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Earlier this year a bunch of MATLAB users got together to talk about their hobbies in a lightning talk format.
  • Using "UIHTML" to create app components and Lightning
  • Creating generative art with MATLAB
  • Making MATLAB run on the Steam Deck (it was a wager)
Do you use MATLAB for hobbies?
https://www.mathworks.com/videos/series/awesome-matlab-projects-lightning-talks-april-5-2023.html
Matt J
Matt J
Last activity on 15 Oct 2023

Do Reinvent the Wheel

Are there Matlab features which intend to satisfy your needs but fail in certain critical areas, forcing you to abandon them completely in favor of your own version or a 3rd party alternative? Perhaps these features are starting to improve with new Matlab releases, but not quickly enough? Share your own frustrations in the comments below.
Here are two of mine:
1. volumeViewier
volumeViewer is 6 years old now. It is fine when you only need to view one 3D image at a time, but I never do. In my work, I am putting several images side-by-side for visual comparison. For such work, you need to be able to programmatically change axis limits and grayscale and use linkprop to reflect these changes across all the images. With 2D image comparison, all that is possible, but volumeViewer supports none of those things. So, I resort to my own 3D viewer
2.Tomographic projection commands RADON and FANBEAM
These commands are provided in the Image Processing Toolbox seemingly for no other reason than to support homework exercises for people taking introductory tomographic imaging courses. They fail in a number of ways for people who need to do serious tomographic imaging work, producing artifacts or nonlinear effects which shouldn't be there. See for example Why isn't FANBEAM linear? or Radon Transform works unexpectedly. Moreover, the toolbox still provides tomographic projectors only for 2D imaging not 3D, even though 64-bit RAM has made volumetric imaging commonplace in Matlab for at least 10 years. Luckily, there are now freely available 3rd party alternatives like TIGRE.
goc3
goc3
Last activity on 6 Nov 2023

Don't Reinvent the Wheel

Have you ever learned that something you were doing manually in MATLAB was already possible using a built-in feature? Have you ever written a function only to later realize (or be told) that a built-in function already did what you needed?
Two such moments come to mind for me.
1. Did you realize that you can set conditional breakpoints? Neither did I, until someone showed me that feature. To do that, open or create a file in the editor, right click on a line number for any line that contains code, and select Set Conditional Breakpoint... This will bring up a dialog wherein you can type any logical condition for which execution should be paused. Before I learned about this, I would manually insert if-statements during debugging. Then, after fixing each bug, I would have to delete those statements. This built-in feature is so much better.
2. Have you ever needed to plot horizontal or vertical lines in a plot? For the longest time, I would manually code such lines. Then, I learned about xline() and yline(). Not only is less code required, these lines automatically span the entire axes while zooming, panning, or adjusting axis limits!
Share your own Aha! moments below. This will help everyone learn about MATLAB functionality that may not be obvious or front and center.
(Note: While File Exchange contains many great contributions, the intent of this thread is to focus on built-in MATLAB functionality.)
Moja
Moja
Last activity on 13 Oct 2023

caret on macbook pro

The carot symbol on my keyboard (ˆ shift+6) doesn't work on matlab. Matlab doesn't recognize it so I can't write any equation with power symbol. I tried every possible solution on the web and it doesn't work. even in the character viewer I don't have any result when I search ''caret".
Exciting news for students! 🚀Simulink Student Challenge 2023 is live! Unleash your engineering skills and compete for exciting rewards. Submission deadline is December 12th, 2023!
https://www.mathworks.com/academia/student-challenge/simulink-student-challenge-2023.html
In the past year, we've witnessed an exponential growth of ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools. AI has quickly become a transformative force across industries, from tech giants to small startups, and even community sites like ours. For instance, Stack Overflow announced its plan to leverage AI tools to draft a question or tag content; Quora built a ChatGPT bot to answer questions; and GitHub is piloting the AI tool for personalized content.
This trend in the community landscape makes me wonder what MATLAB Central community, especially in MATLAB Answers, can do to integrate AI and enhance the community.
Share with us your ideas in the comment session. Ideally one comment per idea, so that others can vote on a secific idea or have deeper discussions about it.
Adam and Heather will be discussing new features in R2023b and answering your questions in a few hours - visit the link below to check out the preview and sign up for notification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mImQs4PfioM
We launched the Discussions area with 6 channels, based on the existing types of content we see today in the MATLAB Central community.
I'm curious which channels you are most interested in participating, or which channels are missing.
Tell us your thoughts here!
Adam Danz just launched a new blog about MATLAB Graphics and App Building.
https://blogs.mathworks.com/graphics-and-apps/2023/10/10/welcome/
As you know, He has been a prolific contributor to MATLAB Answers and one of his answers recently won the Editor's Choice Award.
If there are any topics or questions you are interested in, please share with Adam, and I am sure he will get those into his blog.
Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity on 13 Oct 2023

