 10 laptop is to be hidden in a cabinet, I need to use an external webcam with microphone.

However, the integrated camera and microphone can be chosen by the applications that I run on that laptop.

So how can we make applications on a Windows 10 laptop to use the camera and microphone of your webcam?

This post shows how I made applications on my Windows 10 laptop use the camera and microphone of my Logitech C525 HD Webcam.

How to use NSSM to setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment

When you take Andrew Ng’s Deep Learning Coursera course, you can get a better understanding of deep learning. In addition, you will get many Jupyter Notebook documents that you can reference while building models that can solve interesting problems.

When you want to readily access those documents, you can setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service on your Windows machine.

As I had mentioned in how to use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment, NSSM is a very helpful tool for us to create Windows Services.

Since we can install Jupyter Notebook via pip, we can run Jupyter Notebook from its own virtual environment. In addition to that, since we can create a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10, we can setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment.

Given these points, let us look at how we can use NSSM to setup Jupyter Notebook as a Windows Service running its own Python 3 virtual environment.

How to use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment

If you want to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service, then you are going to love NSSM. Since NSSM handles the life cycle of a Windows Service for our Python 3 application, we can keep it platform agnostic.

Previously, we saw how we can use a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10. Given that, let’s see how we can use NSSM to run a Python 3 application as a Windows Service in its own Python 3 virtual environment.

How to write a C# program to communicate with an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth Serial

Coupled with Bluetooth Serial and GPIO pins, ESP32 can augment a Windows machine with the ability to read from sensors.

So with an ESP32 development board, you can turn your old Windows machine into an IOT gateway that can sense its operating environment.

Given these points, let us look at how we can write a C# program to communicate with an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth Serial.

How to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on Windows 10

When you have an old Windows 10 machine, you can reuse it as an IOT gateway.

Given that your Windows 10 machine has working Bluetooth, you can connect it to an ESP32 development board.

In case you need a reference to connect to an ESP32 development board via Bluetooth on Windows 10, here are the steps to do so.

Making sure that the password of your user account does not expire on Windows 10 IoT

Once upon a time, I was developing an IoT prototype on a Windows 10 IoT device that does not have any display port. Therefore, the only way to work with that device is to use Microsoft Remote Desktop. After using it for some time, I switched to another Raspberry Pi project of higher priority.

When I came back to this Windows based device, the password of the user account had expired. As a result of that, Windows Remote Desktop Connection Manager denied access to the device. Since that was the only user account for me to access the device, I had to start all over again with another device.

After this incident, I make it a point to configure my user account with a password that never expires.

In order to have a reference in the future, I created this post to document the steps to do so on Windows 10 IoT.

How to use a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10

When you need each Python 3 application that you are building to run in its own isolated environment, you can turn to virtual environments.

Since Python is available on Windows 10, you can also use virtual environments on Windows 10.

Typically, using a Python 3 virtual environment in Windows 10 involves the following steps:

1. Installing Python 3 with pip and several features.
2. Creating a Python 3 virtual environment with Python 3 venv module.
3. Activating the Python 3 virtual environment.
4. Installing Python 3 packages that your Python application is using into the virtual environment.
5. Running your Python 3 application within the Python 3 virtual environment.
6. Deactivating the Python 3 virtual environment.

How to determine if your Windows 10 IOT operating system is 32 bit or 64 bit

Before installing anything to the version of Windows 10 IOT operating system on your device, you will need to figure out whether it is 32 bit or 64 bit.

In case you need it, this post shows how to determine whether your Windows 10 is 32 bit or 64 bit.

Setting up Nginx server on Windows 10

Recently, I got my wife an Asus ROG GL552VW-DH74 15-Inch Gaming laptop as a development machine (so that I can have a machine to use when I feel like gaming). Since the nginx server is one of my favorite servers for building web applications, it is something that I will always setup first when I get a new development machine.

I will set up my nginx server to listen on port 80 and serve as a reverse proxy to web applications listening on other port numbers. And since the ROG GL552VW-DH74 15-Inch Gaming laptop came with Windows 10, this post documents the steps that I went through to set up nginx server on Windows 10.