harshadura-blogx

Continuous Integration setup with Instrumented Testing for Android

2018-02-12T21:13:00.002+05:30

Credits may due to the respective authors! thank you.

Knowledge base only.

add the following lines to root "gradle.properies" file

systemProp.http.proxyHost=wwwgate0.mot.com

systemProp.http.proxyPort=1080

org.gradle.java.home=C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jdk1.8.0_111

android.enableBuildCache=false

org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx1536M

https://developer.android.com/studio/test/command-line.html

https://innovation.avg.com/2016/06/15/raspberry-pi-for-android-test-automation/

adb uninstall com.zebra.scannercontrol.app

adb uninstall com.zebra.scannercontrol.app.test

./gradlew clean connectedAndroidTest

**/androidTest-results/connected/*.xml

**/*.apk

"Maddu", Tribute to unsung grandma in my life. :(

2017-04-22T23:43:00.000+05:30

I am writing this blog post with deep sad in my heart, lots of tears in my eyes. Also i am not sure why i am writing this in English, i wanted to write down something before its too late or i might get forget.

'Maddu" in longer terms, Maddu amma, she is my ever loving grandma. The unsung second mom who made my life a better one. If there's anything i have achieved so far - all of that because of her hard work. i am sure she deserve some bigger part.

She is really old now, i think she is living her finals days or months of her life now. Am i really sad ? no, because I have tried my best to pay her back for the things i owe to her in past years. Me with my elder brother & sister took her to Dabadiwa wandanawa which is apparently one of the ultimate interests of the followers of buddhism. Thinking of those now I am really proud that we made that kind of crazy things for the love of her, even with lots of troubles. I never care about money when comes to paying back for the people who i owe. I really dont worry much even if she dies tonight because i am really satisfied with the duties made from my side. I am sure she has made some good work. She may attain nibbana. Thank you maddu. this is from your ever loving podi putha. :'(

Surely, this is Life.. Its really hard when our loved ones gonna separate from us. Somehow we need to cope with the changes, period.

[DIY] Changing engine oil - for Lancer CK2 - JDM

2016-12-08T22:13:00.001+05:30

holy shit, tried chang'in oil myself and it took almost 3 hrs :P

DIY, Changing engine oil - for Lancer CK2

Perquisites:
a) warm up the car for few mins.
b) Jack up the car - if you need more space
c) safety first: apply a support for the jack-wood, lock up wheels using stone blocks/wood
d) get some cloth to work with oil, cover hands with gloves, safety eye glasses
--

0) Warm up the car for few mins.
1) Remove the engine oil cap under the hood.
2) Remove oil pan nut (using #17 wrench): Counter clock wise to loosen.
3) Give it some to drain the oil
4) Remove the oil filter: Counter clock wise to loosen.
5) Give it some time to drain the oil
6) Get the new filter -> apply some oil on the rubber gasket -> now ready to fix
7) Tighten the new filter. -> turn clockwise to tighten
8) Tighten the nut. -> turn clockwise to tighten
9) Fill with new oil - Check the oil reading before filling with all in the can.
10) If the oil level is OK, start the engine.
11) Give it sometime, then Check beneath for oil leaks from filter or nut.
12) DONE!

Note: The video of DarkDragonWing about Lancer USDM is wrong. He rotates to clockwise to loosen which wont work for JDM Lancers.

Retrospect: 240 days in the wonderful Red-Dot of South-east-asia, walao!

2016-11-30T22:14:00.001+05:30

TLDR/Disclaimer: This post expresses the views and opinions of the author about his experience at Singapore in his limited 7-8 months stay as a foreign skilled worker. Some of the stuff here might based on his opinions. Your mileage may vary. xD Peace!

Since its my final days here in Singapore, thought to write down about some my experiences gained in this one of the world's rapidly developing nations. I have decided to make a move due to my family circumstances and hope to be back in this wonderful city possibly after sometime.

Singapore is a diverse country with lots of races lives in harmony. Frankly I haven't seen this kind of mixture in any country of the world i have been yet. Its quite amazing how the founding father of Singapore have made a good foundation for racial harmony in Singapore. Because Singapore is nothing without people. The name of this tiny red dot known to the world because of the work done by Singapore people - with zero natural resources (They even don't have drinking water hence piped from Malaysia) :O IMO Singapore is a miracle work of a very patriotic political leader they had. Namely. Mr. Lee quan yew. Weldone sir!

Culture is really Parra cultural here (dunno where i got that word parra culture :P) Means this is diverse. 70% of the entire population makes of Chinese people. 20% Malay (the natives actually Malay, long story short. Singapore was kind of state of Malaysia 50 years before) 10% indians (mostly south indians), 3% Others. Including Sri Lankans and people from numerous other South east asian countries and europeans as well (Don't know exactly why those ppl are here, probably for girls ;D).

So with this kind of huge mixture its very difficult to communicate with people sometimes. Luckily the official language is English. Noh la! :D its called Singlish. Singlish meaning Singapore English. Its a mixture of English with Chinese Mandarine, Bahasa Melayu and Tamil languages. (Obviously the langs of major races live here.) So in day-today life you are not experiencing the general english you hear like in western world. Its quite different, I had hard time grabbing it early days here and i think i am used to it now. :)

Singapore is just small as 1/100 of Sri Lanka, but it makes the home to 1/20 of total Sri Lankan population. Hence the density of people is very very high. (Chances of getting sick also very high thus high crowd on public places - i actually got sick 2 times in these 7months. :( quite difficult to survive these viruses. They have annual flu jab excersise to overcome this quite a bit.

