Raspberry Pi Robotic Blueprints. Utilize the powerful ingredients of Raspberry Pi to bring to life your amazing robots that can act, draw, and have fun with laser tags

Wolfram Donat, Richard Grimmett

The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. The Raspberry Pi is known as a tiny computer built on a single circuit board. It runs a Linux operating system, and has connection ports for various peripherals so that it can be hooked up to sensors, motors, cameras, and more. Raspberry Pi has been hugely popular among hardware hobbyists for various projects, including robotics. This book gives you an insight into implementing several creative projects using the peripherals provided by Raspberry Pi. To start, we’ll walk through the basic robotics concepts that the world of Raspberry Pi offers us, implementing wireless communication to control your robot from a distance. Next, we demonstrate how to build a sensible and a visionary robot, maximizing the use of sensors and step controllers. After that, we focus on building a wheeled robot that can draw and play hockey. To finish with a bang, we’ll build an autonomous hexcopter, that is, a flying robot controlled by Raspberry Pi.By the end of this book, you will be a maestro in applying an array of different technologies to create almost any imaginable robot.

Mastering macOS Programming. Hands-on guide to macOS Sierra Application Development

Stuart Grimshaw, Gregory Casamento

macOS continues to lead the way in desktop operating systems, with its tight integration across the Apple ecosystem of platforms and devices. With this book, you will get an in-depth knowledge of working on macOS, enabling you to unleash the full potential of the latest version using Swift 3 to build applications.This book will help you broaden your horizons by taking your programming skills to next level. The initial chapters will show you all about the environment that surrounds a developer at the start of a project. It introduces you to the new features that Swift 3 and Xcode 8 offers and also covers the common design patterns that you need to know for planning anything more than trivial projects. You will then learn the advanced Swift programming concepts, including memory management, generics, protocol orientated and functional programming and with this knowledge you will be able to tackle the next several chapters that deal with Apple’s own Cocoa frameworks. It also covers AppKit, Foundation, and Core Data in detail which is a part of the Cocoa umbrella framework. The rest of the book will cover the challenges posed by asynchronous programming, error handling, debugging, and many other areas that are an indispensable part of producing software in a professional environment.By the end of this book, you will be well acquainted with Swift, Cocoa, and AppKit, as well as a plethora of other essential tools, and you will be ready to tackle much more complex and advanced software projects.

Adopting .NET 5. Understand modern architectures, migration best practices, and the new features in .NET 5

Hammad Arif, Habib Qureshi

.NET 5 is the unification of all .NET technologies in a single framework that can run on all platforms and provide a consistent experience to developers, regardless of the device, operating system (OS), or cloud platform they choose.By updating to .NET 5, you can build software that can quickly adapt to the rapidly changing demands of modern consumers and stay up to date on the latest technology trends in .NET.This book provides a comprehensive overview of all the technologies that will form the future landscape of .NET using practical examples based on real-world scenarios, along with best practices to help you migrate from legacy platforms.You’ll start by learning about Microsoft’s vision and rationale for the unification of the platforms. Then, you’ll cover all the new language enhancements in C# 9. As you advance, you’ll find out how you can align yourself with modern technology trends, focusing on everything from microservices to orchestrated containerized deployments. Finally, you’ll learn how to effectively integrate machine learning in .NET code.By the end of this .NET book, you’ll have gained a thorough understanding of the .NET 5 platform, together with a readiness to adapt to future .NET release cycles, and you’ll be able to make architectural decisions about porting legacy systems and code bases to a newer platform.

Tableau: Creating Interactive Data Visualizations. Creating Interactive Data Visualizations

Matt Floyd, Jen Stirrup, Ashley Ohmann, Ashutosh Nandeshwar

With increasing interest for data visualization in the media, businesses are looking to create effective dashboards that engage as well as communicate the truth of data. Tableau makes data accessible to everyone, and is a great way of sharing enterprise dashboards across the business. Tableau is a revolutionary toolkit that lets you simply and effectively create high-quality data visualizations.This course starts with making you familiar with its features and enable you to develop and enhance your dashboard skills, starting with an overview of what dashboard is, followed by how you can collect data using various mathematical formulas. Next, you'll learn to filter and group data, as well as how to use various functions to present the data in an appealing and accurate way. In the first module, you will learn how to use the key advanced string functions to play with data and images. You will be walked through the various features of Tableau including dual axes, scatterplot matrices, heat maps, and sizing.In the second module, you’ll start with getting your data into Tableau, move onto generating progressively complex graphics, and end with the finishing touches and packaging your work for distribution. This module is filled with practical examples to help you create filled maps, use custom markers, add slider selectors, and create dashboards. You will learn how to manipulate data in various ways by applying various filters, logic, and calculating various aggregate measures. Finally, in the third module, you learn about Tableau Public using which allows readers to explore data associations in multiple-sourced public data, and uses state-of-the-art dashboard and chart graphics to immerse the users in an interactive experience. In this module, the readers can quickly gain confidence in understanding and expanding their visualization, creation knowledge, and quickly create interesting, interactive data visualizations to bring a richness and vibrancy to complex articles.The course provides a great overview for beginner to intermediate Tableau users, and covers the creation of data visualizations of varying complexities.

