raspberry pi – Page 7

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…]

Programming a KickStarter Tracker in Python. Part 2.

python programming, raspberry pi 7 Responses »

Oct 032014

Programming a KickStarter Tracker in Python. Part 2.

So this is part 2 of the KickStarter Tracker in Python. (If you’ve not seen part 1 yet, that’s here.) We got the basics working last time. Now we want to make it look nicer, add more campaigns and have it running continously. So first let’s see about how we can introduce some colour… Adding Colour To Console Output There may well be more elegant ways to get the job done here, but I found a way that uses what’s called “escape sequences”. These are basically codes which can be used to modify the characteristics […more…]

Programming a KickStarter Tracker in Python. Part 1.

python programming, raspberry pi 9 Responses »

Sep 222014

Programming a KickStarter Tracker in Python. Part 1.

Ever since the HDMIPi KickStarter I’ve been very interested in watching the progress of other campaigns. I’m following four or five Pi-based campaigns at the moment. Are they going to make it? Are they not? It’s nice to keep an eye on things. But monitoring more than one or two wastes a lot of time. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could have a little computer and screen set up so that it checked these campaigns, say, once a minute, and reported on how they’re doing? I know there’s a decent Python library called urllib2. […more…]

Raspberry Pi SmartWatch Joke

Electronics, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 1 Response »

Sep 152014

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…]

RPi.GPIO – port function checker

Input and Output, interfacing, python programming, raspberry pi 10 Responses »

Sep 012014

A few weeks ago I blogged about RPi.GPIO updates for the model B and updated my RPi.GPIO documentation and quick reference sheets. But there was one feature I held back on because I needed a bit more time to mess about with it. (And then got busy with other things.) So What Was It? gpio_function() Another RPi.GPIO feature that sneaked in while I wasn’t looking is gpio_function() This is a feature that’s been inserted in RPi.GPIO to enable you to query the setup status of a port to see how it’s configured. import RPi.GPIO as […more…]

New Raspberry Pi Speaker from ThePiHut

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 15 Responses »

Aug 222014

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…]

Older Entries Newer Entries