Singapore is one of the safest, cleanest, more planned (well structured) country. Also with amazing transportation system connecting everywhere of the city. Sometimes i still wonder how they have built the downtown lines. The trains travels underground, so far away from the surface. We have to use like 2, 3 escalators down to reach the train stage. :O Miracle work by Engineers. Just within few years. (Singapore is just old as 51 years, so all these miracle work have been done within 50 years. I wonder how much will that take to build the same train underground in Sri Lanka, probably 10 years :D)

Being said that Singapore is also one of the countries with citizens gets least sleep in world (around 6 hours of sleep!? dafaq.) yeap The majority of Singaporeans works so hard to make a living, its a quite expensive to live, Unlike in Sri Lanka medical expenses are sky high, So the poor people and middle class have to work hard for everything. (Singapore dont have beggars, gov provide them with tissue packets to sell in public places hawker centers -- public canteens in SEA region.)

Talking about work culture, they simple work so hard, very punctual. Most of the Singaporeans companies starts work at 8.30 AM and ends at 5.30PM. Around 6 PM you will not able to see a single employee in office, Done and gone!

Getting a job in Singapore is not difficult as you might think, its just a matter of time. I haven't heard my friends who bears (skill, degree, experience) gone back without finding a job here. Being said that if you are not coming on the right time (preferably right after Chinese new year) it will be quite time consuming to find a job since the flow is slow. Here are some awesome info sources for the job seekers (in Sinhala)

I think i had great experience working in my first overseas job. My company, i worked here is known as, Educare cooperative Ltd (a company behind Singapore teachers union.) a truly Singaporean company so i had experienced Singaporean culture. (There are many MNCs here in Singapore where can experience different working culture.) I have worked on android chat app similar to whatsapp in Educare where i have worked on both app and backend server myself. (kind of fullstack development job.) Where i developed the app from scratch.

Quality of life in Singapore is very nice. Transportation, Food, everything perfectly standardized. Wish Sri Lanka also have such a perfect government, Once i went to one of the Police stations of Singapore and it looked like a hotel. Totally cool. Getting a Crime clearance report in Singapore takes jz 1 day since its all centralized, computerized system. Almost everything is computerized here. From busses to trains to taxis. You have apps to track realtime. Kind of dreamland right! Yup. thats how its already. You might want to check the data they have exposed to 3rd party developers here: https://data.gov.sg . quite impressive. that even hv the information of GYM availability and crowdedness information! voila.

Despite the development of Singapore i have seen some cons as well. First one can be a LOL one. People are so workaholic IMO. May be they are working so hard to take the country forward. Singapore is so small (the size of Colombo district in all) hence majority of ppl are stuck in sooo small Apartment "homes". These kind of Apartments have several rooms, bathrooms, kitchen, living room. Quite comfortable in Condos. But still stuck to a very limited environment. And private vehicle prices are so high to restrict the usage of road network of this busy country. (my 1997 Lancer CK2AMX is priced around 2 times Sri Lankan price here) Also the Medical expenses are sky high! We are really lucky in Sri Lanka have free education, free health for everyone! In this part of the world if you dont have money, cannot work hard - you have to suffer a lot. :( Gov has some limited funding resources for the poor people to take care of.

There are some amazing/must visit attractions in Singapore: Senthosa island, Marina Bay financial area, botanical garden, Zoo, etc. But being a hobbyist explorer one of the drawbacks for me was becz the country is so small - there's also nothing much to see or go for picnics. Luckily Singapore have a cool Airport (One of the world's best airports! totally amazing Airport called Changi) which makes the aviation hub to South east asia. So there are many countries to visit from Singapore at a very low price. Malaysia of course the nearest, a diverse and a country with so many areas to see/so many things to do, and Indonesia also same, located in south of Sg. Thailand, Cambodia, Hongkong, Mianmar, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia are couple of other destinations which can discover at a very low price.

Being Sri Lankans; Food is gonna be a huge problem for us in Singapore. Since the majority who live here are Chinese most of the Restaurants serve Chinese food which is very uneatable for us. (I hate the smell even LOL) Unless you cook in your own apartment kitchens food is gonna be a huge problem. And for our luck Singapore makes the population to 10% of south indians. Since the south indian food is very similar, we can have them very easily, delicious too. There's also few Sri Lankan restaurants inside Singapore but reaching those places everyday gonna be a pain if you live outside of central area (Little india district). So somehow people tend to get used to Malay food at-least. which is kind of middle of both worlds. (Chinese world food and Sri Lankan food) Malay food are being served at almost everywhere, so getting used to Malay food will make the life easier.

The experience i gained here was quite amazing, its actually consist with life long lessons and experiences i guess. Totally worth it! I wanna thank few of my friends who helped me in hard times to make this happen. Shamika, Sandun, Lali, Dewmal, Tharindu - these guys helped me financially in the beginning (until i find the job i needed several of lacks to live in this highly expensive city.) without these guys i will be done xD) And later in Singapore i met 2 wonderful brothers who guided me on everything there after - Amila ayya and Sajith ayya. I highly respect these brothers for the guidance and mentorship given to me in this period at Singapore.

Sooo thats it. Hope i have covered the major parts of the story.

It has been a wonderful journey, Thank you for everything Singapura!

[Solved] Disk Utility Can't Repair Disk - Mac OS X

2016-10-18T07:43:00.000+05:30

So, tried to Force Quit 'fsck_hfs' and VOILA!

Ref: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4832305?tstart=0

Firebase : How To Paginate – A Quick Guide: [Credits: Rachel Willmer]

2016-09-30T14:01:00.002+05:30

Mirror Blog from: http://blog.willmer.org/2016/07/how-to-paginate-in-firebase/ since the blog goes offline frequently.