Mobile Application Development: JavaScript Frameworks. Click here to enter text

Sani Yusuf, Tom Bray, Hazem Saleh, Ethan Holmes

A great mobile app is rapidly becoming crucial for a huge range of businesses. With a great app, your customers or your readers don’t come to you – you go with them, just a few clicks and swipes away. This Learning Path shows you how to build awesome mobile apps with some of the best tools currently being used by some of the smartest developers in the industry. Taking you through JavaScript impressive development ecosystem – from jQuery Mobile to React, through to Ionic – we’ll show you how to put your skills into practice so you can build your next mobile apps with confidence and style. In this Learning Path, from jQuery to React, to Ionic, we’ll cover everything you need to start In the first module you’ll learn how to get stuck into Apache Cordova and find out how to use it as the key platform for developing your mobile app. It offers an efficient way to develop hybrid apps, which means you won’t have to connect to platform specific APIs or use their UI framework, and can instead harness your JavaScript web development skills. Make sure you have your HTML, CSS and jQuery skills at the ready.In Module 2 we’ll show you how to take advantage of React Native. It has a reputation for having a steep learning curve, but we’ll make it easy for you, making sure you make full use of your existing knowledge and getting you up and running with a sample application. You’ll also learn how to create components, how to create multiple screens, as well as using native UI components and accessing native APIs.In the third and final module you’ll get started with Ionic. With three practical projects you can build yourself, we’ve made sure that you’ll be learning by doing – which means you’ll not only develop new skills much more quickly, but you’ll have produced something tangible at the end of it!This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products:?JavaScript Mobile Application Development by Hazem Saleh?Getting Started with React Native by Ethan Holmes and Tom Bray?Ionic Framework By Example by Sani Yusuf

Smart Robotics with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor. Learn to play with the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor kit and build creative robots

Aaron Maurer

LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor is the latest addition to the LEGO MINDSTORMS theme. It features unique designs that you can use to build robots, and also enable you to perform activities using the robot inventor application.You'll begin by exploring the history of LEGO MINDSTORMS, and then delve into various elements of the Inventor kit. Moving on, you'll start working on different projects which will prepare you to build a variety of smart robots. The first robotic project involves designing a claw to grab objects, and helps you to explore how a smart robot is used in everyday life and in industry. The second project revolves around building a working guitar that can be played and modified to meet the needs of the user. As you advance, you'll explore the concept of biomimicry as you discover how to build a scorpion robot. In addition to this, you'll also work on a classic robotic challenge by building a sumobot. Throughout the book, you'll come across a variety of projects that will provide you with hands-on experience in building creative robots, such as building a Dragster, Egg Decorator, and Plankton from Spongebob Squarepants.By the end of this LEGO book, you'll have got to grips with the concepts behind building a robot, and also found creative ways to integrate them using the application based on your creative insights and ideas.

Instant Website Optimization for Retina Displays How-to. Learning simple techniques which will make your website look stunning on high-definition Retina Displays

Kyle Larson

Apple launched its line of high-resolution, retina display products with the iPhone 4 and has continued to integrate the technology into its other products. These beautiful displays take computing to a new level with incredibly sharp text and graphics. As other manufacturers add similar displays to their devices, high-resolution graphics will become the new standard for the apps and websites of the future.Instant Website Optimization for Retina Displays How-to is a comprehensive guide to building a website that will look fantastic on high-resolution displays. Helpful insights and simple instructions walk you through all the various methods of optimizing your site for the latest mobile and desktop devices.This book begins by covering the basics of retina images and dives right into practical advice so you can start improving your website's images. It continues building on the basic techniques with simple recipes covering all the tools you'll need to make an impressive high-resolution website.We will take a look at the techniques for adding retina backgrounds, sprites, border images, and loading large images only when needed to keep your website running fast. We will create a variety of basic shapes and styles using CSS that can be used instead of graphics in your user interface. We'll cover scalable image techniques, including using fonts as icons and implementing Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), which make your graphics look great on any device.After reading Instant Website Optimization for Retina Displays How-to you'll have the techniques to make creating high-definition websites easy. You'll have an arsenal of tools for creating graphics on the web at your disposal, leading to superior websites that are beautiful and fast.

ElasticSearch Cookbook. Over 130 advanced recipes to search, analyze, deploy, manage, and monitor data effectively with ElasticSearch

Alberto Paro