On day 3 (day 1 here, day 2 here) I wanted to see if I could use a Raspberry Pi (3 or 0W) as the WiFi access point instead of my phone. Knowing I was taking a slight risk (with my time) I flashed a µSD card with the shiny new Raspbian Stretch. I tweaked all the things I normally tweak (e.g. remove Wolfram and LibreOffice, enable SSH, SPI, I2C, camera etc. – I may well add a camera to this at some point WJDK). Then I went through this excellent tutorial here, which I […more…]
We’ll start with a quick recap of day 1 (which you can find here). By the end of day 1 we had a proof of concept for a phone-controlled, Wemos-driven rear bike light, with indicators (turn signals), tail lights and brake lights. Day 2 started with a bit of real-world testing on the bike. It was determined pretty quickly – within one trip to the gym and back – that mobile phone control was NOT really the way to go. I wasn’t too upset about that because it wasn’t how I originally envisaged things anyway, […more…]
Last week I had a bit of a scare. Having tested all 100 of the trial batch of RasPiO InsPiRing straight-8 boards and found 100/100 working perfectly, I issued an update to let the KickStarter backers know. Testing was done with a DigiSpark, which is based on an ATtiny microcontroller. It’s the same device I sent to the manufacturers for their QC testing because it is small, cheap, pretty bullet-proof and I would not have to explain to them how to use a Pi (which would also need a screen, keyboard, mouse etc. thus making […more…]
Here in the UK it’s Monday morning and yesterday the clocks ‘went forward’, so we’re now in British Summer Time. Everyone could use a bit of ‘good cheer’ on a Monday morning, so I’m releasing a short parody video that I hope you will find amusing. Just Why? Simple answer. For fun. It’s an experiment. I hope it will make you laugh and you’ll want to share it. There’s quite a few geeky jokes buried in the lyrics, but it also tells a story. It took me 8 full takes to get it. I kept […more…]
One of the interesting usage possibilities for the RasPiO InsPiRing system is illuminated signage. What could be better than flashy, blinky, multi-coloured signage? Well, not much really? So I decided to make an arrow out of two straight 8s and a triangle. I used white depron foam as a base, ordinary headers and jumper wires to connect all the shapes to each other and to the controller. Then a needle and thread and some hot glue to fasten the shapes to the depron. I then darkened the foam with a marker pen. This is what […more…]
I’ve been messing about with the Pi Zero W and one of my RasPiO InsPiRing boards to make a colourful clock that keeps accurate time using NTP (Network Time Protocol). Because the Zero W has WiFi onboard, it’s perfect for things like this. It’s quite a visual thing, so I made a video about it… Here’s the Code If you want a walk-through of the code, I made a little walk-through video of it, but decided to keep that separate because not everybody would want that level of detail. You can find that after the […more…]
I’ve been playing with RGB LEDs on and off over the last year or so. They’re amazing things. It’s incredible to me that something so small can produce such bright and brilliantly coloured light. I’ve played with the Adafruit DotStar Pi Painter project (using APA102), which is enormous fun. Also the Pimoroni MOTE (also APA102), which makes everything plug-and-play. Then there was the McRoboface from 4Tronix (using 2 sizes of WS2812). Then back in October 2016 I bought 4 quadrants of 15 WS2812 on ebay to make a 60-element clock. And then one day, amidst […more…]