Firebase : How To Paginate – A Quick Guide: [Credits: Rachel Willmer]

Pagination, or “How to Fetch a Data Set in Parts”

You want to provide a quick initial set of data to your Firebase user, say the first 5 blog posts. If they want more, you can serve up what is needed, always being considerate of their waiting time and network data usage.

This is a great design pattern, because it is optimising the right thing at the right time. At the start, you care most about speed, and giving the user something to work with. Then you care about giving them more of what they want.

It is often called “Pagination”, or “Chunking”.

In this article, I explain how to do this in Firebase.

Step 0: Design the Firebase Data

For this pattern to work, the data set must have a concept of order.

It does not matter how you achieve this order.

One easy option is to use Firebase’s push(). This creates a key based on a timestamp so the order will be “order of creation”.

An alternative is to use a key of your own.

Step 1: Deliver the Initial Chunk

First, we want to show the first 5 entries in the array.

So, on your request to Firebase to get the data, you say:

“I want the data in order.” => use orderByKey
“I only want 5 entries.” => use limitToFirst: 5

Step 2: Deliver the Next Batch

Then, to get the next 10, you need the key of the last one you have already retrieved. Your request says:

“I want the data in order” => orderByKey
“I want to start after the first 5” => startAt:
“I only want 10 entries” => limitToFirst: 10

And that’s it! A very quick guide to how you can easily paginate your data in Firebase.

How you use the orderByKey, startAt, limitToFirst options on your Firebase request depends on your choice of client library. But the principle is the same whichever you choose.

There are various choices you can use for how to order: by key, by value, but I hope this is a useful starting point. Please let me know if it is not clear.

Here’s the official Firebase documentation for this:

for web apps
for Android apps: https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/android/com/google/firebase/database/Query
for IOS apps

How to adjust alternator belt tension - Lancer CK2

2016-09-13T21:10:00.001+05:30

Gotta effing squeaky noise on a cold start ? Your alternator belt might be loose. this is the way how to fix it. will need key: 12 for this. The ideal tension should have less than 1 inch tension. (also wud be able to turn atleast 90 degrees). Note: Less tension will make squeaky noise and more tighten belt will damage the razors overtime.

[Retrospect] OpenMRS Worldwide summit 2015 & my involvement with the project so far.

2016-01-03T18:54:00.001+05:30

OpenMRS is an open source medical records system. I was first introduced to the OpenMRS by one of the brothers who taught me about Google summer of code, Mr. Nirmal Fernando. Thats back in the 2011. Well now its 2016 and i think i have came upon long way with this open source project. Its nearly 5 years. wow! I am really glad that i found this amazing open source project which tries to solve healthcare information technology related issues and ultimately helps for a worthy cause. This open source project is a massive community consist with doctors, healthcare workers, professors, Software engineers, Software architects and HealthIT professionals.

Since its 5 years and i thought its the high time to retrospect about my involvement with the project so far. So first let me list down my OpenMRS related milestones to-date.

Introduction to OpenMRS in late 2011 - Sinhalese localization & bug fixes.
Became Google summer of code student on 2012
Participated OpenMRS implementers conference in Manila, Philippines.
Became Google summer of code student on 2013
Participated FOSSASIA 2013 conference and gave a talk on OpenMRS at Phnom Penn, Cambodia.
Participated FOSSASIA 2014 conference and gave a talk on OpenMRS at NUS, Singapore.
Became Google code in mentor in 2014
Proud to became one of the best Google code-in mentors & got a wonderful opportunity to represent OpenMRS at Google HQ, mountain view.
Became Google summer of code mentor in 2015

And yes, OpenMRS world summit 2015 is the latest & i am really glad i have participated for it.

Despite of my physical illness which i got infected in the last 2 days, I really enjoyed the every bit of it.

Event was very well organized by the OpenMRS staff. Singapore management university was a really good venue. So much easy access to the venue with convenient transportation by MRT which is also quite cheap. I really don't want to mention much about the food because i don't like Chinese like food much which are very popular in SG, but there's a city called 'little india' for south asians like us to consume much tastier food similar to the ones we have in home countries. :) Singapore is a very nice country consist with very interesting places to visit. Marina bay sands was one of my favorite places in SG. And cannot forget other cool places such as gardens by the bay & Senthosa island.

Sessions on the summit was great.

Cloud Computing for OpenMRS Data Analysis
Project Buendia: In-Depth
Project Bahmini & how indian folks tries to solve the healthIT related problems in india.

were few of my favorite talks in the summit. I really loved the way Bahmini tries to solve the health related problems in india but we being Sri Lankans (very near country to india) still don't use proper healthcare IT software for our government hospitals.

Audience -- well our community.

There were lots of people around the world participated to the summit. Proving that Sri Lankans are everywhere in world doing cool stuff -- I met Harsha Kumara who is an another former GSoC student & current mentor from Sri Lanka (actually we were sharing the same room to save some money from our lodging cost for OpenMRS.) And after few years met my old friend and a brother Suranga Kasthurirathne, who departed to US for his Phd in Healthcare informatics. He seems to be doing really great with OpenMRS as a staff member now and wish him good luck with his future studies. Luckily we also met a doctor from Sri Lanka who was also very enthusiastic about OpenMRS and having an idea to implement it in Sri Lanka. We had a slight chat with Dr. Paul Biondich & discussed about how to get this thing done.

From Left: HarshaK, Me, Dr. Paul, Doctor from SL, Dr. Burke, Another gentleman -- really sorry i don't remember the name of him.

