Monthly Archives: April 2016

Building an Android phone connected Door Bell with Light Blue Bean’s iBeacon

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The Light Blue Bean built by Punch Through Design is a versatile Arduino device with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) built in. The Bean’s default 3v battery could typically last a month when running a minimal sketch. A door bell button is possibly the simplest arduino device you could possibly build. A press of the button would notify an android device through BLE that someone is at the door. This post will provide an idea on how this could be built using minimal power (on the Bean) and minimal code.

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Issue with Xaml Designer – An error occurred loading this property page

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So after installing Visual Studio 2015 Update 2, my Xaml Designer decided to stop working. Every time I open the designer by clicking on a xaml file, it would show an error dialog that says “Visual Studio has encountered an unexpected error.” – not very helpful. Going to the menu, Options > Xaml Designer > General property page would yield an error “An error occurred loading this property page”.

I then tried re-installing Visual Studio 2015. Same issue. I then tried opening Expression Blend, it doesn’t work, but I got a some more interesting clues – it tells me to check ActivityLog.xml – In it, there was a telling error:

SetSite failed for package [XamlDesignerPackage][This access control list is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified.

Basically my permissions were corrupted somewhere in some file. I had a hunch. A test by logging on to a fresh Windows user account and opening VS xaml editor confirmed that the issue was limited to my profile account. I tried remove all traces of Visual Studio from profile but removing the obvious AppData folder didn’t fix the issue. There were just too many places it hides files. As a last resort, I reset all permissions on my profile folder such that I was the owner and had write access and surprise! it works!! Now I know what to try next time.