Don’t Look Now, But Your Necklace Is Listening

September 7, 2018 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

There was a time when the average person was worried about the government or big corporations listening in on their every word. It was a quaint era, full of whimsy and superstition. Today, a good deal of us are paying for the privilege to have constantly listening microphones in multiple rooms of our house, largely so we can avoid having to use our hands to turn the lights on and off. Amazing what a couple years and a strong advertising push can do.

So if we’re going to be funneling everything we say to one or more of our corporate overlords anyway, why not make it fun? For example, check out this speech-to-image necklace developed by [Stephanie Nemeth]. As you speak, the necklace listens in and finds (usually) relevant images to display. Conceptually this could be used as an assistive communication technology, but we’re cool with it being a meme display device for now.

Hardware wise, the necklace is just a Raspberry Pi 3, a USB microphone, and a HyperPixel 4.0 touch screen. The Pi Zero would arguably be the better choice for hanging around your neck, but [Stephanie] notes that there’s some compatibility issues with Node.js on the Zero’s ARM6 processor. She details a workaround, but says there’s no guarantee it will work with her code.

The JavaScript software records audio from the microphone with SoX, and then runs that through the Google Cloud Speech-to-Text service to figure out what the wearer is saying. Finally it does a Google image search on the captured words using the custom search JSON API to find pictures to show on the display. There’s a user-supplied list of words to ignore so it doesn’t try looking up images for function words (such as “and” or “however”), though presumably it can also be used to blacklist certain imagery you might not want popping up on your chest in mixed company.

We’d be interested in seeing somebody implement this software on a Raspberry Pi powered digital frame to display artwork that changes based on what the people in the room are talking about. Like in Antitrust, but without Tim Robbins offing anyone.

Raspberry Pi As 433 MHz To MQTT Gateway

August 29, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

Many low-cost wireless temperature and humidity sensors use a 433 MHz transmitter to send data back to their base stations. This is a great choice for the manufacturer of said devices because it’s simple and the radios are cheap, but it does limit what we as the consumer can do with it a bit. Generally speaking, you won’t be reading data from these sensors on your computer unless you’ve got an SDR device and some experience with GNU Radio and reading the Nexus protocol.

But [Aquaticus] has developed a very comprehensive piece of software that should make integrating these type of sensors into your home automation system much easier, as long as you’ve got a spare Raspberry Pi lying around. Called nexus433, it uses a cheap 433 MHz receiver connected to the Pi’s GPIO pins to receive data from environmental sensors using the popular Nexus communication protocol. A few known compatible sensors are listed in the project documentation, one of which can be had for as little as $5 USD shipped.

In addition to publishing the temperature, humidity, and battery level values from the sensors to MQTT, it even tracks connection quality for each individual sensor and when they go on and offline. To be sure, this is no simple hack. In nexus433, [Aquaticus] has created a mature Linux service with enough flexibility that you shouldn’t have any problems working it into your automation setup, whether it’s Home Assistant or something you’ve put together yourself.

We’ve seen a number of home automation hacks using these ubiquitous 433 MHz radios, from controlling them with an ESP8266 to hacking a popular TP-LINK router into a low-cost home automation hub.

PiPod: A Raspberry Pi Zero Portable Music Player

August 28, 2018 by Ben James 16 Comments

[Bram] wasn’t satisfied with the portable music playback devices that were currently available. He craved an offline music player that had a large storage capacity but found that this was only available in high-end, off-the-shelf options, which were far too expensive. [Bram] decided to make his own, powered by a Raspberry Pi zero. After building an initial prototype, the design was iterated a few times, with the latest version featuring a BOM cost of roughly €80.

The whole project is open source, with hardware and software files available on the project GitHub. A 2.2″ TFT displays the UI, which is of course completely customisable. Everything is squashed into a 3D printed case, which has the smallest form factor possible whilst retaining a decent amount of battery life. The electronics are what you’d expect: a boost converter to produce 5 V for the Pi from the 3.7V battery, a charge controller and a battery protection circuit. As a bonus, the battery voltage is monitored with a 12-bit ADC which reports to the Pi, enabling it to do a safe shutdown at low voltage, and display battery level on the UI.

Since the whole purpose of the device is to play audio, onboard filtered PWM wasn’t going to cut it, so instead a 24-bit DAC talks to the Pi via I2S. The audio player backend is VLC, so there’s support for plenty of different file types. A disc image of the whole system is available with everything pre-configured, and you can even buy the assembled PCB from Tindie.

Want to keep the look and feel of your old iPod? We covered an impressive restoration of a 6th gen model, upgrading the storage and battery significantly.

Rasberry Pi PoE Hat Released

August 26, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

It was announced at the beginning of March, but now the Raspberry Pi Power over Ethernet (PoE) hat is out. Thanks to the addition of a new 4-pin header on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, the Pis can get power from an Ethernet cable, provided you’ve got the setup to deliver PoE.