From left: Me, HarshaK, MayankS

I also met Mayank Sharma who was introduced to OpenMRS last year by me & downey at the FOSSASIA summit in Singapore. Looking at his work now, we are really glad that we found him. He really does a great job to OpenMRS being a Branch manager now. Kaweesi Joseph was one of my cyber friends at OpenMRS since 2012 but we never had meet in-person. I am really glad we met at the summit. He is a really cool guy, started as a student and doing a massive job to the project now. Jordan is still a cool girl, i met her back in the days (2012) at Philippines summit and glad to meet her back.

From left: Me, MayankS

From left: HarshaK, Me, DanielK

Ever supporting mentor Daniel Kayiwa, I am glad to meet him back in the summit. There were numerous people i met in the summit including. Dr. Burke, Wyclif, Dr. Andrew, Pascal, Ellen, Robby, Maurya and many of others. I am really glad to be part of this amazing community consist with great brains.

Team getting ready for lightning talks

In lightning talks event, I have a done a brief speech to the participants on "OpenMRS iOS Client" From the responses i got i think quite a lot of people liked the project and the idea.

The OpenMRS worldwide summit 2015 was a great experience and i really appreciate OpenMRS LLC for sponsoring me with a travel grant. It really was a invaluable experience to gain knowledge on healthcare informatics.

Mentioning about my future plans with OpenMRS project, I always wanted to contribute OpenMRS whenever i can. These days i'm quite busy with my masters thesis and my day job as usual. I hope i could do more things and contribute OpenMRS in the months to come. So this is not the end of my engagement with this wonderful open source project and hopefully it should be a life long journey!

"Write Code, Save Lives" - Join with OpenMRS.

Thank you,
Harsha

Durevo's new look - Lancer CK2 MX touring 360 view.

2015-02-21T21:36:00.001+05:30

Durevo is back in action after long 2 months of repairs followed by the big accident happened since ever. (3 vehicles clashed in a row.) I would like to thank LOLC insurance for contributing alot to resurrect durevo back. They have claimed 97% of the total bill of 275K of LOMO <-- the garage. Bit worried about how it took almost two months to get done the work, But overall i would say LOMO seems to be a very good garage in the area with quality work done by professionals in the subject. Bit pricier than 'aba gaha yata garages' but i would say its worth the price.

Mitsubishi Lancer MX Touring 1997
(Note - if you are looking for the stock car's 360 view, please note few mods are here in this car: they are only the rear spoiler, side skirts and lips for the rear bumper.)

Full link: http://3dbin.com/publicjs/xuccpsup

Removed the front bumper due to the very low ground clearance. Here is the comparison of earlier and now. Its not bad huh! pretty decent looking now :) but the rear spoiler is still there to provide the `sporty` look.

Introduction to Facebook OpenGraph custom stories

2015-01-30T13:38:00.001+05:30

Nowadays Facebook has become one of the coolest ways to share information with people. So more and more developers tend to integrate Facebook sharing/like features on their Apps to reach more audience.

Typical Facebook posts look like "Someone shared a post" or "Someone likes a Post" but in OpenGraph you have the opportunity to design your Story from the ground level with appropriate grammar and stuff. ie. "Someone ACTION'S a OBJECT" This awesome possibility of Facebook has opened Facebook developers to use this so called "FB OpenGraph" to create various kinds of good looking sharing posts.

Example Facebook OpenGraph story look like this.

In this example: ate is the Action & dish is the Object.
Basically these are the two things which makes an OpenGraph custom Story.

Story = FB_OG_Action + some_joining_word + FB_OG_Object
Object is where those attributes including Post title, description, Picture and many other are bind with.
For the Action you can specify the attributes like Location etc.

Let me introduce you some of the biggest advantages of OpenGraph; well some use-cases!

Custom storie; ie. "Someone reads a book"
Sharing user Game scores/achievements to FB with OG "Someone scored 5000 on FlappySnake, woohoo!"
Normal Facebook feed share doesn't allow uploading images hence we had to mention a direct link to a image in the code. But using OpenGraph stories we now have the capability to upload the images to Facebook servers and use it from their. So the big overhead of storing images are been handled by this as well.

As FB developers site has more than enough information related to development and documentation stuff I am bit lazy to reinvent the wheel here :) Go read the docs to code! its pretty straightforward. Wish you all the best with FB Open graphing.

Side-notes:

Open Graph stories need to be approved by Facebook team before you can allow it to be used by general public users of Facebook. Until then only what you can do is Test with the FB account which you created the app (you also can add more Test users via the Facebook's apps admin page.)
The review process might take 4-10 days.

References: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph

How Car engines work ..

2014-08-27T12:27:00.004+05:30

Found this really interesting image which describes overall mechanism of how car engine works.. Just thought to clone and book keeping for my reference :D

ref: http://jacoboneal.com/car-engine/car-engine.gif

Help contribute Google Translator for Sinhalese Language support!

2014-07-29T20:29:00.000+05:30

Hi folks,

Its a great pleasure to see Sinhalese language has been added to Google translator very recently. But seems Google's algo would need lots of Sinhalese vocabulary to proceed into next steps; So eventually it'll get included in Google translator, yey!. So as Sri Lankans and Sinhalese people i feel its one of our duties to contribute and fullfill the threshold asap so Google can proceed into the next steps.

So guys here's the link where you will see the webpage for translations: http://goo.gl/nJKsF0

Few notes (came to mind):

1) if you dont know the exact english meaning just "Skip" it.
2) for gods sake, please dont be crazy enough to make incorrect translations which would cause lots of trouble afterwards for lots of people involved.

(Anyways In my opinion for now, lets just forget about the "Rate" section which actually shows us the quality of translations already done by people and lets give the priority to help translate as much as we can!)

EN > SI ftw!

Thanks!
Harsha

Car battery voltage inspection using a multimeter.. DIY!

