The talk today was by Kevin P Davis. He talked about the things he's learning about R Programming. This programming language was originally created to handle statistics questions and it handles those, and arrays/vectors, quite well. It also makes it easy to create "publication ready" graphs with a single command. If the libraries qplot and ggplot2 are included those graphs can be quite interesting.
He walked through an example. He wanted to know how long a card game "War" can last and also whether having all the aces guaranteed winning... in the very long run. It turns out that War can last 300,000 rounds and generally takes at least 10,000 to complete. He also demonstrated showed the graphs drawn from the dataset.
It was a fascinating presentation and raised a number of questions in my mind. Most seriously, is there a good way to integrate this with a C# application? Also, is there something that ordinary users can use this, possibly with a drag and drop style interface?
It turns out there are ways to call R functionality from C# through one of several dlls though there are limitations around which version of R the dll references.
On the second question... well, they exist, but at first blush they seem limited and mostly aimed at getting users familiar with the scripting language.
There are some obvious uses where I'm working.
You can download R here.
Showing posts with label .NET User Group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label .NET User Group. Show all posts
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Lake County .Net User Group 6/14/12
I just got back from the monthly presentation by the Lake County .Net User Group (LCNUG). The presentation this month described how to use the Microsoft Robotics Developer studio and C# to program remote control devices and robots. It was presented by Min Maung.
My basic reaction... Hot damn! There's a lot of potential here. The guts of the code is a type of web service. This allows many different sorts of controllers to interface with different types of mechanical devices. One of the projects the speaker demoed was a light controlled via wi-fi by an Xbox controller. Another was a remote controlled lawnmower controlled via his smartphone.
Microsoft Robotics Developer includes a visual programming component that allows a developer to quickly link up different controllers, sensors, and other devices. It also includes the ability to write web services that serve as modules and can sit between those devices.
The meeting left me thinking about a number of possible applications, mostly with encryption. It is clearly possible to control an entire house from a computer with each piece having a little microcontroller and a central computer controlling the action. That includes lights, music, vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, just about anything.
My basic reaction... Hot damn! There's a lot of potential here. The guts of the code is a type of web service. This allows many different sorts of controllers to interface with different types of mechanical devices. One of the projects the speaker demoed was a light controlled via wi-fi by an Xbox controller. Another was a remote controlled lawnmower controlled via his smartphone.
Microsoft Robotics Developer includes a visual programming component that allows a developer to quickly link up different controllers, sensors, and other devices. It also includes the ability to write web services that serve as modules and can sit between those devices.
The meeting left me thinking about a number of possible applications, mostly with encryption. It is clearly possible to control an entire house from a computer with each piece having a little microcontroller and a central computer controlling the action. That includes lights, music, vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, just about anything.
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