Henry A. Grant
IT Design, Management, Direction
Projects
Outside of work to keep things interesting...
Connected with a dear friend in Michigan - completely transforming my life for the better.
CCNA Recertification - Currently self-studying the Cisco material for this coveted certification. I have all the Cisco texts on e-readers also have a rack of Cisco switches and routers.
Android Application Development - In 2014 I prototyped several Android apps written in Java. I continue to update and work on them as the technology changes.
iPhone Application Development - In late October 2009, I collaborated with another developer and produced a working iPhone application. The app was released and available on Apple's App Store. It is now end-of-life. This project was a profound learning experience both in terms of technology and of personal growth and friendship.
Embedded System Development - I continue to experiment and investe the Texas Instrument MSP430 micro-controller and TI's CC2530 transceiver on a chip using TI's Code Composer Studio.
Wireless Sensors - Experimenting with the XBee Pro S2B radio modules from Digi-Key to create wireless sensors. These modules are configured by using a descendant of the old Hayes telephone modem AT commands! Breakout adapter boards (available from Sparkfun) with USB capability are available that allow the module to communicate to a PC via the USB port. Loading firmware and configuring a module's address and communication functions is performed through a program called X-CTU (free from Digi). Communicating to a ZigBee module is via a terminal program such as CoolTerm or HyperTerm - I use RealTerm, PuTTY is another good one. With two modules, the basic idea is to setup one as a Coordinator and another as a Router, then you have a network. The two can be setup for a 'chat' session and then the terminal programs can be replaced by cooperating applications on two computers.
GUI Programming with Python - I am using the Eclipse Kepler IDE configured with PyDev and wxPython. I'm using a GUI interface builder, Boa-Constructor (BCon). BCon is open source and makes coding of "box-sizers", text controls, buttons and menus pretty easy. I've built a simple text-to-Morse code converter application. The application GUI allows a user to enter plain text into a multiline "textctrl". When the Enter key is pressed, the app generates a data stream to a serial port. An Texas Instrument MSP-430 (see above project) reads the serial stream and acts as the interface (keyer switch) to a HAM band transceiver. I've experimented with text to Morse conversion by 'dictionary' (key:value pairs) and by XML. An XML schema and instance file can be found on the web at Google Code.
XML and Schema - Using XMLSpy with the above Python investigation to construct new text-2-Morse XML schemas and validate new XML instance files. I'm also working with an expert in social media network analysis to develop an ontology and XML schema for a ground breaking book.
Endurance Events - 2014 - Finisher in the Tough Mudder held May 31 at Mt. Snow Vermont. 2013 - Carl Hart Duathlon and other distance/endurance events. 2012 - Personal best Carl Hart Mothers Day Duathlon sprint - shaved one minute off 2011 time, also Smith Point swim/bike/run Triathlon. 2011 - Carl Hart Duathlon, Belleayre Mountain ski/bike/run spring triathlon, 2010 - Belleayre Mountain ski/bike/run spring triathlon.
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