Tech blog

StackHub updated to recognise Project Haystack 4 definitions within uploaded pods - that get displayed on the Pod's tag summary page.

Have a look here on StackHub.

Here is a quick update to make life more comfortable:

• Change: Updated to be compatible with Belimo v4 Energy Valves

Find out more in the Release notes here on StackHub.

We have made an update to make your life easier:

• Change: Fixes for new JS Compiler added in SkySpark 3.1.9

Find out more in the Release notes here on StackHub.

We have made a quick update to allow for smooth sailing:

• Change: Updated to work with new SkySpark 3.1.9 ECMA Javascript compiler

Find out more in the Release notes here on StackHub.

We've made some fixes and changes to make your experience even better:

• Bug: Fix for new 3.1.9 JS compiler
• Change: Added defs for default synced file recs

Find out more in the Release notes here on StackHub.

We made some quick changes to make this view even more SPARKLY!

• New: Custom CSS properties may be added to the title, subtitle, and other parts of the Nyan Cat card.
• Change: Prevented Nyan Cat from being clipped at extreme values.
• Change: Added an explicit licence section to the documentation.

Check it out here on StackHub.

Delight customers and managers alike with the Nyan Cat Card View on SkySpark FOR FREE!

Check it out here on StackHub.

Here is the new StackHub updates:

• New: Customers may now manually delete their own Account - as opposed to having to email support with a query
• New: Automatic "Your licence is expiring" emails sent to vendors now contain notes as added by the vendor

Try them here on StackHub.

Fixed a wording error in Q5.2.4 in our entroCIM Analyst course.

Thanks to Jan Zajas for highlighting this.

entroCIM Analyst course details

Here is the new StackHub update:

• Customer are automatically emailed their licence files when purchased - meaning they don't have to manually download them.

Have a look here on StackHub.

Kaiterra Cloud Ext is a SkySpark connector for ALL Kaiterra Laser Egg and SenseEdge devices.

The Kaitterra Cloud connector update includes:

• Fixed an issue with "Personal" devices not showing in the Learn tree. Thanks to Austin Hinners from BranchPattern for bringing this to our attention.
• Added a unit test using the ProjTest framework to test the Learn tree "for real".

Take a look at afKaiterraCloudExt

Our new Software Developer Bundle is all of our essential SkySpark developer tools - in one convenient licence!

Read all about it here in our Software Developer Bundle News Article.

Starting off with the native displays and visualisations available, we are proud to showcase how Fantom produces a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of dashboard display screens!

• 1. Default SkySpark Views
• 2. SkySpark Viewbuilder
• 3. Fantom Views
• 4. Fantom Websites

To see these amazing dashboards take a look now on our YouTube channel:

Our Fantom Factory team had the absolute privilege to be finalists in the recent Innovation Excellence Awards held by the historic Stationers' Company in London.

Read all about it here in our Stationers Awards 2023 News Article.

Folio File Sync enables GIT and Source Code Management development processes to be used with SkySpark. Features include:

• Sync Folio records to .trio files
• Sync .trio files to Folio records
• Customise directories and file naming conventions
• Import / export settings for easy configuration
• Ready-made Axon functions for scripting synchronisations

Find out more here! release notes on StackHub.

Here are the new changes and fixes:

• Chg: New "About Us" dialogue containing updated graphic, message and links.

See all the changes in the release notes on StackHub.

Here are the new changes and fixes:

• Chg: Allow system meta (e.g. pod.fcode) to be included in pod meta.props. Thanks to Nathan Travis of Trove Consulting for the idea.
• Bug: Fixed file lock issue when PodBuilder was used to re-install newly built pods on Windows systems, see SkyFoundry forum for details.

Thank you to Samuel Nelson of Synergy for reporting.

See all the changes in the release notes on StackHub.

We've had so many great reviews on our courses, that we've had to add a filter on the star ratings to show them all!

We invite all of our students and software customers to review our services for feedback which we automatically publish here on our website!

GitHub is a platform and cloud-based service for software development and version control using Git, allowing developers to store and manage their code.

• Fix: We fixed a bug in the core Fantom language whereby browser dom Events in Java could not express which mouse button was clicked at the time of inception.

Have a look

Pegger is a Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG) implementation. It lets you create text parsers by building up a tree of simple matching rules.

We've updated Pegger with this:

• New convenience methods to find(), search(), and replace().
• More macro rules.
• More convenience methods in result Matches
• Now runs in Javascript!
• Bug fixes.

