Do you want touch on a Raspberry Pi screen, and if so, why?

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  9 Responses »
Oct 142014
 
Do you want touch on a Raspberry Pi screen, and if so, why?

Google+ has recently launched a poll feature. I thought it’d be fun to see what people’s attitudes are towards touchscreens on the Raspberry Pi. So yesterday I started a little poll. If you’d like to add your voice, you can vote with your G+ account. If you don’t have a G+ account, feel free to leave a comment below. https://plus.google.com/116371886106894368991/posts/cKXyYhSfmrp (If the poll doesn’t appear embedded above, you can find it here.) Early Results At the time of posting, the results were… So what do you think? Do you want touch on a Raspberry Pi […more…]

protocam

 Electronics, Raspberry Pi Camera, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  3 Responses »
Sep 292014
 
protocam

In my previous blog post I started a series on how to program a KickStarter tracker. That will continue soon. In the meantime, one of the KickStarter campaigns I’ve been tracking is for a nice little board called the ProtoCam. It’s a simple, but original, idea by Richard Saville, who blogs under the name of ‘AverageManVsRaspberryPi’. (His emphasis is on quality articles, often with complete ‘how-tos’ for specific things he’s learned to do.) So he came up with this original idea for a prototyping board with space for a Pi camera on. You can put […more…]

Raspberry Pi SmartWatch Joke

 Electronics, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  1 Response »
Sep 152014
 
Raspberry Pi SmartWatch Joke

A Raspberry Pi SmartWatch? You’re kidding me right? Errrm. Yes. I mean… Well… This has a lot of the functionality of a smartwatch, but it wasn’t built for that purpose. It’s a little big, for starters. Let me back up and explain. Last week, Apple released photos of their new smartwatch. Twitter, Google+ and every social network was awash with photos, comparison photos, criticism, analysis and good old-fashioned Apple-hating. By Thursday I was rather bored of it all, so I decided to make a joke tweet. I had this rather large Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) […more…]

VGA for Pi Debuts at CamJam, alongside HDMIPi production model No. 1

 Electronics, Input and Output, Raspberry Pi Hardware  41 Responses »
Sep 072014
 
VGA for Pi Debuts at CamJam, alongside HDMIPi production model No. 1

I went to the Cambridge Jam yesterday and displayed HDMIPi production model #1, met lots of people, including Eben, Liz, and a multitude of Pi enthusiasts and bloggers (quite normal for a #CamJam). There was also a CNBC news crew there to film some Pi action. They shot a brief clip of me doing something like this… Matt Hawkins @RPiSpy kindly took this one for me using my camera. Good job he’s not a monkey, or we might have a copyright dispute. It was really nice to spend some time chatting to Matt. (Thanks for […more…]

New Raspberry Pi Speaker from ThePiHut

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  15 Responses »
Aug 222014
 
New Raspberry Pi Speaker from ThePiHut

I got a new speaker in the post yesterday morning. It’s been redesigned specifically for the Raspberry Pi by ThePiHut. I charged it for a few hours (it has an internal lipo battery, which powers it for 7 hours of use) and then plugged it into the 3.5mm stereo outlet of an HDMIPi screen. This takes the sound from the HDMI output of the Pi (so it’s digital and high quality, much better than the Pi’s analog output). I tested it with Bug Buck Bunny, which has superb graphics and sound. It also makes an […more…]

PiHut WiFi dongle vs Edimax – Power Usage

 raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review  29 Responses »
Aug 182014
 
PiHut WiFi dongle vs Edimax - Power Usage

At the May CamJam, Jamie from The Pi Hut handed me a couple of his Raspberry Pi Wifi dongles for testing. I did some measurements a week or two later on a Raspberry Pi model B and sent them to Jamie. But I thought it would be fun to repeat this now with the new B+ and show all the results together. I’m doing a comparison test against the Edimax EW-7811Un which is my current ‘Go To wifi dongle’. Differences & Similarities? The Edimax is very slightly smaller. Both have blue LED activity indicators. The […more…]

New Port ID Board for the Raspberry Pi B+ – RasPiO Portsplus 2

 Electronics, Input and Output, interfacing, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  7 Responses »
Aug 132014
 
New Port ID Board for the Raspberry Pi B+ - RasPiO Portsplus 2

Today I’m launching the RasPiO Portsplus 2. It’s a simple port ID board for the Raspberry Pi model B+. It’s available over at https://rasp.io/portsplus2 but full information below… RasPiO® Portsplus 2 The RasPiO® Portsplus 2 board is designed for the new Raspberry Pi B+. It labels the ports clearly for you so that you don’t need to count pins. This will help you avoid wiring errors and damage… You can slip it over the B+ GPIO header if you want, or hold it next to the header (many people tell me they do this – and this […more…]

RPi.GPIO Quick Reference updated for Raspberry Pi B+, A+ and Pi2B

 python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  26 Responses »
Jul 262014
 
RPi.GPIO Quick Reference updated for Raspberry Pi B+, A+ and Pi2B

Having brought my RPi.GPIO documentation (almost) up-to-date with the previous blog post, I realised it was time to update my RPi.GPIO Quick Reference ‘cheat sheet’ as well. It’s quite a useful reference. Page 1 gives you the basic RPi.GPIO commands and usage. I like to take one of these the Jams in case someone needs help and I can’t remember the necessary commands. Page 2 has a Raspberry Pi GPIO pinout diagram for all versions (except compute module). This part has been updated to add the pinouts for the B+ (and A+). Page 3 gives […more…]

RPi.GPIO update and detecting BOTH rising and falling edges

 python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware  31 Responses »
Jul 252014
 
RPi.GPIO update and detecting BOTH rising and falling edges

A few days ago, Ben Croston updated the RPi.GPIO Python library so that the ‘board’ pin numbering system would work with all of the pins on the B+. It doesn’t really affect the way I work, as I always use BCM port numbers. They already worked on the B+ and the compute module. While he was at it, he made a couple of bug-fix tweaks. Looking at what was tweaked, I realised there are a couple of features of RPi.GPIO that I hadn’t yet documented. In this blog post I hope to update my RPi.GPIO […more…]

Just How Awesome is the Raspberry Pi Community? Fixing the ‘B+ won’t shutdown’ issue.

 Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware  12 Responses »
Jul 202014
 
Just How Awesome is the Raspberry Pi Community? Fixing the 'B+ won't shutdown' issue.

On Friday I noticed a bit of ‘weirdness’ happening with my new model B+ Raspberry Pi. When I shut it down with sudo halt it would shut down fine. But when my hand, or the wireless keyboard I was using, got close to the GPIO pins, the Pi would start up again all by itself. I didn’t even need to touch it. Getting close was enough. Let’s Ask the Twitterverse I wasn’t sure if this was a quirk of the B+ or something to do with the dodgy wiring in our house in Poland (not […more…]

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