October 2024 Updates

IEEE 2030 Smart Grid Interoperability Communication Protocol

Added information about the IEEE 2030.5 Smart Grid communication protocol.

Makefiles

Added information on changing directory and detecting the operating system in a Makefile.

Cellular

Added information on LPWAN (cellular comm. protocols designed for embedded devices/IoT), including LTE Cat M and LTE Cat NB (NB-IoT).

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

Added information on the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), including network hierarchy, versions, and traps.

Running GitLab Pipelines Locally

Added information on how to run GitLab pipelines locally using the gitlab-ci-local tool.

Added a Astro.js Table Component

To support data-rich tables in .mdx files, I created a Table component.

The Table component allows you to pass in the data as a Javascript object, and it will automatically create the headers and rows from this.

Using Dev Containers for Firmware Development

Added information on how to use dev containers for firmware development.

Add Info on ESP32 and ESP-IDF

Added info on ESP32 SoCs and ESP-IDF.

Added Equation Referencing Support

When moving from MathJac to Katex (as part of the move from Hugo to astro.js), I lost the ability to reference equations from within text as Katex does not support the \label and \ref commands with automatically numbered equations.

To get around this, I add \htmlId{}{} markers in the Katex and implement the reset of the logic for equation referencing in the client-side IRefClientScript.js script (which already does the figure and table referencing).

Added Resistor Node Analysis Info

Added a convoluted resistor network example to show how to analyse the nodes in a resistor network to determine whether resistors are in series or parallel.

Added Info on Kirchhoff’s Circuit Laws

Added a new page on Kirchhoff’s Circuit Laws.

Added Info on Google Cloud

Added a new page on Google Cloud, including info on Firebase and the Firebase CLI.

Fixed Missing Square Root Symbols

I discovered this month that square root symbols were not rendering in any equations across the site. After much digging, I found at that this was because some Starlight CSS was messing with the svg used to render the square root symbol.

The offending CSS from Starlight was:

.sl-markdown-content :is(img, picture, video, canvas, svg, iframe):not(:where(.not-content *)) {
    display: block;
    max-width: 100%;
    height: auto;
}

Specifically, it is the height: auto; which selects svg. Katex uses an svg to draw the square root symbol in equations (many other parts of the equation are not svg, which is why you may not notice anything is amiss!). I added the following CSS to custom.css to fix this:

custom.css

/**
This CSS fixes issue where \sqrt{} was not being rendered in Katex, due to a Starlight Css svg height rule
*/
.katex-html svg {
  height: inherit;
}

Split the RF Info Into It’s Own Page

The RF connector info on the Connectors page was brought out onto it’s own child page. Info on reverse-thread SMA connectors was added.