Raspberry Pi Hardware – Page 4

Central Heating Furnace Monitoring and Control with RasPiO Duino and Raspberry Pi

Electronics, interfacing, Raspberry Pi Hardware, RasPiO Duino 23 Responses »

Apr 152016

We went to Poland for the Easter holiday. When we got there the house was really cold (6°C), having been vacant for several months. We’ve got a fairly substantial solid-fuel furnace in the basement and a large room full of coal to burn. We have a gas boiler too, but we want to get rid of the coal to repurpose the space it occupies. Burning it is the most logical solution, but it involves some work. But I’ve tried to make it a bit more fun. The furnace is an interesting beast. It’s taken me […more…]

Is KickStarter Dead Yet? Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding

Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 3 Responses »

Mar 102016

Is KickStarter Dead Yet? Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding

Last summer I wrote a blog post that, at the time, I didn’t publish. I showed it to Mike @recantha Horne and we both agreed its natural tone would come across better as a talk, not a blog post. Last weekend I had a chance to deliver this talk at the Raspberry Pi Birthday Weekend in Cambridge. I managed to get an audio recording (thanks to @AndyBateyPi) to which I have synchronised my slides in the video below (26 minutes including questions). Enjoy… Also Available As Text If you prefer the (slightly fuller) original written […more…]

How Much Power Does Raspberry Pi3B Use? How Fast Is It Compared To Pi2B?

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 15 Responses »

Mar 032016

How Much Power Does Raspberry Pi3B Use? How Fast Is It Compared To Pi2B?

The Raspberry Pi 3, launched this week, is more powerful than the Pi2. It also requires a bit more electrical power if you’re going to be hammering those four A53 CPU cores. How much more? The recommended PSU is 5.1V, 2.5A, which is 0.5A higher than for previous Pis. That doesn’t mean the Pi itself needs that much, but with four USB ports onboard, the PSU has to cater for power-hungry USB devices as well. I usually publish some power measurements each time a new Pi is released. But this time I learnt something new […more…]

Raspberry Pi 3 model B launches today – 64-bit quad A53 1.2 GHz BCM2837

Product Launch, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 8 Responses »

Feb 292016

Raspberry Pi 3 model B launch is today’s big news. The new Pi sports a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53 CPU with VideoCore IV GPU packaged into the new BCM2837 chip. This 1.2GHz CPU offers ~50% speed improvement over the Pi 2’s BCM2836. Video Overview Pretty much all the information and impressions I have of the Raspberry Pi 3 model B are in this short video… …but if you prefer to read, it’s all here too… Now With Built-in WiFi & Bluetooth The other major news is that the Raspberry Pi 3B now has built-in […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…]

RasPiO Pro Hat – Putting Pi Ports in Perfect Positions for Productive Play

Electronics, Product Launch, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware 18 Responses »

Jan 152016

RasPiO Pro Hat - Putting Pi Ports in Perfect Positions for Productive Play

Today I launched the RasPiO Pro Hat on Kickstarter. It’s a Raspberry Pi Hat for GPIO tinkering (it goes perfectly with GPIO Zero). It arranges the GPIO ports in numerical order around a mini-breadboard, which, to my knowledge, has not been done before. It also replaces the RasPiO Breakout Pro (now end of life) because it protects all the ports from over-current and over/under-voltage as well. It should prove a very useful board for GPIO tinkering and education. Have a look at the video and pop on over to the RasPiO Pro Hat campaign page […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…]

Raspberry Pi Zero – Updated Pi Family Photo

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 20 Responses »

Nov 302015

Raspberry Pi Zero - Updated Pi Family Photo

With each new release of Raspberry Pi, I usually do a new family photo. It’s getting harder and harder to fit them all ‘on the sofa’ and get them all smiling. The way I’ve always done it is “all in one shot”. I may change this for future versions in order to get more definition. We’ll see. (As usual, more ideas than implementation time.) I am very happy for people to use this photo if they wish to do so provided the RasPi.TV credit stays intact. I make it available at 1500px resolution as CC-BY-SA. […more…]

Raspberry Pi Zero – Power Measurements

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 22 Responses »

Nov 272015

Since the Pi Zero is small and eminently wearable, I thought I’d take some power measurements as this will be useful information for people to plan their projects. So I ran my usual series of tests and updated the table and chart showing all consumer models of Raspberry Pi. In my standard tests, I measure the current consumption, using the calibrated shunt on my Emeter, while the Pi is: Idling; Loading LXDE; Watching HD video and Shooting HD video. Since the Zero has no camera port, shooting video is not applicable, but all the other […more…]

Raspberry Pi Zero FREE on the cover of this month’s MagPi magazine.

Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 45 Responses »

Nov 262015

Raspberry Pi Zero FREE on the cover of this month’s MagPi magazine. Yes you read that correctly. Raspberry Pi have pulled another world first out of the bag. Back in the pre-internet days when I used to buy PC magazines, they used to have a cover disk. Well Raspberry Pi have come up with a ‘cover computer’. It’s an absolutely awesome idea and is sure to cause ‘quite a stir*‘. Raspberry Pi Zero, a brand new spin of the Raspberry Pi, is designed to be as inexpensive as possible. A year ago the model A+ […more…]

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