The leaning header of Pi5a. How best to solder a header on P5?

 Input and Output, Raspberry Pi Hardware  31 Responses »
Mar 252013
 
The leaning header of Pi5a. How best to solder a header on P5?

People seem very reticent about soldering headers to their Pis. Nobody else seems to be blogging or vlogging about it.* D’you know what? I think it was a really magnificent oversight that the original Raspberry Pis shipped with the 26 pin GPIO header on. In case you didn’t know, the original plan was to leave them off, but they didn’t get deleted from the design before the factory quoted for manufacturing – and they’ve stayed on ever since. Without that happy accident, I don’t think I would have ‘gotten’ so heavily into interfacing. You see, […more…]

How to make your own Raspberry Pi flag-waving demo

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, Raspberry Pi Hardware  36 Responses »
Mar 112013
 
How to make your own Raspberry Pi flag-waving demo

After the recent call for items for the demo table over at Raspberry Pi HQ, I thought I’d send over a flag-waving set. It’s not a product for sale, but it’s one of the most eye-catching and memorable Raspberry Pi demos I’ve made. People mention it more than any of the others when I don’t take it along to Jams. There’s a video, at the end of the page, showing three Pis all waving flags together (based on three different drive systems). Making the flag So I set about making a flag. It’s pretty easy. […more…]

Controlled shutdown duration test of Pi model A with 2 cell lipo

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  126 Responses »
Mar 052013
 
Controlled shutdown duration test of Pi model A with 2 cell lipo

Lithium polymer batteries are light and powerful, but they can’t be run completely flat or they are ruined. I’ve been using them for several years to fly model planes, so I have plenty of them around. I’ve also been using them at Raspberry Jam meetings to power some of my Pi demos. I thought it would be fun to make a circuit so the Pi could monitor its own battery voltage. I used an analog to digital converter (mcp3002) and had the Pi check the battery voltage every minute and shut down when the battery […more…]

Raspberry Pi in near space 35.5km from earth

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  12 Responses »
Mar 012013
 
Raspberry Pi in near space 35.5km from earth

On Wednesday of this week, I went to film Dave Akerman and Anthony Stirk launching two high altitude weather balloons. One of them had a Raspberry Pi inside a TARDIS as its payload. It was cold. In the video you’ll see it looks almost as if Dave is smoking at one point. That would have been a bad idea as the 70 kg red cylinders are full of highly explosive Hydrogen gas. Slight cheating on the Vid I confess in advance that I did have to cheat slightly with the video. Dave was really keen […more…]

Wake up your Pi with WiFi dongle

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  10 Responses »
Feb 182013
 

A few days ago I was playing about with my Raspberry Pi Model A. I wanted to measure the power consumption, since I started a thread on the Pi forums that talks all about this. This threw up an interesting problem because I wanted to measure the power consumption of the Pi both with and without my wifi dongle. But if I pull out the dongle, I’m not sure it will reconnect when I re-attach it, and then I won’t be able to communicate with it (I was using it headless – no monitor/keyboard). Eventually […more…]

RasPi.TV makes it onto BBC Click

 Raspberry Pi Hardware  4 Responses »
Feb 162013
 

BBC Technology program Click just used a segment from the video I posted a couple of weeks ago on the model A release. It’s right in the middle of this 6 minute video. About 8 seconds starting around 4:28. It’s a real shame I was out yesterday afternoon when Liz was trying to get in touch – I could have given them a much nicer 1080i HD version. :( Watch the whole 6 minutes though, it’s a good one about hackers, makers and Pi users.

Using a Wii controller with your Raspberry Pi, Gertboard, Bluetooth and Python

 Electronics, Gertboard, Input and Output, interfacing, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware  37 Responses »
Feb 122013
 
Using a Wii controller with your Raspberry Pi, Gertboard, Bluetooth and Python

Matt Hawkins from Raspberry Pi Spy has done the leg-work enabling Pi users to use a Wii controller – along with a Bluetooth USB dongle to send inputs to the Raspberry Pi. It uses a Python library called “CWiid” (I imagine this is pronounced “seaweed”). This is awesome because the Wii controller has 11 different digital inputs. When you consider combinations of inputs, that gives you a lot of extra possible “input commands” to play with. Theoretically*, with 11 buttons, there are 55 different 2-button combinations (11C2). That should be enough for most uses. If […more…]

Raspberry Pi Model A first impressions and photos

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  14 Responses »
Feb 052013
 
Raspberry Pi Model A first impressions and photos

I was keeping an eye on the RS and Farnell sites on Monday morning because I’d heard a ‘reliable whisper’ that the model A was launching this week. I didn’t know what day, but I figured it might be Monday. No sign of anything early morning, but then I forgot and didn’t see Liz’s announcement on the Pi blog until a couple of hours after they went live. By that time, RS was showing back order, but Farnell had stock levels of ~1800, so I snagged one. I got a “shipped” email about 3 hours […more…]

HDMI to VGA converter part 2 – VGA projector

 Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  8 Responses »
Feb 032013
 
HDMI to VGA converter part 2 - VGA projector

This is part 2 of my review of the HDMI/VGA 1080 Ultimate HD Video Converter. It covers comparison of VGA and HDMI in the GUI; use of an old 1024 x 768 VGA monitor with the Pi; using a VGA projector to show a video; trying out an MHL adaptor with a phone and VGA monitor. If you haven’t seen part one yet, you can find that here. To complete the review, I set myself the following tasks… see if I can get it to go full-screen in GUI by tweaking settings do some side […more…]

RasPi RepRap 3d printing on the Raspberry Pi

 Electronics, interfacing, Raspberry Pi Hardware  9 Responses »
Feb 012013
 

Alex Gibson, co-host of the Oxford Jam impressed us all with his RepRap 3d printer controlled by a Raspberry Pi. I hadn’t seen one of these up close and personal before. I’d really like one now, but I have a feeling it requires a large investment in time to build, calibrate and use. Check out the 4 minute video. Most impressive indeed! :) Background Alex told us he’d joined the Thames Valley build group, which is a bunch of people who get together to help each other make RepRaps. The reel of poly-lactic acid (PLA) […more…]

 Older Entries  Newer Entries