2014-05-15T23:50:00.000+05:30

A good battery should be between 12.4 to 12.6v at rest, it will drop some if any accesories are on (lights, radio, phone or gps chargers, flashers, etc) if you have an automotive voltage/amperage tester available, you can do a load test on the battery (hook it up and load it by 1/2 the cca rating of the battery for 15 seconds) if it drops below 10v, it's time for a new battery. Most autoparts stores can do this test for you, but beware, if they don't know what they are doing, they could test it as needing replacement when it does not. Also, the test must be done fully charged. Also, after testing it will be mostly dead and unable to start your car, requiring a recharge. After starting the engine battery voltage goes very high. Thats normal.

Case Study 1: if your car doesn't start also no power at all (no dashboard lights/no other lights working) but after you check it then recognize the battery is also OK. Then this may be a car ground problem.You will need to check your car grounds.:

Reading car ECU? EvoScan for Lancer MX touring; OBD2/MUT

2014-05-13T21:00:00.000+05:30

When I was buying my Lancer i didn knew about ECUs aka. Engine control units - a small computing unit resides on modern cars (cars after 1996 in JDM) its also known as vehicle computer which amazed me. I got more excited after hearing this word 'vehicle computer' which seems related to computing because of my passion towards computing related stuff and also being an IT guy in profession. So I was thoroughly researched more about this subject. Had a great curiously to find out whether my car has such computer on its! (since its 1997 mitsu lancer). I directly went to my neighborhood mechanic uncle and asked to do a OBD scan for my car....And whoohoo! i was so lucky, it had a OBD2 port which is the latest version of OBD update to date (but later i got to know it was using a sucking protocol called MUT)

Then i wanted to buy a scanner like the uncle had but he said "its a professional one So this costs like 1lack putha!` :-( disappointing! then i was looking for a simple tool which i could use to read the ecu of my lancer. and found out there;s a elm327 bluetooth device which comes handy with a nice android application called `torque`. I ordered it from ebay. After lots of tries it appeared that particular tool isn't has the support for Mitusubishi MUT protocol which was the same one used in my car ecu. Again disappointing !

Well! after lots of reading on Evoforums, i was able to find a tool called "EVOScan" which seem fit to read the lancer ecu. And the tool was quite expensive (7000 in LKR) and i had to wait till i have some money in the pocket!
Finally it received it in last week after long waiting and glad i could read the car ecu with it, yey! :-)

Its so fun to read the car ECU, which shows us the readings of car sensors and lots of other useful information. In the other hand we can use EvoScan software to write into the ECU as well; which is very dangerous (for example using that evoscan write Cable (1.3U) we can change the fuel + air ratio used in internal combustion engine, so it could blow up even LOL! nothing so funny thats why i ordered the Evo scan cable which only lets me to read the ECU! :)

FYI: This is the cable i used: EvoScan 1.3D cable this is suitable if you have a Lancer CK2A MX Touring; 1997 YOM car

Here are some screenshots of EvoScan which shows the power of this tool.

Carbon Tracker by Carbonware

2014-01-14T11:26:00.000+05:30

Recently we have started a tech company called Carbonware :)

Our company web site: http://www.carbonw.com/

Currently we have a ongoing project there called Carbon Tracker which is a Cost effective - GPS tracking system for Various enterprises (especially for Taxi Services, Courier Services, Trucking Logistics Services and etc..) Lots of work need to be done in the coming days this involves in TRC regulations stuff. we hope for the best and trying to launch the product Asap.

You can check more info here: https://www.facebook.com/CarbonTrackerLK/info

PS: Fixed the tracker into my Car as well, it works perfectly :)

Bought my first Car - Mitsubishi Lancer CK2 MX Touring :)

2013-11-18T11:12:00.000+05:30

After lots of hard work I was lucky enough to buy my first car last week. I was searching and investigating lots of Cars! (well i m pretty sure i hv checked more than 50 cars engine started and bonnet opened xD) around Colombo area with a great deal of support from one of my uncle who is a a relation and a former Mechanic at Toyota Lanka.

And finally I decided to buy this charming (atleast for me xD) Lancer CK2 comes with the Evo5 bodykit installed to it. :)

Spec: http://specs.cars-directory.net/mitsubishi/lancer/1.5_MX_touring_11872.html

_____________

PS: Happened a lil accident near a three way junction at Bambalapit hit with a damned pizza motor bike :/ Front bumper, bonnet, 1 fog lamp, 1 signal lamp and 1 head lamp got damaged by this. Luckily I had setup a full insurance for my Car so got full claim for everything. But not to mention the big amount of time I had to spent in garages and insurance offices :/ it was a (sucking indeed) but a great experience after all ..

Never-mind! all is well back again. Here is a picture taken after the recovery :)

Google Summer of Code 2014: Here are some great info sources for Potential GSoC Aspirants!

2013-11-11T09:54:00.000+05:30

We had a GSoC meetup at GdayK event (9th Nov'13 at Queens Hotel, Kandy) Here are the presentation resources we used at there: http://goo.gl/Z5lYIW

Hope this would be helpful for potential GSoC aspirants, Good luck!

-HTH,

Harsha

GSoC Meetup Resources

Introduction Video about GSoC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBUvf2q9vSc

GSoC from A to Z - one of the coolest GSoC Presentations (Credits: Mr.Pradeeban) https://www.box.com/shared/c3b6d457360bfc8051bc

Google Developers page of GSoC: https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/

GSoC 2014 Meetup resources: http://pastebin.com/ziHiLVXS

Home page of GSoC: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2014

GSoC 2013 shortlisted Org list: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2013

Orgs List banner: https://www.box.com/shared/149767d70829f305b20b

Another really cool GSoC Presentation (Credits: Mr.Suranga) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0txED3K91sYZldyQlBnVEE1LTA/edit?usp=sharing

Open source software for the world: Presentation (Credits: Mr.Keshan) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G_1eOb9L46WCbC7ipbx4Ffc7RTqC3Rh812omSmOlvz4/edit?usp=sharing

Getting involved with OpenMRS (one of the coolest orgs at GSoC) Presentation (Credits: Mr.Harsha) http://www.slideshare.net/harshadura/openmrs-getting-involved

End of Google Summer of Code thoughts, at OpenMRS!

