Over the last few weekends and then some, I have been playing with the Colorific RGB Bulb from Amazon. Inspired by this learn guide https://learn.adafruit.com/reverse-engineering-a-bluetooth-low-energy-light-bulb/explore-gatt I decided to make it reactive to audio. Finally! An excuse to buy the Teensy Audio shield! Here are a few pictures and a short demo of it in action. You can find the code and my notes on the issues with it and where the project is at currently on:https://github.com/FriedCircuits/Jamrific Teensy 3.1 with Audio Shield, TFT connect to RPi Raspberry Pi 2 with BT 4.0 and UART connected to Teensy 3.1. Colorific Bulb in action
Raspberry Pi 2 and Motorola Lapdock
Back in October of 2012, I had tested the Motorola Lapdock with the original 256MB Raspberry Pi. Recently I was able to get my hands on a Raspberry Pi 2 and decided to see if it worked any better. It pretty much works the same in that if the Lapdock doesn’t detect it, it goes to sleep and it won’t try again until it turns itself off. So the only way to get past the point in boot where the display signal is lost for a second, is to power the Pi up from another power source with the HDMI connected. You must wait for it to fully boot. Then disconnect the HDMI, wait for the Lapdock to turn off, …
ZenMiner: RPI Temps
The first week of the Fury’s (Zeus Blizzard) Scrypt miners from GAWMiners came with a free ZenController. It’s basically a Raspberry Pi, case and a memory card that is setup ready to mine using ZenMiners cloud service. Simplifies the process of setting up mining without a computer. Yesterday I had an issue with the network connection to my ZenController and I noticed the Raspberry Pi was warmer than I am used too with others. Upon inspection, I realized the bottom label is covering the only holes for ventilation. There isn’t any on top or sides. Even without the label there should be vents on top like most cases. If you get one of these, the first thing you want to …
Live Raspberry Pi Power Usage!
Since the release of the Raspberry Pi, I have had one on my desk powered up. It’s my go to Pi that is always available on the network. It’s mostly running Python stuff and eXtplorer. After all this time, I have always wondered what it really costs to keep a Pi powered up 24/7/365. Then one evening, it dawned on me, I have the USB Tester why not use that? Doh! One thing lead to another and I realized why not log the serial output to the Pi itself. Using my existing Python code for logging motion to CosmXiviely, in one night, I could easily set it up to log the RPi power usage to the cloud. Pretty freaking sweet, …
Raspberry Pi Camera Module and Streaming
Now that the camera is connected it’s time to test it. I have always liked setting up a camera for real-time streaming, plus it’s helpful whenever I am away on a trip. With the PIR project, I could use that to record on motion instead of using image based motion. This would allow for no false positives, unless of course you have animals. You can use the standard mjpg-streamer but it can’t read from the camera module directly and therefore you need to save a file and then read it back. This would be a fast way to wear out your your SD card. I knew there had to be a better solution. Then low and behold I found this: https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer …
Raspberry Pi Camera Module + PiBow
Previously I show how to mount the Raspberry Pi module in the Pimoroni camera mount, but now we need to connect it. Connecting the camera to the RPi is pretty easy if you are careful and there plenty of guides, but I wanted to use it with the Pibow case. The new PiBow cases have a slit for the ribbon cable but if you have the older version, you can make it work. Here is how I did it: Check out this post about using the camera and real-time streaming with mjpg-streamer.
PiGlow from Pimoroni
In a recent Adafruit order I couldn’t resist picking up the new PiGlow for the Raspberry Pi. This is a neat 18 LED add-on that connects to the GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi and communicates over I2C. With the example Python code, I was blinking in color in no time. You can buy them from Adafruit in the US or directly from Pimoroni in the UK. The Pimoroni site has all the links to get you started. I used the link to Jason Barnett’s Gihub which has a in depth how-to and a lot of examples to get you started and playing in color. The LEDs are in a spiral pattern, making for a great binary clock, which is …
Raspberry Pi Camera with Pimoroni’s Camera Mount
In my last Adafruit order, I decided to get the Raspberry Pi camera and the Pimoroni Raspberry Pi Camera Mount. This has been on my to-buy list for quite some time. I first saw the camera in person at Hacker Dojo when Rob from RPi came on his tour in the States. I am really excited to see what fun stuff I can come up with. In the past I have used a webcam on my desktop with ActiveWebCam to stream my entry-way to keep tabs on it. I want to try the Raspberry Pi to replace this setup as well as other projects. I have may have to put a few more cameras to go with all the Pi’s …
Raspberry Pi and eXtplorer
Over the last few months as I have been working with the Raspberry Pi, I have been using eXtplorer as a file manager and text editor. It is PHP and runs from the RPi’s web server. This is a great way to write code on the RPi from your desktop or from any web browser. I figured that I should share it since it is such a great tool. It should almost come with Rasbian. You can find it here: http://extplorer.net/ Here are some pictures of it running on the RPi: eXtplorer Login Screen eXtplorer File Manager Some of the great features are listed below (from their site). This is a must needed tool for working on the Raspberry Pi! I can’t …
Raspberry Pi 1/2 DOA
When the 512MB version of the Raspberry Pi was released, I couldn’t resist not getting one. This would be perfect as a permanent attachment for the Motorola Lapdock and a Pillbow case. A few days later I received it in the mail and loaded Adafruit distro on a borrowed SD card from our digital camera. This is when things started to go awry. After first boot I went through the setup, including region and all that stuff. That last thing I did was a rpi-update to update the firmware. After that it wouldn’t boot, or so I thought. I tried multiple images and SD cards. So far, nothing. It looked like it would boot and then get to a point, lose video and Ethernet. After many …