Electronics – Page 9

Texys 2.8 inch touchscreen with RasPiCamcorder – step 1

Electronics, interfacing, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Camera, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review, Uncategorized 4 Responses »

Jan 162014

Texys 2.8 inch touchscreen with RasPiCamcorder - step 1

At the end of August, I bought one of Texy’s 2.8 inch 320×240 touch-screens to have a play with. I thought it’d be great if I could somehow get it working with my RasPiCamcorder. Although, at the time, you had to jump through quite a few hoops to get the drivers working, and nobody had yet done the necessary work to enable camera output to be displayed on it. Then I got busy with KickStarter and HDMIPi and it lay untouched until December. I periodically looked in on the camera section of the Raspberry Pi […more…]

Cambridge Raspberry Jam

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 8 Responses »

Dec 132013

Last Saturday (7th December) there was a Raspberry Jam at Cambridge Institute of Astronomy. This one was a bit different from previous jams because we had some beginners’ Scratch workshops for children in the morning. I was tasked to lead the workshop. The support was tremendous. There was a small army of people setting up ~20 Raspberry Pi systems when I arrived. Another small army assisted with the workshop itself, intervening when the children needed a prod in the right direction. Thank you to all these helpers. It couldn’t have been done without you. We […more…]

Hong Kong and Shenzhen HDMIPi Trip

Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware 13 Responses »

Dec 032013

Just back from a week in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Shenzhen is the capital of the Chinese electronics market. If you buy components on ebay, chances are they’ll be shipped from Shenzhen, and through Hong Kong. Shenzhen is a large and sprawling city. There’s an awful lot of new construction going on. Every time we went to see a supplier, we went past dozens of new blocks of flats/apartments being built. And we’re talking skyscrapers, each and every one of them. It was a really busy time there and I didn’t get many pictures, but […more…]

Pi Supply – ATX style power switch for Raspberry Pi – Review

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 27 Responses »

Oct 142013

Pi Supply - ATX style power switch for Raspberry Pi - Review

Pi Supply is an external power switch for your Raspberry Pi. I have to be scrupulously honest here and say that, when I first heard about it, I thought “well that solves a problem I haven’t got”. But in the Raspberry Pi forums, quite a lot of people complained about not having a power switch. It’s never been an issue for me. I don’t find unplugging a micro USB cable all that hard. I’ve never broken the capacitor off the Pi (although I have broken a couple of SD card slots and fried a couple […more…]

MotorPiTX build and testing with photos

Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 16 Responses »

Sep 302013

On Saturday I decided to build my MotorPiTX, by Jason ‘boeeerb’ Barnett. It was a straightforward build. The only difficult part was the optional micro-USB power connector. Overall it took me about an hour to build. I took my time over it – knowing that I was going to photograph it and that you lot would be scrutinising every blemish. ;) About 20 minutes of that time was spent trying to ensure that I didn’t bridge two connections on the micro USB connector. I rarely use desoldering braid, but on this occasion I did. I […more…]

Boeeerb’s MotorPiTX has arrived – a couple of quick photos

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 6 Responses »

Sep 172013

Boeeerb's MotorPiTX has arrived - a couple of quick photos

MotorPiTX, by Jason Barnett, was delivered today. It’s a robotics board for the Raspberry Pi, combined with ATX style power supply. It was one of this summer’s successful Kickstarter campaigns. It was either the first or second KS that I’ve backed. I’m a bit busy this week, but there’s a part of me that’s saying “never mind all that, just get out there and put it together”. I’m not going to do that tonight. I think we’ll have to settle for some kit photos and I’ll let you know how I get on with the […more…]

Using PiGlow with GPIO button control on the Raspberry Pi

Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi, Review 4 Responses »

Sep 062013

Using PiGlow with GPIO button control on the Raspberry Pi

Pimoroni released the PiGlow in August while I was away in Poland. It’s a small, purple board (that fits inside a PiBow) with 18 LEDs in 6 colour groups, arranged in a 3 armed spiral formation. It has an 8 bit, 18-way PWM controller that can be used to control the brightness of the LEDs (0 = OFF, 255 = Fully ON). (More on PWM here) Although I was abroad when it came out, there was plenty of banter about it on twitter. In a few short weeks, various people have written Python classes to […more…]

Video Review of surface mount (SMT) cutters set

Electronics, Review 2 Responses »

Aug 122013

Video Review of surface mount (SMT) cutters set

Paolo at RS Components sent me over this set of SMT cutters and pliers to play with and review. I’m not going to write much here, as it’s a video review, but the cutters are sharp and cut very nicely. If you work on stripboard or circuit boards, having a good set of cutters will make life easier for you. See them in action in the video. I should add that the close-up shots in this video were done with my RasPiCamcorder 2. Link to product page here.

RasPiCamcorder software released on Github

Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Camera, Raspberry Pi Hardware 24 Responses »

Aug 092013

RasPiCamcorder software released on Github

A few people have been asking me about the RasPiCamcorder software. My original plan was to partner with a well known supplier and offer a “build your own RasPiCamcorder” kit, along with software and instructions, as a product. The software was always going to be open sourced though. But the market said NO! Many people have argued with the market and lost. I don’t intend to. There simply weren’t many takers for it. Cool though it is to be able to Dropbox your photos and videos, having neither sound nor screen seems to be enough […more…]

How to stream vlc from a Raspberry Pi with GPIO control but without being root

Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, Linux usage, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Camera 19 Responses »

Aug 072013

How to stream vlc from a Raspberry Pi with GPIO control but without being root

Having managed to get VLC streaming from Pi Camera to Nexus 7 Android tablet working, it was only a matter of time before I wanted to stream from the RasPiCamcorder. But when I tried it, I came across an annoying problem. RPi.GPIO needs to run as root (that’s why we always use sudo for our GPIO stuff) But VLC refuses to run as root. This means you can’t run them both from the same program. There’s all sorts of clever solutions people proposed (and I wasted a lot of time unsuccessfully trying them all out) […more…]

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