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.
Renesas Promotion Board for RL78/G13
Yesterday I received my free evaluation board Renesas is giving out to promote their Rl78/G13. Head over to claim your own. http://am.renesas.com/products/tools/introductory_evaluation_tools/renesas_demo_kits/yrpbrl78g13/index.jsp They ship super fast. I put in the order at 4:25pm and had it before noon the following day. Now to put it to the test…
Raspberry Pi releases Debian Wheezy
It has arrived: We are pleased to announce the release of our first SD card image based on the Raspbian distribution. This is the result of an enormous amount of hard work by Alex and Dom over the past couple of months, and replaces the existing Debian squeeze image as our recommended install. Notably, it is the first official image to take full advantage of the Raspberry Pi’s floating point hardware for, amongst other things, much faster web browsing SOURCE: RaspberryPi.org Now to figure out if I can upgrade. Sounds like it would be worth the trouble to upgrade from scratch.
Chat on IRC!
MobileWill is now on IRC! Come check out the channel here: #mobilewill Chat about robots, home automation, and anything electronics/cool. I should be available in the evenings if you want to chat with me. If there is enough interest, we can do evening topic chats.
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 …