alex

Alex Eames is the founder, owner and main contributor to RasPi.TV more information about him can be found in his Google+ profile.

New Raspberry Pi Speaker from ThePiHut

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 15 Responses »

Aug 222014

I got a new speaker in the post yesterday morning. It’s been redesigned specifically for the Raspberry Pi by ThePiHut. I charged it for a few hours (it has an internal lipo battery, which powers it for 7 hours of use) and then plugged it into the 3.5mm stereo outlet of an HDMIPi screen. This takes the sound from the HDMI output of the Pi (so it’s digital and high quality, much better than the Pi’s analog output). I tested it with Bug Buck Bunny, which has superb graphics and sound. It also makes an […more…]

PiHut WiFi dongle vs Edimax – Power Usage

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 29 Responses »

Aug 182014

PiHut WiFi dongle vs Edimax - Power Usage

At the May CamJam, Jamie from The Pi Hut handed me a couple of his Raspberry Pi Wifi dongles for testing. I did some measurements a week or two later on a Raspberry Pi model B and sent them to Jamie. But I thought it would be fun to repeat this now with the new B+ and show all the results together. I’m doing a comparison test against the Edimax EW-7811Un which is my current ‘Go To wifi dongle’. Differences & Similarities? The Edimax is very slightly smaller. Both have blue LED activity indicators. The […more…]

New Port ID Board for the Raspberry Pi B+ – RasPiO Portsplus 2

Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 7 Responses »

Aug 132014

New Port ID Board for the Raspberry Pi B+ - RasPiO Portsplus 2

Today I’m launching the RasPiO Portsplus 2. It’s a simple port ID board for the Raspberry Pi model B+. It’s available over at https://rasp.io/portsplus2 but full information below… RasPiO® Portsplus 2 The RasPiO® Portsplus 2 board is designed for the new Raspberry Pi B+. It labels the ports clearly for you so that you don’t need to count pins. This will help you avoid wiring errors and damage… You can slip it over the B+ GPIO header if you want, or hold it next to the header (many people tell me they do this – and this […more…]

RPi.GPIO Quick Reference updated for Raspberry Pi B+, A+ and Pi2B

python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 26 Responses »

Jul 262014

RPi.GPIO Quick Reference updated for Raspberry Pi B+, A+ and Pi2B

Having brought my RPi.GPIO documentation (almost) up-to-date with the previous blog post, I realised it was time to update my RPi.GPIO Quick Reference ‘cheat sheet’ as well. It’s quite a useful reference. Page 1 gives you the basic RPi.GPIO commands and usage. I like to take one of these the Jams in case someone needs help and I can’t remember the necessary commands. Page 2 has a Raspberry Pi GPIO pinout diagram for all versions (except compute module). This part has been updated to add the pinouts for the B+ (and A+). Page 3 gives […more…]

RPi.GPIO update and detecting BOTH rising and falling edges

python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 31 Responses »

Jul 252014

RPi.GPIO update and detecting BOTH rising and falling edges

A few days ago, Ben Croston updated the RPi.GPIO Python library so that the ‘board’ pin numbering system would work with all of the pins on the B+. It doesn’t really affect the way I work, as I always use BCM port numbers. They already worked on the B+ and the compute module. While he was at it, he made a couple of bug-fix tweaks. Looking at what was tweaked, I realised there are a couple of features of RPi.GPIO that I hadn’t yet documented. In this blog post I hope to update my RPi.GPIO […more…]

Just How Awesome is the Raspberry Pi Community? Fixing the ‘B+ won’t shutdown’ issue.

Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware 12 Responses »

Jul 202014

Just How Awesome is the Raspberry Pi Community? Fixing the 'B+ won't shutdown' issue.

On Friday I noticed a bit of ‘weirdness’ happening with my new model B+ Raspberry Pi. When I shut it down with sudo halt it would shut down fine. But when my hand, or the wireless keyboard I was using, got close to the GPIO pins, the Pi would start up again all by itself. I didn’t even need to touch it. Getting close was enough. Let’s Ask the Twitterverse I wasn’t sure if this was a quirk of the B+ or something to do with the dodgy wiring in our house in Poland (not […more…]

Raspberry Pi B+ testing all the GPIO ports

python programming, raspberry pi 18 Responses »

Jul 182014

Raspberry Pi B+ testing all the GPIO ports

I wanted to check out the GPIO ports on the Raspberry Pi B+. The new B+ has 26 ports available for GPIO work. The previous model B had 17 on the main (P1) header and four more on the now deleted P5 header. The top 26 pins are all the same, but the 14 new pins contain 9 GPIO ports. There’s a full explanation of the ports in the diagram here… How to Test All 26 ports? Why with LEDs of course. You can do it by connecting an LED and resistor (~330 Ohms is […more…]

How Much Less Power does the Raspberry Pi B+ use than the old model B?

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 91 Responses »

Jul 162014

How Much Less Power does the Raspberry Pi B+ use than the old model B?

The power circuit on the new Raspberry Pi B+ has been completely redesigned. It now has an efficient switching regulator. So I decided to take my trusty emeter, a tool I spent far too much money on a few years ago whilst in the grip of the aero-modelling ‘bug’, and make some measurements. I measured the current and voltage going into the Raspberry Pi. The emeter has a calibrated shunt (small blue rectange in the photo with ‘battery’ and ‘load’ at each end) that’s good for up to 20 Amps. This is a way of […more…]

Raspberry Pi Model B+ Launched Today

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 25 Responses »

Jul 142014

Today the Raspberry Pi model B+ is officially announced. It’s a well polished upgrade of the previous model B rev 2. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one a bit early, so had time to examine, photograph, video and briefly try out the new Pi model B+ with HDMIPi. Here’s what it looks like… What’s New? What’s Changed? The processor and board size are the same, but there are lots of changes. We now have… a metal micro SD card slot on the back. Having previously broken (and fixed) two of the […more…]

RasPi.Today interview with Alex Eames about HDMIPi, RasPi.TV and RasPiO

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 2 Responses »

Jul 062014

RasPi.Today interview with Alex Eames about HDMIPi, RasPi.TV and RasPiO

A couple of weeks ago, Russell Barnes interviewed me via a skype voice call. We had a half-hour discussion about HDMIPi, RasPi.TV and RasPiO as well as the Raspberry Pi in general and a bit of background stuff that I don’t tend to blog about. Russell is doing a great job with his RasPi.Today podcast and web site. He really did his homework in advance of the interview and in post production. There was definitely a need for a high quality Raspberry Pi based podcast, and I’m glad Russell has decided to fill the gap. […more…]

Older Entries Newer Entries