For when Regular Expressions just aren't enough!

Take a look at afPegger

Our best selling course SkySpark Engineer is now bigger and better than ever - updated for SkySpark v3.1.8.

We've also listened to all of your feedback and improved several questions in the final assessment and for the Ice Drill challenge in topic 5.7!

Contact us for free trial access at any time.

• New: Pod Builder now allows concurrent users to edit different pod projects.

Thank you to Sherri Simms of ABI Advantage for the idea.

See all the changes in the release notes on StackHub.

A headless browser for testing web sites and BedSheet applications.

• Chg: Treat absolute localhost URLs as if they were relative.

Sometimes it's hard to avoid absolute URLs!

Take a look at afBounce

FormBeam renders Fantom objects as HTML forms complete with client and server side validation.

• The bean instance passed to render() methods is now optional.

Find out more! Visit the Fantom Eggbox Pod Repository

Our team updated 12 custom Fantom pods for a customer to ensure they continue to work with SkySpark 3.1.8. Ahh - relax!

Honestly, it's taken us some sweet time to sort out our email newsletters!

We've added a new sign up feature on our website to tell us who to send our newsletters to!

Stay up to date with Fantom Factory news and events:

Working with a familiar SkySpark client, we were happy to update their ALC connector to be compatible with the latest SkySpark 3.1.8 release.

Our company was proud to sponsor a local education project - the Cardiff Space Academy

Working with Cardiff university, Cardiff High School, and Cardiff Commitment, we provided a space education eLearning course for the Space Academy students. On the final day we met the children in person to go over the course and to hand out certificates and free SWAG!

All part of our STEM Futures eLearning initiative.

We recently reviewed feedback from contributing students and made improvements to our SkySpark Analyst course.

Thank you everyone!

SkySpark Analyst course details

Fantom Factory received a silver award as "Best Veteran Owned Business" for 2023 at the prestigious Welsh Veterans Awards.

This recognises the growth of our company and services as a Welsh business.

(At least since we won the bronze last year!).

It was our pleasure to work with Active Facility Monitoring on a new API extension they requested.

This extension is designed for whitelisted Axon functions to be called via JSON over a standard REST API.

"I am very happy with this API Pod design and it is even more rigid than I first hoped for. Eval is dead. Long live afmApiWhitelist! Thank you so much."

• Ian Habermann, AFM

Working with a new client we were very pleased to deliver a new custom Fantom View for a mini responsive dashboard in SkySpark.

With our Fantom expertise, we are able to do more inside SkySpark screens than most people may be aware of!

Working with Synergy Consulting Engineers we were very proud to release version 2 of their SONICx Dashboard. (Synergy's Ongoing Intelligent Commissioning)

SONICx is a powerful and rich facility performance dashboard for operational data.

Our client was very happy with the results!

On the back of the new SkySpark v3.1.7. release we were very happy to update and test 12 custom extensions we provide for a valued client.

Fixed a typographical error in our SkySpark Viewbuilder course.

Thanks to Jayson Andres for highlighting this.

SkySpark Viewbuilder course details

Space Education for the Next-Generation

We've taken our amazing new space education - "Destination Mars!" and designed a shorter version for the younger audience. All completely FREE!

We hope that Blast Off! will inspire schoolchildren around the UK to start learning about the growing space industry and the global efforts towards actually colonising Mars.

(Yes it's really happening!)

Blast Off! now and take a look

We've launched STEM Futures as a STEM and space education initiative for the school age audience. Our next-generation platform is just perfect for, well, the "next-generation"!

In fact, STEM Futures is supporting the UK Space Tour and the Space Academy Cardiff programme.

All thanks to our specially designed space education courses: "Blast Off!" and "Destination Mars!".

Visit STEM Futures UK

Our eLearning story universe, the Alpha Colony is getting an upgrade!

It's all part of our efforts to bring next-generation eLearning to a wider audience.

Watch this space!

Plastic is a library for dynamically generating and compiling Fantom code.

Here is what we did in this update:

• Removed dependency on BeanUtils
• Added toStr() methods to model classes

Have a look! Visit the Fantom Eggbox Pod Repository

EasyConn provides a framework for creating your own SkySpark Connectors from Axon functions.

• Thanks to Healthy Workers for helping us to develop this.

Visit EasyConn on StackHub

A library for rendering Embedded Fantom (efan) templates.

