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 …
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) …
Kinect Sensor and Voice Control
In my previous post I mentioned that I had set up Microsoft’s SAPI to implement voice control of my lights. For the most part, it works well with the tweaks I did with the grammar file, except that you have to train your speech. For what I want to accomplish that will be a large issue. I want anyone to be able to walk into my house and use the system. It should be a hands free system that doesn’t make turning the lights on more complicated with having to use something like your phone (but that too, can be an option). I have been playing with the idea of using RFID/NFC but it still would involve always having your phone around; also, not everyone has …
Raspberry Pi and GPIO Permissions
It works! Okay, back up a little. Getting a PHP web interface to talk to hardware proved to be rather difficult. You need root access to control hardware but the web service runs with minimal permissions. So how does one bridge the gap without compromising the system? The answer, very carefully. I found a few workarounds but they involved either using MySQL or the gpio-admin library that works from commandline or shell scripts. In my case I wanted to stay with using C programs with the wiringPi library being called from PHP. C is much faster to control GPIO and PHP gives me a web front end. Here is how I did it. First the PHP process needs a way to run the binary as …
Raspberry Pi, CommandIR and Beyond
Now that I have had some time to play with the CommandIR, progress has been made. Of the two initial issues I have one left. The first issue is that LIRCD doesn’t auto start even though it is configured in the hardware.conf. While researching, I came to the conclusion that LIRC isn’t reading the hardware.conf at all. I made a change to it, enabling the listen option to try an Android app but it didn’t take effect. When I manually start LIRCD I have to include the options at the commandline. This is still a mystery but I am working with support on it. The odd thing is the init.d service script doesn’t seem to do anything. TV with IR Emitter Xbox S with IR Emitter …
Raspberry Pi and CommandIR
While reading an article the other day I had an idea formulate in my head. I have a older USB CommandIR Mini that has 4 emitters and 1 receiver. This would make a great use of the Raspberry Pi, a network based IR gateway. Originally it was only for Linux, but now it is supported in WinLIRC which I haven’t tired. Newer version of mine First thing was to do some research and see about getting it to work on the Raspberry Pi with an ARM CPU. So here is a run down of how I got it to work. Rear ports Get LIRC installed: The version that is available in the Debian Squeeze repository isn’t new enough to support the CommandIR. In this case you need to download the lastest version …
The Raspberry Pi is Running: Getting You There
Excited, I ripped open the package to find my Raspberry Pi. The packing looked like it had been run over but my Pi was still intact. Yay! First thing I realized I needed to find a power source and a SD card. After some digging I just ended up using an iPad power adapter with a cell phone micro USB cable. I was going to use my Galaxy S power adapter but I didn’t want to run it close to the limit of 700ma. For some reason I thought I had plenty of SD cards around, but I guess not. Luckily Best Buy had a 32GB Sandisk Ultra class 10 available in store for $27. Perfect! Raspberry Pi packaging, amazing it wasn’t damaged For the most part I hard …
How To: Fly With Homemade Electronics
Something I found that could be really helpful from grathio.com. “About once a month I see an article about some ambitious maker who’s project created an alarm at airport security. Most makers who travel with homemade electronics and other prototypes have a fear that their innocuous project wil catapult them to the front page as a threat to national security. While these news reports make up a good list of how to travel with bespoke electronics, but what I really want to collect is information on how to avoid getting into these situations to begin with.” Read More
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