Here is a quick note on using USB serial with Python. I hooked up a Sparkfun explorer board with a Xbee series 1. Sparkfun Xbee Explorer https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8687 First you need to install the Serial library: apt-get install python-serial The Sparkfun adapter uses FTDI so it shows up as /dev/ttyUSB0 I found this, it works really well. Simple TCP/IP bridgehttp://pyserial.sourceforge.net/examples.html#tcp-ip-serial-bridge I started with this link:http://www.doctormonk.com/2012/04/raspberry-pi-and-arduino.html I couldn’t get it to show data from the Xbee at first so I used Minicom to test:http://codeandlife.com/2012/07/29/arduino-and-raspberry-pi-serial-communication/#more-859 Somehow it started working once I saw data using Minicom. Here is the final code to test read from serial with Python [xbee_read.py] #!/usr/bin/pythonimport serialser = serial.Serial(‘/dev/ttyUSB0’, 9600)ser.open()try: while 1 : result = ser.readline() print result except KeyboardInterrupt: ser.close() …
Neil Armstrong dies at 82
“It’s a story that we hoped we’d never have to report. Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on Earth’s Moon, has died at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery three weeks earlier. His greatest accomplishment very nearly speaks for itself — along with help from fellow NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, he changed the landscape of space exploration through a set of footprints. It’s still important to stress his accomplishments both before and after the historic Apollo 11 flight, though. He was instrumental to the Gemini and X-series test programs in the years before Apollo, and followed his moonshot with roles in teaching aerospace engineering as well as investigating the Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle Challenger incidents. What …
Mobilewill on Adafruit Show and Tell
Adafruit’s Show and Tell is a must if you’re looking to get ideas on various projects. Ladyada hosts a Google+ Hangout each Saturday evening in which she invites makers to share their latest projects. This last week, I was able to get on and join in. Check it out below! I showcased my Raspberry Pi Motion Logger which you can read about here http://www.mobilewill.us/2012/08/raspberry-pi-and-motion-graphing.html. Have you watched any or shared projects of your own? I’d be interested to hear about it!
Raspberry Pi and Motion Graphing
This week was the week of Raspberry Pi goodness and lots of coding. Now that I had the PIR sensor working, I wanted to do something with that data over time. I decided to log the data to MySQL running on my web server instead of the Pi. The Pi is awesome but I didn’t want the overhead of running MySQL on it along with writing constantly to the SD Card. Here is how I did it, after the break. First thing was to setup the database on my Web server which is running Server 2008 R2 on my VMWare ESXi server. I ended up using the Web Platform installer to install MySQL 5.1 and PHP. I probably won’t need …
Raspberry Pi and Wheezy
I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to Debian Wheezy. I have been putting it off because Squeeze works and it would involve re-configuring everything I have setup so far. At the same time, the longer I wait the more stuff there will be to setup. The great thing about re-installing: I get to do a clean install without the mistakes of figuring things out. It is also a refresher of how I got where I am now. Jump below for notes about the upgrade process. Firstly, you should make a backup of the SD card in case you need to restore back or to check how you did something. I used win32diskimager on my Windows 7 PC to make an …
Curiosity Rover has landed!
It once was one small step… now it’s six big wheels. Here’s a look at one of them on the soil of Mars #MSL http://t.co/uzO99NZz — Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity)
Raspberry and a PIR Sensor
Last month I bought a PIR as part of my Adafruit order for Raspberry Pi stuff. This weekend I decided to try and use it with the RPi. PIR Sensor (image from Adafruit) Rear of PIR Sensor (image from Adafruit) Using the WiringPi library, it was pretty easy to get it up and running. Here is a picture of it mounted on top of the Prototyping Pi Plate from Adafruit with double-sided tape. Raspberry Pi Plate with PIR and LED I connected it to GPIO 18 or pin 1 in the WiringPi library. Here is the code I used that blinks the LED when there is motion. I used the same technique as the blinking LED test so that I …
RPi-Update
I was reading about the release of Chromium for the Raspberry Pi and read a comment about changing the memory split using rpi-update. I decided to see what it was all about. RPi-Update makes it much easier to change the memory split and keeping the firmware up to date rather than doing it manually. You can find it here https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/ Here is how I ended up getting it to install without the errors I got. This is based on the Debian Squeeze release from 06-19-2012. I haven’t switched to Wheezy yet. sudo apt-get install ca-certificatessudo apt-get install git-coresudo wget http://goo.gl/1BOfJ -O /usr/bin/rpi-update && chmod +x /usr/bin/rpi-updatesudo ldupdatesudo rpi-update If you get a error about the library then (I can’t remember the exact message) …
Free courses at Coursera
I came across this the other day and thought this is a great opportunity for us hobbyist who didn’t go to school for this stuff. My degree is in IT/IS so this would be great way to start studying other fields that I would like to switch too. https://www.coursera.org/ Here is some of their AI and robot courses: https://www.coursera.org/category/cs-ai
Even Better Renesas Promotion Board: RX62N
My friend sent this to me yesterday. http://am.renesas.com/products/tools/introductory_evaluation_tools/renesas_demo_kits/yrdkrx62n/index.jsp?campaign=top_rdkrx62n If you watch the two videos you can see it is an awesome board. I can’t wait to get mine tomorrow. Shipping is super fast with Renesas. I hope to do some cool things with it.