2013-09-26T21:02:00.003+05:30

TL;DR Worked as a GSoC intern at OpenMRS and would love to thank all the people involved.

This years Google Summer of Code has drawn to an end. I worked on the Patient Narratives Upload project under the mentor-ship of Saptarshi Purkayastha.

And.. I am really glad to announce the Initial release of "Patient Narratives Module" ! :-)

Project in brief: The ultimate goal of this project is to build a OpenMRS based User-driven-Health-care system (with this module installed on top of OpenMRS-core)
By enabling care-seekers to connect with care-givers in which their current treatment can be reviewed by a group of care-givers, who can suggest further action.

I had some serious fun this summer.

Got involved with various technologies. including SpringAOP, DWR, WebRTC, Xuggle and dug up more into OpenMRS framework + with Form entry and Xforms module implementations.

Made a demo video, documented a lot about the project on the wiki and wrote a lot of code !
Did a presentation at OpenMRS Developer forum about the project.

I’d love to thank my mentor Saptarshi Purkayastha, Daniel Kayiwa, Mark Goodrich and OpenMRS community in general for all the amazing guidance that has been giving us throughout the summer.

We had loads of discussions on #openmrs IRC about development, do’s and don’ts in our implementation, pros and cons of implementing a certain thing in a certain way. I was able to complete the core functionality and add support for commonly used features.

Although this formally concludes the Google Summer of Code’13 part, this is in no way the end. There are a lot more things in the project that have to be done. I’ll be helping to maintain the project along with adding functionality to it..

May the blessings of Lord Buddha be with us. නමෝ බුද්ධාය.

Remote debugging J2EE Application with Tomcat/Jetty and IntelliJ IDEA

2013-07-23T11:29:00.001+05:30

Debug with Tomcat

Start tomcat with this command:


catalina.sh jpda start

(if you do a "tail -100f catalina.out" it should display something like this at the bottom: "Listening for transport dt_socket at address: 8000")

>> thats it! now goto step (2) to config IntelliJ

Debug with Jetty

B.1. Add maven options property inside your bash profile.


export MAVEN_OPTS="-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:PermSize=512M 
-XX:MaxPermSize=1024M -Xdebug 
-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8000"

B.2. Save and source: source ~/.bashrc

B.3. Then Run jetty as usual in your web app: mvn jetty:run

(Now you should see something like this at the bottom of jetty log: "Listening for transport dt_socket at address: 8000")

>> thats it! now goto step (2) to config IntelliJ

------------------

2. Inside IntelliJ: Run -> Edit config -> Click (+) sign -> choose Remote -> give the host and debug port (default port of tomcat is 8000/for jetty use the port you used) -> Click OK

!! Thats all!

3. Now put some debug points inside the webapp.

4. Run -> Click Debug

now the Debugger will get connected with JVM. you will see a message saying "Connected to the target VM, address: 'localhost:8000', transport: 'socket'" yes thats it!

Now just browse your webapp as you normally do. IntelliJ will hit the debugger when you reach the debug point which you put earlier at the web app code.
(You will notice the browser is not responding when the Debugger hit some debug point.)

Notes: Don't forget to use the same source code you used to deploy the webapp. i mean WAR package should be a deployed output package of the relevant source code you gonna debug with. If its not crazy things will happen of course. ;-)

Sample Java/Maven Web project which allows to simply send SMS using Twilio API

2013-07-03T11:42:00.001+05:30

Twilio-SMS-test

Download project: https://github.com/harshadura/Twilio-SMS-test/archive/master.zip

Require: Java, Maven

Maven project: simply use =) mvn clean install jetty:run

Web app will start on: http://localhost:8085/twilio-web-test/

Pre-Built war can be found at: DemoWAR folder.

Screenshot: >>

"Story of the Floss" -- About a great life phrase

2013-06-23T10:01:00.002+05:30

Yesterday at the discussion with my mentor Saptarshi, he mentioned a really nice phrase called "Story of the Floss" I studied more about it. Its a really great phrase and can learn lots of thing from it.

Simply it means: Keep it simple, Build an End to End solution, Most importantly take action(code) without thinking/talking too much and adding more and more fancy ideas into the problem.

Here's the related story. (Reference: https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/RES/The+Story+of+the+Floss)

Clem and another group are faced with the same challenge: build a bridge across a canyon.

The other group — like most of us would — gathers engineers, draws up specifications, and begins planning on how the bridge should be constructed properly. Meanwhile, Clem pulls a box of dental floss out of his pocket, unwinds it, and throws it across the canyon. Almost immediately, he's got something across the canyon. It's only floss, but it's there — end to end.

The other group is arguing about whether the bridge should be a beam, suspension, truss, or arch bridge. Clem starts layering paper mâché onto the floss.

The other group has finally decided on a suspension bridge and begins preparing the materials according to specifications. Clem has people walking across his paper mâché bridge.

The other group realizes that they would probably be better off with a truss bridge, begins discussions on the new specifications, and then realizes that they are too far over budget and the project is shut down. Clem has people driving across his bridge.

The other group finally creates their version of the bridge, only to realize it doesn't reach over to the other side where they initially intended it to!

