7 segment display Python Raspberry Pi – countdown ticker

 Electronics, interfacing, python programming, Raspberry Pi Hardware  48 Responses »
Nov 182015
 
7 segment display Python Raspberry Pi - countdown ticker

Continuing with our theme of 7-segment displays driven directly from the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO using Python, I was asked for an explanation of the code from the previous post. In order to explain something, you first have to fully understand it, so I took some time to have a good look at the ‘business end’ of Bertwert’s code and figured out exactly how it works. I’ve now put a full code walkthrough of that script in the comments section of the previous post. Having done that, and having had a tweet from David Meiklejohn saying […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…]

CamJam Edukit 3 Robotics Kit

 Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  15 Responses »
Nov 132015
 
CamJam Edukit 3 Robotics Kit

CamJam Edukit 3 robotics kit is launched today. It’s an entry-level robotics kit aimed at beginners, but I’ve had quite a lot of fun with it, and haven’t even used all the bits yet. It’s been put together by Jamie Mann from the PiHut, and Mike Horne and Tim Richardson from CamJam. As with other CamJam Edukits, there is a progressive series of worksheets to help guide you through how to make the various pieces do what they’re designed for. You can find those here. Here’s what the kit looks like straight out of the […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…]

New Official Raspberry Pi DSI screen launches

 Product Launch, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  44 Responses »
Sep 082015
 
New Official Raspberry Pi DSI screen launches

The official 7 inch DSI Raspberry Pi screen is now launched and available for purchase. It’s been a long time in the making, but the B+, the A+ and Pi2B have all been responsible for pushing this display to the back-burner. When there finally was some ‘engineering time’ to get on with it, hurdles were faced with EMC compliance and chip availability. But those hurdles are now overcome and the screen is now launched. And it looks great (click any photo for higher resolution). Video Overview Here’s a video overview. There’s more detail in the […more…]

Witty Pi Full Review

 Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  12 Responses »
Aug 212015
 
Witty Pi Full Review

Back in July I did a mailbag video and got you guys to vote on which item I should do a more in-depth review of. WittyPi got about 50% of the vote by the time I had to make the decision. So here is the UUGear WittyPi review. WittyPi is an A+/B+/Pi2B add-on that gives you a safe on-off switch and enables timed shutdowns and startups of your Raspberry Pi. It has a battery-backed realtime clock (RTC) that controls the startup times and allows your Pi to retain the correct time even if not connected […more…]

New Official Raspberry Pi WiFi Dongle 3-way testing Vs ThePiHut and Edimax

 Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  21 Responses »
Aug 062015
 
New Official Raspberry Pi WiFi Dongle 3-way testing Vs ThePiHut and Edimax

A few weeks ago, Raspberry Pi launched a new official WiFi dongle with the following specs… 802.11 b/g/n USB 2.0 BCM43143 chipset 150Mbps maximum throughput Supports Access Point/Infrastructure mode Works with Raspbian out of the box (other OS yet to be supported) It’s been designed by the Raspberry Pi hardware team, uses a Broadcom chip and has a larger antenna than the other two dongles I’m testing it against. This makes it a little longer than the other two, but how does it stack up against them in terms of performance? That’s what we’re here […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…]

RasPiO Duino Goes On General Sale With Free Arduino Programming eBook

 Raspberry Pi Hardware, RasPiO Duino  23 Responses »
Jun 062015
 
RasPiO Duino Goes On General Sale With Free Arduino Programming eBook

Having completed the KickStarter fulfilment a long way ahead of schedule, we’re now ready to launch RasPiO® Duino on general sale. We thought it would be nice to launch it officially today at the Cambridge Jam. What Is A RasPiO® Duino? RasPiO® Duino is a small plug-on board for Raspberry Pi. It has similar functionality to an Arduino Uno, but is fully programmable from the Raspberry Pi. Once programmed, it can be removed from the Pi and used on its own. If you’re interested in the full product description you can find that here. Free […more…]

 Older Entries  Newer Entries