Alex Eames of RasPi.TV fame has got a new product he is launching via KickStarter. He sent me one to try out. The product is a 15cm (6 inch) ruler with a RPi.GPIO programming reference and GPIO header guide printed onto it. If you are going to have a ruler on your desk or in your laptop bag it might as well be one of these. Unless you are a 12 inch sort of person.
Author: Matt
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The IMNEED GC-802 power bank from Lumsing is a small USB power bank with a capacity of 3200mAh. As with my other power banks I decided to see how long it could run a Raspberry Pi for.
There are plenty of examples out there of temperature logging systems but I wanted to create my own and keep it nice and simple. The other thing I wanted to try out was logging the data to the internet using a third party service. I’ve done it before using my own website based databases but that is a little bit more involved.
Despite the rain we made our way to AtBristol for another Digimakers event. On the way through Millenium Square we spotted Andy from CBeebies’ “Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures” but we didn’t have time to say hello and he was busy singing a song to a live audience and TV crew.
Recently I set up a Raspberry Model A+ with a Python script to log temperature to the internet. I used an Edimax EW-7811 WiFi dongle to connect to it using SSH. This worked fine but occassionally I would lose the connection for no apparent reason.
Witty Pi is a new, reasonably priced ($16) add-on board for the Raspberry which provides a real time clock and power management features. This makes it ideal as a the base for a wide variety of projects. Its most promising feature is the ability to power up and power down the Pi using an integrated switch. Shawn from UUGear very kindly sent me a Witty Pi board to try out. It’s a well made and good looking product with a HAT footprint. This allows it to securely sit on a Raspberry Pi Model A+ and B+ using the four mounting…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncvFAm4kYCo “Point Break” was a popular film released in 1991 starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. These days Hollywood prefers recycling to new ideas so 24 years later they are remaking it. The trailer shows a bomb with two detonators made with Raspberry Pis at the 1 minute 22 second mark. The screens appear to be RPi Displays from Watterott Electronics encased in a TEK-BERRY clear enclosure. The prop uses the audio jack to connect the Raspberry Pi to block of C-4 explosive. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that this would be unlikely to workout in reality. The real question is…
While your Pi is connected to a network it will be able to set it’s clock correctly using NTP. Without a network connection the system time and date will almost certainly be wrong. For some projects this is a problem especially if you are logging timestamps or performing other time sensitive operations.
In previous posts I’ve covered using HD44780 16×2 and 20×4 LCD screens with the Raspberry Pi using Python. These are relatively easy to use but require a number of connections to be made to the Pi’s GPIO header. This setup can be simplified with the use of an I2C enabled LCD screen.
The EE mobile phone network in the UK is offering its customers a free USB rechargeable battery pack. As I’ve tested plenty of power banks in previous posts I’d thought I would see how long it could run a Raspberry Pi for.
The SlushEngine Stepper Motor Controller is an add-on board for the Raspberry Pi which allows you to control a number of stepper motors. It has just launched on KickStarter and is already heading towards it’s modest $7,500 target.
The BMP180 device is a digital barometric pressure sensor. This is available on a small module which provides access to the sensor via the I2C interface. This allows us to easily connect it to the Raspberry Pi with a minimum of wiring.
The BH1750 device is a digital light sensor which uses the I2C interface. This allows it to be connected to the Raspberry Pi with only four wires. The module allows quick and cheap ambient light level measurement and the light level can be read from it as a digital number due to the built in 16-bit analogue-to-digital converter. The device itself is commonly used in mobile phones, LCD TVs and digital cameras.
Piper is a new Raspberry Pi based toolkit aimed at helping young people learn about technology by using Minecraft as a platform to engage kids in problem solving activities. The product has launched on Kickstarter and is proving extremely popular! There are a number of pledge levels including one which doesn’t include a Pi for $99 but you’ll need to be quick!
SpeedTest.net is an excellent website that lets you measure internet speed from your Raspberry Pi. It’s useful for checking the performance either for fault finding purposes or to see if you are getting the service promised by your ISP. Matt Martz has created a Python project called speedtest-cli which allows you to do a basic upload/download measurement using SpeedNet’s infrastructure. It works fine on the Pi and is really easy to try out on the command line.
The Ryanteck Debug Clip is an add-on for the Raspberry Pi that provides a serial interface to another computer via USB. The device pushes onto the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO Header leaving the pins free for other devices and add-on boards. The product was successfully launched on Kickstarter and easily met its target with days to spare. Ryan sent me a prototype to try out. It’s not quite the same as the final design but close enough.
If you attempt to re-use an SD card you might find the usable capacity is less than you were expecting. This can be due to partitions previously configured and some “format” utilities can’t remove them. Raspberry Pi SD cards will often only appear to have a capacity of 56MB in windows but that is because it can’t see the much larger Linux partition.
Although much of the Pi world was talking about the Birthday Party over in Cambridge some of us helped keep the fires of creativity burning in far corners of the UK. In my case Bristol. Which isn’t really a corner but you get the idea. The Digimaker volunteers, At-Bristol, the British Institute for Computing (BCS) and the University of Bristol laid on another great event with plenty of workshops aimed at young children. They got booked up very quickly but I managed to grab a place for my son on the “Beginner & Intermediate (9+) – PiStops: Traffic Light Control with Scratch”…
PiJuice is a new product being launched on KickStarter on 28th February 2015. It provides a wireless, off-grid power solution to for the Raspberry Pi. It can be used as the basis of a solar powered project or as an un-interruptable power supply. The onboard real-time clock (RTC) allows for intelligent deep sleep and automated wake-up functionality.
The Raspberry Pi is three years old this weekend and has sold over 5 million units making it the most popular British computer ever made. Sales figures are great but what matters is the user base, community and support. Thankfully that has continued to grow steam-rollering many would-be “Pi killers”. The volume of material available for the Pi is staggering and it’s growing every day.
Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to receive one of the first Pipsta printers. The thermal printer is described by its makers as “a smart little printer that’s full of big ideas” and it gives your Pi the ability to print onto rolls of thermal paper.
The Pi has always supported 1-wire, I2C and SPI interfaces via the GPIO header. These allow various devices to be connected to the Pi and controlled via software. In the recent update to Raspbian some major changes were introduced which changed the way these interfaces are enabled. The exact details of the change are discussed in the “I2C, SPI, I2S, LIRC, PPS, stopped working? Read this.” forum post over at the official site.