Collect MSDTC trace logs, access denied

During a support case, I needed to collect MSDTC trace logs. However, I ran into the issue of not having access to the c:\windows\system32\msdtc folder.

The way to access this folder and the trace files collected, is to do it via an elevated command prompt. Running cmd as administrator will give you access to the folder and allow you to copy the needed trace files.

Bulk modify items in Visual Studio Team Services

I just had a need to add around 500 work items for a new project in Visual Studio Team Services. We use VSTS for keeping track in our projects and use the Scrum template. In this case, it was a bit different from a normal project since 98% of the work items were defined before hand and most of the priority was also set. I had a list of all the work items and needed to populate the scrum board with these in a quick way. Still, what I learned can be very useful in other projects as well, but helped me tremendously in this case.

I have heard about the export/import functionality to Excel earlier, but were curious on how to do it in VSTS today. The documentation found online was a bit off and didn't quite tell me what I wanted. Most pages and articles found pointed me to old versions of TFS and Visual Studio. This post is for me (and others) to use as a reference in the future.

Start out by creating a custom query in VSTS that return all objects you want in a tree view format. In my case I want absolutely everything, but you could always filter out specifics to work with if you'd like.

Then make sure to enable the Team ribbon add-in in Excel. I had several versions installed (most likely due to multiple installations of Visual Studio) so I enabled the one with the highest version number.

Go to Options and then Add-ins in the left menu bar. At the bottom you'll find a drop-down where you can select COM Add-ins, then click Go.

If you don't have the Team Foundation Add-in in the list, you can get it by either installing Visual Studio or install the Team Foundation Server Office Integration from here (a bit down in the downloads list).

Then create a new Excel book and connect to VSTS via the newly enabled Team ribbon by selecting New List and connect to the VSTS and then select the new "All items" query.

Add those columns you are interested in. In my case it was Remaining Work and Effort, since I already had those numbers.

Also, in order to be able to work with items on different levels, you need to make sure that you have Title-columns that correspond to the levels. In this case, Title 1 is used for Backlog Item and I have to add a level for the Tasks. Click Add Tree Level in the ribbon and you will get a new column for Title 2 that will contain the Task title.

Then start to populate the table in a normal Excel way. Don't miss out on utilizing the filtering functionality in the table to quickly select items and set properties on those. One example is to filter out everything with "deploy" in the title and set the Activity property to Deployment by using Drag-and-fill. This is WAY faster than doing it in the web GUI, even if you there can select and edit multiple items at once.

Then it is just a matter of Publishing to VSTS to populate the board with the items. So click Publish in the ribbon.

Jump over to VSTS and refresh the page to get your updated backlog.

Just be vary of others updating the board while you work. Changes may be overwritten and/or messed up.

Getting notifications from a mouse trap using RuuviTag, Raspberry Pi 3, Windows IoT Core (and a string)

I was part of a Kickstarter campaign that ended up with me receiving five RuuviTags. They are small battery powered tags that communicate via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and are equipped with a sensor chip. They are of course extendible and can be flashed with custom firmware. All in all, fun toys to tinker with when time permits.

Since I have a few mouse traps scattered around the house in locations that I rarely visit, I'd like to get a notification when one of them has trapped a mouse. Since the RuuviTag has acceleration data as part of the data available from the sensors (the other are temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity and battery voltage), I thought this could be used to check whether a mouse trap has been active or not.

My basic setup is this:

A mouse trap with the RuuviTag attached. This is using stock Ruuvi firmware in RAW mode. This means that it at 1Hz interval will broadcast 20 bytes of raw sensor data via bluetooth. I have a Raspberry Pi 3 running Windows IoT Core in my house that will intercept the signal. When a change in the acceleration data is identified, it is interpreted as the mouse trap has been activated (or flipped over or in any way tampered with). If so, a REST call is made to Pushover that in turn will send a notification to my cell phone. I already use Pushover for other notifications in my home such as notifying me that tool batteries are fully loaded, that the car heater hasn't been switched off (if for instance it has been activated in the morning, but we never took the car to work) etc.

Now, one could argue that the sensor should be able to itself identify a change in the acceleration data and then send a notification regarding this instead of offloading the processing to the RPi3. However, since the tags, while having extremely good bluetooth range, can be missed by the RPi3, the current setup will ensure that I always catch a change in acceleration data. Even if I miss out on five transmits from the tag directly after a change in acceleration data, the sixth transmit will differ from the last one received, and hence trigger the logic.

I will however look into turning down the transmit interval since 1Hz is quite often for this need. I guess I can prolong the battery life a bit by doing so.

On the plus side, since I have at least one tag in the garage, I can utilize the other data sent by the tag. The temperature can be used as input to the car heater logic so that the time for the car heater will differ depending on the temperature inside the garage. Right now, I use outdoor temperature, but since the car is inside, it is not 100% correct for optimizing performance/cost.

The code is not advanced at all. I briefly looked into pairing, GATT profiles and other stuff before realizing that I didn't need any of that.

I simply add a BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcher to catch any BLE signals received.

BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcher watcher = new BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcher();

watcher.Received += OnAdvertisementReceived;

watcher.Start();

I also have a small class to hold info regarding my tags and the received data.

bleTags.Add(new BLETag { BTAddress = 230418796132391, IDNumber = 5, Name = "Mouse trap garage" });

bleTags.Add(new BLETag { BTAddress = 241760085512663, IDNumber = 4, Name = "Mouse trap garage #2" });

Then in my OnAdvertisementReceived event, I check the tags in my class against the received BTAddress to see if the advertisement is for a tag I have interest in (there are quite a lot of bluetooth traffic in my house).

bleTags.FindIndex(x => x.BTAddress.Equals(eventArgs.BluetoothAddress));

Then I need to get the second data section from the advertisement since that is where the raw sensor data is stored.

BluetoothLEAdvertisementDataSection BLEDataSection2 = eventArgs.Advertisement.DataSections[1];

var dataReader = DataReader.FromBuffer(BLEDataSection2.Data);

byte[] fileContent = new byte[dataReader.UnconsumedBufferLength];

dataReader.ReadBytes(fileContent);

The data string is then parsed byte by byte according to the specification to get each sensor value.

To check if the orientation has changed, I currently just check if any of the acceleration values has changed more than 200mG, which will give me enough slack to not trigger on normal sensor fluctuation, but catch any movement from the sensor.

public bool OrientationHasChanged()

{

bool retval = false;

if (PreviousSensorData != null)

{

double xdiff = Math.Abs(PreviousSensorData.AccelerationX - SensorData.AccelerationX);

double ydiff = Math.Abs(PreviousSensorData.AccelerationY - SensorData.AccelerationY);

double zdiff = Math.Abs(PreviousSensorData.AccelerationZ - SensorData.AccelerationZ);

double difflimit = 200; // breaking limit in mG

if (xdiff > difflimit || ydiff > difflimit || zdiff > difflimit)

retval = true;

}

return retval;

}

The sensor in turn is currently fastened to a spring loaded arm on the mouse trap using a string so that when the mouse trap is moved ever so slightly or that it is triggered, the tag will move enough to change the acceleration data more than the 200mG needed to indicate a change.

When testing it out, it has showed to work very well. From a mouse meeting its creator to me getting a push notification, it is 1-5 seconds. This due to the sensor broadcasting at 1Hz, not all advertisements getting to the RPi and finally the push notification that has to make it around the world and back to my phone.

The code is most likely going to change. Altering the filtering of advertisements, trying to increase the quality of transmissions so that none are dropped and similar things are in the pipeline.