If you trying to setup JSF2 + IceFaces + Hibernate + Spring in Maven2 pom…

If you trying to setup JSF2 + IceFaces + Hibernate + Spring in Maven2 pom you are risking of loosing so much time if you do it from scratch… Trust me I did until I came across this great post. This blog has archetypes prepared for different flavors of libraries which is a great starting point for setting up a new application development.

Have a look and spare yourself from frustration!

Thanks Robert for a superb work!

Articles must read on using Transactions in Spring

It is very important subject but quite often overlooked by many developers. Some do not have complete understanding and develop software that "works" for years until the issue is finally triggered by some non-trivial scenario. At times issues are silent and when found it is quite difficult (if possible) to fix data as traces of the transactions been lost over time or damage is great...

How to add Velocity sensitivity / Aftertouch to Piano toy midi controller

As promised this is the second part of the project "How to turn Toy piano into Midi keyboard" and in this series we are adding velocity sensitivity to the keyboard. In fact as a bonus we will add an aftertouch effect as well.

Poor man's Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR)

This post is not about making your own FSR from Conductive foam, but how you can get many FSRs from single large FSR. I bet you have guessed...

 You can cut a 60cm FSR into many smaller FSRs that will be still of original sensing quality but much cheaper compared to if you have bought many small factory made FSRs. Consider the cost saving when you get FSR for $20 and cut it into 20 pieces! That's what I've done for one of my projects. Below is a demo comparison of original FSR and cut version:

By the way for good intro to FSRs read following very detailed post

How to turn Piano toy into MIDI keyboard (using Arduino/Atmega)

Recently I've recovered a broken Casio SA-47 piano toy:

Pic1: Keyboard

What a great opportunity to experiment I thought! I always wanted to make my own midi device and here was a chance. So I decided to make a midi keyboard.

Below is the video of the final result...

For those interested there is a second part of the project here where we add Velocity and After touch to the keyboard.