alex

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

Hacking the UNICEF HDMIPi

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 3 Responses »

Jul 022014

You may remember seeing the special UNICEF edition HDMIPi, which I blogged about in a guest post on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog a few weeks ago. This was a temporary solution to get them up and running quickly before the mainstream HDMIPi gets going. It’s a 10″ screen, a bit more expensive than the 9″ regular HDMIPi. It’s currently using a standard driver board. I visited Dave at Cyntech on Monday to discuss various HDMIPi related things. I walked away with one of the UNICEF edition demo HDMIPis, which I decided to take and […more…]

Raspberry Pi Compute Module pt 2

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 4 Responses »

Jun 262014

I managed to get some GPIO action on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. Gordon Henderson tweeted, jokily, about a lack of LEDs in my first video, so I got out some LED boards I made last year, plugged them in and modified a python script to incorporate 32 ports :). The video below shows the results, and also gives you a close-up of the ports, the compute module itself and removal and insertion.

Raspberry Pi Compute Module

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 30 Responses »

Jun 242014

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module was launched yesterday and I felt I owed it to you, dear readers, to get one. ;) OK. So, maybe it’s not fair to blame you guys for it. I’d have bought one anyway, but you helped me to not dither over the decision. I also have ideas for something I might do with it. But that’s top secret, so don’t tell anyone! So What is the Compute Module? It’s a small module in the same SODIMM form factor as a laptop memory module. You can see it in the […more…]

Temperature Control with RasPiO duino – or, How to protect your pipes

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 30 Responses »

Jun 202014

Temperature Control with RasPiO duino - or, How to protect your pipes

I’ve recently been working on a new board called the RasPiO® duino. You might guess from the name that it’s a bit Arduino-like, and it is. I’m currently on iteration 5 and there’s going to be at least one more before production. All iterations have worked, but I keep getting ideas and suggestions from my beta testers (and myself) that I want to include. But the board is not really what today’s post is about. I want a way of preventing the water inlet pipe freezing in the basement of our house in Poland. In […more…]

RasPi.TV Hits 2 Million Page Views and HDMIPi driver board hardware freeze

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 5 Responses »

Jun 132014

RasPi.TV Hits 2 Million Page Views and HDMIPi driver board hardware freeze

I’m publishing this post just after we hit 2 million page views, which will be around 1600 on Friday 13th June 2014 (lucky for some). It’s interesting this week that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced sale of 3 million Pis. We can’t quite match that, but let’s have some fun with stats anyway… 3 Million Pis sold – announced this week 2 Million page views on RasPi.TV – reached today 1 Million minutes of video watched on the RasPi.TV YouTube channel – in the next couple of weeks 1 Million visitors to RasPi.TV blog […more…]

Bitscope Micro Logic Analyser Demystifies SPI on the Pi

Electronics, Input and Output, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 11 Responses »

May 262014

Bitscope Micro Logic Analyser Demystifies SPI on the Pi

SPI – Serial Peripheral Interface Demystified I was in need of an interesting signal to check out the logic analyser functionality of the BitScope micro. So, another of my current RasPiO® Beta boards was used as a convenient way to connect an mcp3008 analog to digital converter (ADC) to the Pi and the scope. I don’t claim to be an expert on SPI, but having spent the best part of a day playing with it, the mcp3008 data sheet and the BitScope Micro, I understand it a lot better now. Four pins are used… CEO […more…]

Bitscope Micro. USB Scope that works on Raspberry Pi.

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 8 Responses »

May 192014

Bitscope Micro. USB Scope that works on Raspberry Pi.

When I first saw the Bitscope Micro on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog, it ‘ticked all my boxes’. A couple of weeks later, when Pimoroni tweeted about having the first batch in stock, I ordered one immediately. In my circumstances, it would have been rude not to. Why? The reasons are too numerous to list them all, but here are the first few that spring to mind… I need a small, portable, USB scope since I spend about 20% of my time abroad and take my work with me. It’s also a logic analyser – […more…]

Best Wire Strippers for Electronics?

Electronics, Review 20 Responses »

May 042014

I needed some new wire strippers as I got fed up damaging my thumb by using a knife. Not knowing which were best, I decided to buy four different types and try them out. The findings are quite interesting. One wasn’t any good, one was the best budget pair, another was the most flexible, and another was the best for electronics work. Have a look at the video to see the results.

Banana Pi Review – First Impressions

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 119 Responses »

Apr 282014

While I was away in Poland for Easter I had an email from someone called Jet (jetxu@lemaker.org – he asked me to share that) about a board called Banana Pi. I’d heard of it already. I also knew that other people in the Raspberry Pi community had been approached (we talk to each other ;p). They wanted me to join their forums and submit a request for a sample. I didn’t want to play that game so I said I was happy to have a look at it if they sent me one, but otherwise […more…]

How does the RasPiO Breakout Pro protect your GPIO ports?

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 2 Responses »

Apr 112014

How does the RasPiO Breakout Pro protect your GPIO ports?

You may remember I launched three RasPiO® boards a couple of weeks ago. One of them, the RasPiO® Breakout Pro, offers protection for the GPIO ports on the Raspberry Pi. I thought it might be interesting to explain how the port protection works, so I’ve made a little video about it… Current Limiting Resistor One of the ways you can potentially damage (or kill) your GPIO ports is to try and draw too much current from them. You’re not supposed to draw more than 16mA from any one port (and 60mA from ALL the GPIO […more…]

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