The Lesson

Whenever possible, start with the floss. See the solution through end-to-end, since this is often the best way to understand the problem and often informs the next pass at the solution. In the end, it is rare that we fully understand the problem until the third iteration of the solution.
Be agile, open to corrections, and iterate on your solutions. But, most importantly, take action.

My Thoughts

In my words the lesson of this story is dont try to be so smart and keep expanding the idea of your project. Just start simply from sctratch and add lil by lil, But the goal should be to develop an end to end solution (that means a product which is something useful and usable in a practical scenario.) After getting accomplish the basic goals of the project you can proceed into your other fancy ideas. Note that those fancy ideas could take a longer time to develop (or might get failed) but if you have followed the floss way, you still have a basic product which is really a usable one!

Actually I think this phrase isn't only related to the open source software development, This is a truly awesome phrase which we can adopt in our life in general!

OpenShift Gear quick links

2013-06-22T14:52:00.000+05:30

SSH into Open-Shift instances:

https://www.openshift.com/blogs/access-your-application-gear-using-ssh-with-putty

How to deploy WAR files inside Open-Shift:

http://whyjava.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/deploy-war-on-tomcat-running-on-openshift/

How to restart Open-Shift without Git pushes:

ctl_app  : control your application (start, stop, restart, etc)

https://www.openshift.com/kb/kb-e1055-how-to-restart-an-application

[Tutorial] Simple Android Application which consumes C# ASP.net Web service

2013-06-09T17:41:00.001+05:30

Whoever getting started to learn Web services - Android app interaction I hope this tutorial may be helpful, You can download the full source from here: https://github.com/harshadura/RDA-Android-ASP.WS-interact/archive/master.zip

Prerequisites:
.NET framework, SQL server 2008, Android device/emulator

How to run.

Attach the MDF file into your SQL server.
Change the connection string at the C# project config according to your db connection.
Change the 'Web service URL' on the Android Application.

Notes:

You will need to use WIFI tether to get connect your device with PC/otherwise you will need a router, both connected into it.
Sometimes you will need to configure the security restrictions of your IIS web server to get connect the device.

C# Web Service

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.Sql;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]

public class Service : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
    public Service () {

        //Uncomment the following line if using designed components 
        //InitializeComponent(); 
    }

    [WebMethod]
    public String GetEmployeeByID(String id) {
          
            DataSet2TableAdapters.EmployeeTableAdapter dt1 = new DataSet2TableAdapters.EmployeeTableAdapter();
            String ename = "" + dt1.getEmpByID(id);
            return ename;
    }

    [WebMethod]
    public Employee[] GetEmployees()
    {
        var employees = new List();

        try
        {
            string connect = @"Data Source=HARSHADURA-AZUS\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=RDA;Integrated Security=True";
            string query = "SELECT eid, ename FROM Employee";

                SqlConnection thisConnection = new SqlConnection(connect);
                thisConnection.Open();
                SqlCommand thisCommand = thisConnection.CreateCommand();
                thisCommand.CommandText = query;
                SqlDataReader thisReader = thisCommand.ExecuteReader();
                while (thisReader.Read())
                {
                    var emp = new Employee();
                    emp.eid = thisReader["eid"].ToString();
                    emp.ename = thisReader["ename"].ToString();
                    employees.Add(emp);
                }
                thisReader.Close();
                thisConnection.Close();
            }
            catch (SqlException e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
            }
        return employees.ToArray();
    }
}

Android --SOAP Client

 private SoapObject result = null;

 private static String SOAP_ACTION = "http://tempuri.org/GetEmployeeByID";
 private static String NAMESPACE = "http://tempuri.org/";
 private static String METHOD_NAME = "GetEmployeeByID";
 private static String URL = "http://192.168.123.100:8080/Service.asmx?WSDL";

 public void connectSOAP(String empid) {
  SoapObject request = new SoapObject(NAMESPACE, METHOD_NAME);
  request.addProperty("id", empid);

  SoapSerializationEnvelope envelope = new SoapSerializationEnvelope(
    SoapEnvelope.VER11);
  envelope.dotNet = true;
  envelope.setOutputSoapObject(request);
  HttpTransportSE androidHttpTransport = new HttpTransportSE(URL);
  try {
   androidHttpTransport.call(SOAP_ACTION, envelope);
  } catch (Exception e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }

  result = (SoapObject) envelope.bodyIn;
  
 }

Google Summer of Code 2013.. I am IN for the second time!!

2013-05-28T10:19:00.001+05:30

Google Summer of Code 2013.. I am IN!! Thank god, I have done it for the second time!! #gsoc (නමෝ බුද්ධාය.)
— Harsha Siriwardena (@harshadura) May 27, 2013

So Glad to heard that I have been selected for "Google summer of code 2013" as a Student this year again, yeap for the second time! :-) This year it was very amazing and much more competitive than last year. To mention a lil wow fact: I have been selected for *two* open source organizations this time!! In-fact those are two great organizations:"Raxa" and "OpenMRS" both are related to Healthcare informatics. (Sometimes we need to take some crucial decisions in our life.) So finally I chose OpenMRS as my organization, because of my love towards this awesome open source community which I have been with over year now,

And ripen, I love this concept by now, "Write codes, Save lives!" I dont think we (as coders) can do much better work than this to serve the global healthcare informatics force. Saving human lives is a priority among all other alms-giving stuff.

Lastly I wanna thank Lord Budhdha who were always blessed me to get through this big achievement! නමෝ බුද්ධාය.

Congratz everyone! Looking forward for a great summer with OpenMRS!

If you are interested, My Project details can be found here:
I will be developing a "User-driven healthcare" system by integrating OpenMRS-core as the base.