This update includes two key features:

• The dependency on afConcurrent has been removed - which (neatly) accommodates AFX Fass macros!
• Added a system hook that lets Efan Errs be converted to custom Errs (added for AFX).

Have a look! Visit the Fantom Eggbox Pod Repository

HTTP Client now handles the case where multiple Set-Cookie headers are returned in a single HTTP response.

• Thanks to Altura Associates for bringing this to our attention.

Visit HTTP Client on StackHub

Working for a new client we were very pleased to deliver a (proof of concept) for a new dashboard in the SkySpark application.

This design was submitted to us for a data centre to monitor power use.

Our client was very happy and is keen to progress this further!

Added new Filter box to the Folio View, to help find wanted records.

• Thank you to Florin Hebean of BAM Energy Systems for suggesting the idea.

Added multiLineCipher and encryptComp options to the Axon Encrytor dialogue.

We've made huge efforts to ensure all of our website policies are up to date and accurate. We're sure noone particularly enjoys reading them, but they can be incredibly important all the same.

In the footer of our website you can find links to our new policies for:

• Terms and conditions
• Privacy policy
• Cookie policy

EasyConn is our idea for a kind of universal connector template - for SkySpark.

It provides the required "Fantom wrapper" for your bespoke connector and enables you to fill out the Axon bits for the authentication you need.

The result is a streamlined, simplier, yet enhanced platform, designed for next-level enterpise applications.

EasyConn is now in beta testing, so watch this space for more news coming soon!

We consider ourselves community champions for Project Haystack.

But WHY? - we hear you ask!

Well, our new video explains all! Watch it now on our YouTube channel:

Fantom Factory is now certified in the Cyber Essentials scheme - as recognised by the UK Government as a business standard for Cyber awareness.

Read more in this news article link

Fantom Factory is the proud winner of the 2023 award for:

Technology Training Consultants of the Year!

Hooray! We are thrilled our team has been recognised for another year of hard work!

Read all the details in our news article here:

We have completed the first round of development on our new eXtreme Application Platform, AFX!

   ___ ____ __ ___
  / _ | ___|  V  /  CyberStar eLearning Platform
 / _  | __/ )   (   by Fantom Factory
/_/ |_|_|  /__^__\  v2.0.0

AFX takes concepts from our existing open source libraries, optimises them, and re-imagines them as a unified whole.

AFX is set to power our upcoming CyberStar eLearning Platform - which we hope to release very soon.

The following table lists the core AFX components, and the libraries they have been built from:

The result is a streamlined, simpler, yet enhanced platform, designed for next-level enterprise applications. (Watch this space!)

We've released a fun new video for anyone new to SkySpark to find out how to "get started"!

Learn about the overall concepts of using SkySpark and follow our very own engineer, Chuck, as he sets out to start using it for the very first time.

We hope this will help businesses to understand more about required skills and training this technology stack needs.

We're proud to be finalist in the UK Building Controls Industry Association 2023 awards for our Contribution to Training.

The judges will consider our success with Haystack Essentials alongside applications from other industry heavyweight organisations and we'll find out on 4th May.

Cross your fingers for us!

During a collaborative project, a client tasked us with solving a SkySpark issue with a control loop instability. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how we tackled it:

• We changed a rule to run only when specific fans are running
• We ruled out false positives by making sure a damper position cannot return a value less than an associated set minimum.
• Added checks for the status of a fan to determine whether or not to create a Spark.
• Fixed existing unfinished tests and added new tests for minVal damper point and fan running checks.
• Deployed new rules and fixed some incorrect targeting.

Plenty of testing confirmed we'd resolved the issue and we succeeded in making our client very happy!

Submitted Pull-Requests to the official Fantom-Lang GitHub repo to stub out the native Java Peer classes in the core "dom" pod.

This allows AFX to supply its own server / Java version of the "dom" pod to enable full, round-trip client-server-client style unit testing for Fantom web applications.

An industry first! https://github.com/fantom-lang/fantom/pull/16

A library for querying XML documents by means of CSS 2.1 selectors.

Sizzle Documents may now be updated to reflect changes in the underlying XML / DOM document, and query results may also be filtered to constrain elements to a given parent.

Try it for yourself! Visit the Fantom Eggbox Pod Repository

The story is now complete!

You may have noticed our storytelling was a little, well, "lacking" in our new course.

Thankfully, our in-house illustrator Morgan has now saved the day and we have released the final touches to our dramatic Destination Mars comic-style story!

Try it out (again) - it's completely free after all!

How to access Destination Mars!