Posts tagged Development
Adobe AIR and iOS Certificate Woes
Mar 30th
I’ve recently gotten into Adobe Air on mobile devices (seeing as I had to write an iPad app for work, and our main UI is all built in Flex, this was a perfect framework for me.) Getting ready to go on vacation, I ran into a very frustrating problem when I tried to load the application onto my device for testing. “APP_NAME could not be installed.”
Adobe Air works on mobile devices by cross-compiling the flash into iOS native code. During the cross-compile, the application is signed for deployment via the Apple App Store (or Ad-Hoc distribution.) This signature process through me off my game, as there are a combination of certificates, provisioning profiles, and other madness.
I was finally able to get my application to run and install correctly when I did the following:
1) Found the “Distribution” certificate. This is generated on the Apple website using the Certificate Request mechanism
2) Generated a Ad Hoc Distribution certificate for my application. This should be tied to the Distribution certificate
3) Set the application id in the application config to the name of the Apple application id (without the “company prefix”)
4) Signed the application using adt, the certificate, the mobile provision, and the appropriate application config.
The part that caught me up was the application ID didn’t match the one in the configuration file, and so my application wouldn’t install. This was particularly frustrating as the adt still signed the .ipa file, it just wouldn’t load on my iPad.
Long story short, if you get this error, make absolutely sure you are signing it with the right id.
Btw, I have a simple project template with ant that will do all this for those that are interested. Let me know if you want me to post it.
- Posted from my iPad
Running Lejos on RCX 2.0 and Mac OSX Snow Leopard
Mar 27th
Yesterday I purchased a Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 for my son.
It was ridiculously expensive. I had a focus on robotics in my BS program, so I was excited to build some robots with him. At the time, we used the Lego Robotics Invention System (now called RCX). I went onto craigslist and found one of these machines so that I could build robots with my son, but without the $300+ pricetag.
After procuring the machine, I spent some time trying to setup the development environment I had used back in college. Unfortunately, the C toolchain I had used was not available for Mac (at least, I couldn’t find a tutorial on setting it up.) I found an interesting firmware replacement at lejos.org that allows you to code your applications in java, using a custom library set.
Being a Java developer by day, this appealed to me quite a bit. So I set about the long process of trying to get lejos to work on my 64-bit Snow Leopard MBP… and failed miserably. There were compilation issues (conversion of 64-bit pointers to 32-bit handles in the code necessary to communicate with the IR tower (used to program the RCX).
Finally, I found http://lejos.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1673, and the link by tsinn where he’d setup an installer for the lejos subsystem and toolchain onto Mac OSX 10.5 (a 32-bit system). After downloading his system, then making a couple of tweaks, I was able to generate the following package: http://kennelbound.com/downloads/lejos3.zip
To use, simply do the following:
1) Download and extract the lejos3,zip to a local folder (such as /personal/lejos3)
2) Edit the lejos.env file and change the LEJOS_HOME to point to the directory where you extracted it.
3) Open a command console, and cd to the LEJOS_HOME directory
4) Type in “source lejos.env” (without the quotes)
5) cd to the LEJOS_HOME/bin directory
6) Install the firmware onto the RCX using “./firmdl” without the quotes
7) You should see some progress. Once it completes, you now have the RCX running lejos!
You can test it with a simple Hello World application:
1) cd to lejos3/examples/test/hworld
2) execute “lejosjc HelloWorld; lejos HelloWorld” without the quotes to compile and send the program to the RCX.
3) Once it’s done, on the RCX, press the “Run” button.
You should see “hello world” on the RCX’s LCD.
Next time, I’ll write down how I have Intellij setup so that I can run and load the applications with ease!
Games: Fallout 3 Hacking Minigame Solver
Oct 29th
I’ve added my Fallout 3 Solver back to the website, so if you were having trouble finding it before it is back now.
For those that haven’t used it before: In Fallout 3 there are computer terminals all around the world. To access some of them you have to pass a “hacking” puzzle. Sometimes its fun to play this out and try and solve the puzzle manually. However, often I really needed what was in the next room and the door was controlled by the computer.
To ensure that I didn’t lose my chances, I wrote this solving tool.
The tool has percentages based upon how common the letters are in it. For example, the letter e is the most common letter in the English language. It seems to me then that a word with an e in it is more likely to occur than a word with no e’s in it. That being said, the percentages are just for fun.
Enjoy and leave me comments!