1) https://google-melange.appspot.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2013/durapix/118001
2) https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/projects/Patient+Narratives+Upload+-+Project+Proposal

Few Links:
OpenMRS GSoC 2013 students list: https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/RES/Summer+Of+Code+2013#SummerOfCode2013-Interns,Mentors,andProjects

GSoC 2013 Accept students at Google Melange web: https://google-melange.appspot.com/gsoc/projects/list/google/gsoc2013

Weekend Raspberry-Pi experiments!

2013-05-18T21:34:00.002+05:30

Raspberry PI is an awesome mini Linux Computer. I was totally amazed with the computing power it bears and the inbuilt GPIO pins make it even more awesome! I am pretty sure this cute lil linux box opens unlimited possibilities for a creative tech person because of this Computing and Electronics prototyping features it bears. So thats it a lil intro about RasPi and here we go, my 1st project using it! xD

I have used Raspbian Wheezy Linux distro installed to my Sandisk SDHC 8GB class 10 microSD card. My monitor has no HDMI port, So I had to use home Sony TV for it. Plugged everything, powered on, And booyah!the PI booted successfully!

Small issue was noticed after few mins, its only about colors! the colors were only black and white. So I googled about it and found that some TVs display like this and i need to edit a conf at PI O/S. If you need more info can be found here: (Simply the fix is change to: "sdtvmode=2" at "/boot/config.txt" file, and do a sudo reboot, Voila! colors will come up!)

Despite blinking LEDs xD I have tried a new tutorial to stream video from a Web Cam attached to PI to Web server, So the video stream can be accessed by the LAN network. I have used my router for this connected to PI.

RaspberryPI is awesome for electronics-computer-mobile combinated projects. And while surfing I found theirs another product called beagle board similar to RaspberyPI. : http://beagleboard.org/
Since the highly marketing strategies of RasPI we dont aware much about this gadget, But I think it can do more stuff than RasPI though the cost it lil bit larger. RaspPi is 35$ and BeagleBrd is 89$ A nice comparison between both those two credit card size Linux Computers can be found here:

And finally i wanna thank my friend "Harsha Kumara" who provided me his awesome gadget to play with it for couple of days! Thanks harsha!

Playing with GPIO!

Let's start with the first method (File System):

*Before starting startx

Use SuperUser (After every reboot) or use sudo before any command

sudo su

Connect an LED using a resistor between GPIO11 and GND.

Creating a File access to GPIO using console commands:

If you write to the ./export file in the /sys/class/gpio/ subdirectory, the system creates a file with a GPIO structure according to the input. In this case we want to create an access to write directly to GPIO11 in order to handle an LED.

Create a GPIO file access:

echo 11 > /sys/class/gpio/export

Configure the Pin Direction (In/Out):

echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/direction

Write a value to turn on the LED using the GPIO11:

echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/value

Now your led should be ON!!!

Write a value to clear the LED using the GPIO11

echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/value

Now your led should be OFF!!!

Delete the created GPIO (11)

echo 11 > /sys/class/gpio/unexport

Ref: https://sites.google.com/site/semilleroadt/raspberry-pi-tutorials/gpio

lil guide on RasPI

lil guide on Beagle Bone/Board

Links:

Login using Remote Desktop to Raspberry PI: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2119786

Raspberry Pi Hardware Overview, Documentation, and Research
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1945778

Raspberry Pi Supercomputer

harshadura-blogx

Continuous Integration setup with Instrumented Testing for Android

"Maddu", Tribute to unsung grandma in my life. :(

[DIY] Changing engine oil - for Lancer CK2 - JDM

Retrospect: 240 days in the wonderful Red-Dot of South-east-asia, walao!

[Solved] Disk Utility Can't Repair Disk - Mac OS X

Firebase : How To Paginate – A Quick Guide: [Credits: Rachel Willmer]

Step 0: Design the Firebase Data

Step 1: Deliver the Initial Chunk

Step 2: Deliver the Next Batch

How to adjust alternator belt tension - Lancer CK2

[Retrospect] OpenMRS Worldwide summit 2015 & my involvement with the project so far.

Durevo's new look - Lancer CK2 MX touring 360 view.

Introduction to Facebook OpenGraph custom stories

How Car engines work ..

Help contribute Google Translator for Sinhalese Language support!

Car battery voltage inspection using a multimeter.. DIY!

Reading car ECU? EvoScan for Lancer MX touring; OBD2/MUT

Carbon Tracker by Carbonware

Bought my first Car - Mitsubishi Lancer CK2 MX Touring :)

Google Summer of Code 2014: Here are some great info sources for Potential GSoC Aspirants!

GSoC Meetup Resources

Introduction Video about GSoC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBUvf2q9vSc

Another really cool GSoC Presentation (Credits: Mr.Suranga) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0txED3K91sYZldyQlBnVEE1LTA/edit?usp=sharing

Open source software for the world: Presentation (Credits: Mr.Keshan) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1G_1eOb9L46WCbC7ipbx4Ffc7RTqC3Rh812omSmOlvz4/edit?usp=sharing

End of Google Summer of Code thoughts, at OpenMRS!

Remote debugging J2EE Application with Tomcat/Jetty and IntelliJ IDEA

Debug with Tomcat

Debug with Jetty

Sample Java/Maven Web project which allows to simply send SMS using Twilio API

Twilio-SMS-test

"Story of the Floss" -- About a great life phrase

Clem and another group are faced with the same challenge: build a bridge across a canyon.

The Lesson

My Thoughts

OpenShift Gear quick links

[Tutorial] Simple Android Application which consumes C# ASP.net Web service

Google Summer of Code 2013.. I am IN for the second time!!

Weekend Raspberry-Pi experiments!