Review – Page 4

A Quick Look At My New Soldering – Rework Station

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 6 Responses »

Mar 142014

A Quick Look At My New Soldering - Rework Station

I’ve been hankering after a hot air rework gun and a soldering station for some time. The main problem is that most rework stations are hundreds of pounds. I don’t really need an ‘industrial strength’ one, so when the most recent CPC Tradesman offers came through the door, two items by TENMA caught my eye. One was a simple soldering station for about £30 (+VAT), the other had both soldering iron and hot air gun for £99 (+ VAT). In the end, I opted for the combined model (SDO174105). I ordered it on Saturday and […more…]

Jamboree Raspberry Pi Second Birthday

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Camera, Review 3 Responses »

Mar 012014

I spent Thursday and Friday of this week at the Manchester Raspberry Jamboree. It was a very large event combined with the Education Innovation conference. I went there with the intention of meeting and talking to people. I so often get involved in giving talks or workshops and ‘show and tells’, that I often miss the chance to meet and talk to as many people as I would like to. (Forget to enjoy it?) I Still Took Too Much Stuff Although I did take “far too much stuff” as usual (I thought people would like […more…]

Linux Voice – Issue 1 – Review

Linux usage, Review 4 Responses »

Feb 262014

On Saturday I received an email from Linux Voice with download instructions for Issue 1. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Linux Voice, but it’s a brand new crowd-funded Linux magazine (they ran an IndieGoGo campaign in November/December 2013). It’s in print and digital formats. They needed £90,000 to get it up and running. In the end they raised £127,603. But I Don’t Buy Magazines Any More? I haven’t bought a magazine for several years. There’s so much information on the web these days that I don’t really bother with them any more. But, […more…]

Texys 2.8 inch touchscreen with RasPiCamcorder – step 1

Electronics, interfacing, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Camera, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review, Uncategorized 4 Responses »

Jan 162014

Texys 2.8 inch touchscreen with RasPiCamcorder - step 1

At the end of August, I bought one of Texy’s 2.8 inch 320×240 touch-screens to have a play with. I thought it’d be great if I could somehow get it working with my RasPiCamcorder. Although, at the time, you had to jump through quite a few hoops to get the drivers working, and nobody had yet done the necessary work to enable camera output to be displayed on it. Then I got busy with KickStarter and HDMIPi and it lay untouched until December. I periodically looked in on the camera section of the Raspberry Pi […more…]

New Year, New Server at Mythic Beasts

Linux usage, Review 3 Responses »

Jan 082014

Just a short post today to let you know that RasPi.TV has just completed server migration to a new server at Mythic Beasts. Why move? I found out on New Year’s Day that my existing server hosting company was moving from London to Reading. So at the end of January they were going to physically move the rack, containing my server, to Reading. This meant that, while it was in transit, all five web sites I have on this machine, and all my email, would be offline. This was estimated to be ~8 hours. But […more…]

Pi Supply – ATX style power switch for Raspberry Pi – Review

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 27 Responses »

Oct 142013

Pi Supply - ATX style power switch for Raspberry Pi - Review

Pi Supply is an external power switch for your Raspberry Pi. I have to be scrupulously honest here and say that, when I first heard about it, I thought “well that solves a problem I haven’t got”. But in the Raspberry Pi forums, quite a lot of people complained about not having a power switch. It’s never been an issue for me. I don’t find unplugging a micro USB cable all that hard. I’ve never broken the capacitor off the Pi (although I have broken a couple of SD card slots and fried a couple […more…]

MotorPiTX build and testing with photos

Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 16 Responses »

Sep 302013

On Saturday I decided to build my MotorPiTX, by Jason ‘boeeerb’ Barnett. It was a straightforward build. The only difficult part was the optional micro-USB power connector. Overall it took me about an hour to build. I took my time over it – knowing that I was going to photograph it and that you lot would be scrutinising every blemish. ;) About 20 minutes of that time was spent trying to ensure that I didn’t bridge two connections on the micro USB connector. I rarely use desoldering braid, but on this occasion I did. I […more…]

PiHub from Cyntech and Pimoroni – a new powered USB Hub for the Raspberry Pi

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 9 Responses »

Sep 092013

PiHub from Cyntech and Pimoroni - a new powered USB Hub for the Raspberry Pi

PiHub, a new powered USB hub, designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi, has been released today. I first saw an early prototype of this when I visited Cyntech back in May 2013. It was on a table of goodies and it jumped out at me immediately. It’s absolutely beautiful to look at. Modelled in the shape and colours of the Raspberry Pi logo, it has four downstream USB ports, a barrel connector for power and an USB B upstream port that connects to a USB port on the Pi. Here’s what the final production version […more…]

Using PiGlow with GPIO button control on the Raspberry Pi

Electronics, Input and Output, python programming, raspberry pi, Review 4 Responses »

Sep 062013

Using PiGlow with GPIO button control on the Raspberry Pi

Pimoroni released the PiGlow in August while I was away in Poland. It’s a small, purple board (that fits inside a PiBow) with 18 LEDs in 6 colour groups, arranged in a 3 armed spiral formation. It has an 8 bit, 18-way PWM controller that can be used to control the brightness of the LEDs (0 = OFF, 255 = Fully ON). (More on PWM here) Although I was abroad when it came out, there was plenty of banter about it on twitter. In a few short weeks, various people have written Python classes to […more…]

Video Review of surface mount (SMT) cutters set

Electronics, Review 2 Responses »

Aug 122013

Video Review of surface mount (SMT) cutters set

Paolo at RS Components sent me over this set of SMT cutters and pliers to play with and review. I’m not going to write much here, as it’s a video review, but the cutters are sharp and cut very nicely. If you work on stripboard or circuit boards, having a good set of cutters will make life easier for you. See them in action in the video. I should add that the close-up shots in this video were done with my RasPiCamcorder 2. Link to product page here.

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