2016 – Page 3 – RasPi.TV

Central Heating Furnace Monitoring and Control with RasPiO Duino and Raspberry Pi

Electronics, interfacing, Raspberry Pi Hardware, RasPiO Duino 23 Responses »

Apr 152016

We went to Poland for the Easter holiday. When we got there the house was really cold (6°C), having been vacant for several months. We’ve got a fairly substantial solid-fuel furnace in the basement and a large room full of coal to burn. We have a gas boiler too, but we want to get rid of the coal to repurpose the space it occupies. Burning it is the most logical solution, but it involves some work. But I’ve tried to make it a bit more fun. The furnace is an interesting beast. It’s taken me […more…]

Is KickStarter Dead Yet? Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding

Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 3 Responses »

Mar 102016

Is KickStarter Dead Yet? Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding

Last summer I wrote a blog post that, at the time, I didn’t publish. I showed it to Mike @recantha Horne and we both agreed its natural tone would come across better as a talk, not a blog post. Last weekend I had a chance to deliver this talk at the Raspberry Pi Birthday Weekend in Cambridge. I managed to get an audio recording (thanks to @AndyBateyPi) to which I have synchronised my slides in the video below (26 minutes including questions). Enjoy… Also Available As Text If you prefer the (slightly fuller) original written […more…]

Raspberry Pi Family Photo updated to include Pi3B 29 Feb 2016

Product Launch, raspberry pi, raspberry pihardware 6 Responses »

Mar 042016

Raspberry Pi Family Photo updated to include Pi3B 29 Feb 2016

It’s become a bit of a new model launch tradition now that I release a new “Pi family photo” with all the main revisions of Raspberry Pi in it. I’ve done things a little differently from last time in order to get a better resolution result. As usual I make this 1500px version available to the world under a CC-BY-SA-4 licence with the only condition being that the RasPi.TV credit stays intact. Aside from that, it may be used as you wish. I have ‘gone to town’ on this one slightly. Where previously I’d always […more…]

How Much Power Does Raspberry Pi3B Use? How Fast Is It Compared To Pi2B?

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 15 Responses »

Mar 032016

How Much Power Does Raspberry Pi3B Use? How Fast Is It Compared To Pi2B?

The Raspberry Pi 3, launched this week, is more powerful than the Pi2. It also requires a bit more electrical power if you’re going to be hammering those four A53 CPU cores. How much more? The recommended PSU is 5.1V, 2.5A, which is 0.5A higher than for previous Pis. That doesn’t mean the Pi itself needs that much, but with four USB ports onboard, the PSU has to cater for power-hungry USB devices as well. I usually publish some power measurements each time a new Pi is released. But this time I learnt something new […more…]

Raspberry Pi 3 model B launches today – 64-bit quad A53 1.2 GHz BCM2837

Product Launch, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 8 Responses »

Feb 292016

Raspberry Pi 3 model B launch is today’s big news. The new Pi sports a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU with VideoCore IV GPU packaged into the new BCM2837 chip. This 1.2GHz CPU offers ~50% speed improvement over the Pi 2’s BCM2836. Video Overview Pretty much all the information and impressions I have of the Raspberry Pi 3 model B are in this short video… …but if you prefer to read, it’s all here too… Now With Built-in WiFi & Bluetooth The other major news is that the Raspberry Pi 3B now has built-in […more…]

Using MCP3008 to measure temperature with GPIO Zero and RasPiO Pro Hat

Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, python programming 18 Responses »

Feb 032016

Using MCP3008 to measure temperature with GPIO Zero and RasPiO Pro Hat

In the previous article I showed you the GPIO Zero Experimenter’s Kit I put together to go with the RasPiO® Pro Hat. Today I’m going to give a quick overview of how to use the MCP3008 analogue to digital converter to read the TMP-36 temperature sensor. This gives us a temperature reading (in °C) that we can use to make “decisions” in our Python program. In our case, we’re going to switch on a red LED when the temperature is 24 °C or greater. But there are all sorts of other things you could do, […more…]

GPIO Zero Experimenter’s Kit and RasPiO Pro Hat

Electronics, Input and Output, Raspberry Pi Hardware 3 Responses »

Jan 282016

GPIO Zero Experimenter's Kit and RasPiO Pro Hat

On Tuesday I had a funny thing happen. I was testing an analogue to digital converter (ADC) chip – the MCP3008 – to see how well it worked on the RasPiO® Pro Hat. I had it all wired up, and powered up the Pi, typed a few lines of GPIO Zero code, and… It worked, but not quite how I thought it should. Instead of giving a value of 1.0 for 3V3 and 0 for 0V it was giving 0.67 for 3V3. I left it running and went for lunch. During lunch the ‘lights went […more…]

RasPiO Pro Hat – Putting Pi Ports in Perfect Positions for Productive Play

Electronics, Product Launch, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware 18 Responses »

Jan 152016

RasPiO Pro Hat - Putting Pi Ports in Perfect Positions for Productive Play

Today I launched the RasPiO Pro Hat on Kickstarter. It’s a Raspberry Pi Hat for GPIO tinkering (it goes perfectly with GPIO Zero). It arranges the GPIO ports in numerical order around a mini-breadboard, which, to my knowledge, has not been done before. It also replaces the RasPiO Breakout Pro (now end of life) because it protects all the ports from over-current and over/under-voltage as well. It should prove a very useful board for GPIO tinkering and education. Have a look at the video and pop on over to the RasPiO Pro Hat campaign page […more…]

Always Test Everything – Twitter App Update

Electronics, python programming, raspberry pi 7 Responses »

Jan 072016

Always Test Everything - Twitter App Update

I’m a firm believer that you should always test things in advance. It helps avoid unexpected last-minute panics when things don’t work as you expected them to. On Friday I’m going to pick a winner from my twitter followers using the twitter app script I wrote back in October 2013. My Joey from @gooligumelec just arrived. :) I have a spare I will give to a randomly selected follower on Friday. pic.twitter.com/yGtwATYXng — RasPi.TV (@RasPiTV) January 5, 2016 It Still Works, But… Since I had no idea where the SD card with that old Raspbian […more…]

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