Approximating π with durations

Over the weekend I came across a pi approximation using durations of years and weeks (image below, Wolfram, eq. 89), accurate to 6 digits using the average Gregorian year (365.2425 days).
Here it is in MATLAB. I divided by 1 week at the end rather than multiplying by its reciprocal because you can’t divide a numeric by a duration in MATLAB (1/week).
weeks = @(n)n*days(7);
piApprox = ((years(13)-weeks(6))/years(13) + weeks(3)) / weeks(1)
% piApprox = 3.141593493469302
Here’s a breakdown
  • The first argument becomes 12.885 yrs / 13 yrs or 0.99115
  • Add three weeks: 0.99115 + 3 weeks = 21.991 days
  • The reduced fraction becomes 21.991 days / 7 days
Now it looks a lot closer to the more familiar approximation for pi 22/7 but with greater precision!
Adam Danz
Adam Danz
Last activity on 6 Mar 2024

To hold or not to hold

I'm curious how the community uses the hold command when creating charts and graphics in MATLAB. In short, hold on sets up the axes to add new objects to the axes while hold off sets up the axes to reset when new objects are added.
When you use hold on do you always follow up with hold off? What's your reasoning on this decision?
Can't wait to discuss this here! I'd love to hear from newbies and experts alike!
Ben Pasquariello
Ben Pasquariello
Last activity on 19 Jan 2024

MATLAB GitHub for Students!

Calling all students! New to MATLAB or need helpful resources? Check out our MATLAB GitHub for Students repository! Find MATLAB examples, videos, cheat sheets, and more!
Visit the repository here: MATLAB GitHub for Students
The way we've solved ODEs in MATLAB has been relatively unchanged at the user-level for decades. Indeed, I consider ode45 to be as iconic as backslash! There have been a few new solvers in recent years -- ode78 and ode89 for example -- and various things have gotten much faster but if you learned how to solve ODEs in MATLAB in 1997 then your knowledge is still applicable today.
In R2023b, there's a completely new framework for solving ODEs and I love it! You might argue that I'm contractually obliged to love it since I'm a MathWorker but I can assure you this is the real thing!
I wrote it up in a tutorial style on The MATLAB Blog https://blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2023/10/03/the-new-solution-framework-for-ordinary-differential-equations-odes-in-matlab-r2023b/
The new interface makes a lot of things a much easier to do. Its also setting us up for a future where we'll be able to do some very cool algorithmic stuff behind the scenes.
Let me know what you think of the new functionality and what you think MathWorks should be doing next in the area of ODEs.
4 months ago, the new API was published to access content on the MATLAB Central community. I shared my MATLAB code to access the API at that time, but the team just released the official SDK.
MATLAB toolbox on File Exchange: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/135567-matlab-central-interface-for-matlab
Node.js package on NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/matlabcentral
Public API Doc: https://api.mathworks.com/
Houman and Rameez will talk about how you can model wireless networks (5G, WLAN, Bluetooth, 802.11ax WLAN mesh, etc.) in MATLAB in the upcoming livestream. They will start with the basics such as nodes, links, topology and metrics. Then they will introduce a new free add-on library that lets you model such networks, and show you how to use it.
Bookmark this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EFpUd5aTFw
Congratulations, @Adam Danz for winning the Editor's Pick badge awarded for MATLAB Answers, in recognition of your awesome solution in overlapping images in grid layout.
Thank you for going to great lengths to help a user in this thread by suggesting alternative approach to representing stack of playing cards in MATLAB, highlighting very interesting features like hggroup.
This badge recognizes awesome answers people contribute and yours was picked for providing a very detailed and helpful answer.
Thank you so much for setting a high standard for MATLAB Answers and for your ongoing contribution to the community.
MATLAB Central Team
Congratuations, @Voss, for htting this important miletone!
You had a meteoric rise to in our community since you started answering questions in June 2020.
You provided 3218 answers and 926 votes. You are ranked #23 in the community. Thank you for your contribution to the community and please keep up the good track record!
MATLAB Central Team
MATLAB Onramp is a free online tutorial and it has been very popular with new MATLAB users to learn how to use it, and MathWorks have been adding more and more modules. The lastest one just dropped https://matlabacademy.mathworks.com/details/power-systems-simulation-onramp/orps
It shows you the basics of power system simulation by modeling a simple microgrid. You will learn how to simulate and measure three-phase circuits, and how to evaluate algorithms like droop control and maximum power point tracking.
Here's a screenshot from 22 years ago. Thanks for building one of the best engineering and science communities together.