Tuesday, October 4, 2016

My ideas for thesis papers for under grads

I have lots of ideas regarding students' projects, some I really thought about while others just came pass my mind. Here are some of them:

1. Water bill counter-checker
This involves a device and a software. The idea is to check the actual consumption of a household versus the billed consumption. Maybe a device could be installed in all of the water outlets in the house, including the toilet flush, to check how much water are discharged and if it reflects properly on the billing. The goal is not to bill the consumer since water districts add other fees in the bill. The goal is to just check if the amount of water recorded in the billing is close to the actual amount discharged. This can help check if there are tapped connections or leaks that the household is unaware of.

2. Street lights auto switch
I've seen some street lights that are still on even thought it's already noon time. What a waste of electricity! So I thought, why not have an automatic switch that turns them on at 5:30pm and turns them off at 5:30am? Of course a manual override should still be possible.

To be continued...

Monday, October 3, 2016

How to access MySQL database of your website using SQL Yog

To be able to do this you should have the following:
- permission to set-up and configure your hosting database
- username and password to access the database

1. Login to your web hosting control panel and select the option for Remote MySQL.
*You need this because we want to access the database remotely, using SQL Yog.
If you're using SiteGround's hosting, the icon for Remote MySQL looks like this:



2. Add an access host.
You can get your public IP Address and put it as access host. This means that your IP address will be recognized by the database so that you can access it. If you're not sure of your IP address, you can put the percentage (%) which means "wild card". This will allow ANY IP ADDRESS to access your database. This will work but is DANGEROUS so better set your IP instead.


3. Set-up SQL Yog to access your website's server.
Just input the credentials and you're good to go. Be careful with your live data! Make sure to BACK-UP first before touching anything. And oh, secure your backup in a proper location too!

The values are as follows:
Saved Connections - this is the name of your connection just for you to easily recognize it. Any name will do.
MySQL Host Address - this is the name of your website (ex. www.example.com) where your database is located. Note that if the database is in a different server you may put a different name here. You can also put the IP Address instead.
Username - your database username. The one that you used to access your database.
Password - your database password.

Hope this helps.