Using Wemos D1 mini to control a brushless motor with ESC and servo signals

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, Wemos  4 Responses »
Feb 122018
 
Using Wemos D1 mini to control a brushless motor with ESC and servo signals

I’ve recently become interested in making “machines” of various sorts. I was sorting through some of my RC (radio control) plane “stash” the other day and came across various brushless motors and electronic speed controllers (ESC) like these. In RC, Brushless ESCs are usually connected to a radio receiver which generates servo control pulses. So this morning I thought it would be fun to try and get a Wemos D1 mini controlling a brushless motor. I’ve done similar before. I can remember, back in the dark ages of 2013, using a Guzunty Pi to generate […more…]

High Visibility Cycle Lights with Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 & RasPiO InsPiRing – Day 3

 Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 
High Visibility Cycle Lights with Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 & RasPiO InsPiRing - Day 3

On day 3 (day 1 here, day 2 here) I wanted to see if I could use a Raspberry Pi (3 or 0W) as the WiFi access point instead of my phone. Knowing I was taking a slight risk (with my time) I flashed a µSD card with the shiny new Raspbian Stretch. I tweaked all the things I normally tweak (e.g. remove Wolfram and LibreOffice, enable SSH, SPI, I2C, camera etc. – I may well add a camera to this at some point WJDK). Then I went through this excellent tutorial here, which I […more…]

RasPiO GPIO Zero Ruler

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, raspberry pi  No Responses »
Jul 212016
 
RasPiO GPIO Zero Ruler

You may remember this time last year I KickStarted a 6-inch ruler with the most important RPi.GPIO code on it. I’ve been using it myself an awful lot in the last year when coding. So it won’t surprise you to learn that I’m now doing another one for GPIO Zero. Since GPIO Zero is about the easiest way imaginable to get into Python GPIO tinkering, I think this will be really helpful for people. I’ve already been using the prototypes and find them an extremely helpful reference. Here’s what it looks like… It’s twice as […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…]

Ethernet On Pi Zero – How To Put An Ethernet Port On Your Pi

 Input and Output, interfacing, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Uncategorized  114 Responses »
Dec 022015
 
Ethernet On Pi Zero - How To Put An Ethernet Port On Your Pi

The Pi Zero attracted a huge amount of attention, which is great for the educational mission of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Whenever a new product is released, people air their opinions in the forums on what they would have liked it to have. One of the most common “I wish it had”s was an ethernet port. There are reasons why ethernet was not included. The two most obvious ones are cost and board size (it would have almost doubled the size of the Zero) So What’s To Be Done If You Need Ethernet? Well the […more…]

How to drive a 7 segment display directly on Raspberry Pi in Python

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware  96 Responses »
Nov 162015
 
How to drive a 7 segment display directly on Raspberry Pi in Python

Last week I bought some 4-digit, 7-segment displays to experiment with. Strangely enough it was something I’d never tried before, so I was interested to see how they work. I googled around looking to see if someone else had done this before. It seems there are several different sorts of 7-segment displays, so you have to find a good match for the one you’ve bought. You can get them in various guises including: i2c backpack; 12 pins; 16 pins; resistors built-in; common anode; common cathode etc. The ones I bought are 12 pin, bare, no […more…]

RasPiO Duino Videos Complete

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, RasPiO Duino  2 Responses »
Oct 292015
 
RasPiO Duino Videos Complete

Last Thursday I decided I needed to do the “Analog Inputs Video” for RasPiO® Duino. All the other basic functionality was well covered in the previous assembly/setup/tutorial videos. There’s also the 47 page user guide (FREE Download – good intro to Arduino programming) and a GitHub repository with the example sketches in. But I wanted to complete the basic set of videos, so at midday I started planning. I filmed in the afternoon and cut the video in the evening. At about 2230 I was done, so I started uploading it to YouTube (~2.4 Gigabytes […more…]

RasPiO GPIO Ruler goes on general sale

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware  8 Responses »
Oct 222015
 
RasPiO GPIO Ruler goes on general sale

You may remember I ran a KickStarter campaign in August for the RasPiO® GPIO Ruler. The KickStarter rewards were all sent out in the first week of October. (We finished shipping 3 weeks early.) So now it’s time to launch the product officially and make it available to all on general sale. If you missed out on the KickStarter, now you can buy one. In case you haven’t seen it before, this is what it looks like… What Is The RasPiO® GPIO Ruler? It’s a coding crib-sheet for RPi.GPIO, a port ID guide, a multi-scale […more…]

RasPiO GPIO Ruler

 Input and Output, interfacing, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  7 Responses »
Jul 142015
 
RasPiO GPIO Ruler

For some time now I’ve been using the wonderful RPi.GPIO Python library by Ben Croston. It’s great for using the General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) ports on the Raspberry Pi to control things and read inputs. I’ve written at least 14 tutorials on it (listed here) over the last couple of years. But I still find myself needing to look up the exact commands to use. I’ve made a crib-sheet which is really useful, but pieces of paper get lost. What I really want is the most used commands in a portable, accessible form that […more…]

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