This is a remarkable bit of engineering, even though it’s just adding Power over Ethernet to a small single board computer. Mechanically, the PoE hat doesn’t increase the 3D bounding box volume of the Raspberry Pi at all. It adds cooling with a fan controlled over I2C. Even more bizarrely, the transformer is mounted in a PCB cutout, and we’re desperate to know how that was specced, designed, and assembled. Yeah, it might just be an add-on for the Raspberry Pi, but there’s some clever work that went into designing it.

The Raspberry Pi gained PoE capability with the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ last March, a release that did require a slight change to the hardware and pinout of the Raspberry Pi. Compared to the Pi 3 Model B, the Pi 3 Model B+ sports a four-pin header right next to the Ethernet jack and one of the mounting holes. This is the same location of the ‘Run’ header found in the Pi 3 Model B, and probably caused much consternation to anyone who built a hat to take advantage of having a real power button on their Pi.

Nevertheless, what’s done is done, and now we have a real PoE solution for the Raspberry Pi. This is bound to be a boon for anyone who wants to build a Raspberry Pi cluster computer, or anyone who is dropping a few Pis into a server rack that already has PoE hardware.

You can pick up a PoE Pi hat through the usual suspects (Farnell, RS, and other resellers) for $20.

Guardin, Guarding The Garden: Turn Raspberry Pi Into A 3rd Eye

August 23, 2018 by Jenny List 16 Comments

If you are a gardener, you’ll know only too well the distress of seeing your hard work turned into a free lunch for passing herbivorous wildlife. It’s something that has evidently vexed [Jim], because he’s come up with an automated Raspberry Pi-controlled turret to seek out invading deer, and in his words: “Persuade them to munch elsewhere”.

Before you groan and sigh that here’s yet another pan and tilt camera, let us reassure you that this one is a little bit special. For a start, it rotates upon a set of slip rings rather than an untidy mess of twisted cables, so it can perfom 360 degree rotations at will, then it has a rather well-designed tilting cage for its payload. The write-up is rather functional but worth persevering with, and he’s posted a YouTube video that we’ve placed below the break.

This is a project that still has some way to go, for example just how those pesky deer are to be sent packing isn’t made entirely clear, but we think it already shows enough potential to be worthy of a second look. The slip ring mechanism in particular could find a home in many other projects.

It’s worth reminding readers that while pan and tilt mechanisms can be as impressive as this one, sometimes they are a little more basic.

Continue reading “Guardin, Guarding The Garden: Turn Raspberry Pi Into A 3rd Eye” →

Blink A Pi, Win A Prize

August 21, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

You can plug in a Raspberry Pi, and you can blink a LED. You can visualize data, and now there’s a contest on Hackaday.io to show off your skills. Right now, we’re opening up the Visualize It With Pi contest on Hackaday.io. The challenge? Visualize data with LED strips and panels. Is that ‘data’ actually just a video of Never Gonna Give You Up? We’ll find out soon enough.

The goal of this contest is to combine a Raspberry Pi and its immense processing power and the blinky goodness of LED strips and panels to visualize and interpret data in novel and artistic ways. We’re looking for animation. clarity, and flamboyant flickering. Want some ideas? Check out the World of Light or the American Constitution Candle. We’re looking for the most blinky you can do with a Pi, and yes, there will be prizes.

Prizes

Prizes for the best blinky include, of course, more blinky. The best visualizations from a directly connected sensor, data from an Internet Source, and data from an esoteric data source will each receive some Blinkytape. This is a strip of WS2812b LEDs with an ATMega32u4 embedded on the end. Plug a USB power supply into the Blinkytape, and you get a strip of LEDs in whatever color you want with the ability to push animation frames to the chip on the strip. The Grand Prize winner for this contest will also receive Blinkytile Explorers Kit, a Serpentine LED strip, a LED ring, and two meters of ultra thin LED strip.

Let’s Do This!

The requirements for the contest are simple: just use a Raspberry Pi to drive LED strips or panels, post it as a new project on Hackaday.io, and submit the project to the contest. We’re looking for a full description, source, schematics, and photos and videos of the finished version of the project — do everything you can to show off your work! The contest is open right now, and ends at 08:00 Pacific on October 1st. We know you like to blink those LEDs, so get crackin’.

An Upcycled Speaker Box With Hidden Features

August 20, 2018 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

At first glance, this fire engine red speaker box built by [NoshBar] looks straightforward enough. Just an MDF case and couple of drivers recovered from a trashed stereo. But the array of controls and connectors on the front, and a peek on the inside, shows there’s more to this particular project than meets the eye.

Built almost entirely from parts [NoshBar] found in the trash, construction started with some salvaged MDF IKEA shelves and their corresponding twist lock cam fittings. We don’t usually see those style cam fittings used to build DIY enclosures, but if it works for all those furniture manufacturers why not?

A pair of Sony stereo speakers he found gave up their internals, and a TPA3116 amplifier board off of eBay drives them. He’s wired up an audio pass-through mode for using headphones when the amplifier is powered off, and dual inputs so he can switch between PC and PS4.

But the audio components are only half of what’s inside that shiny red exterior. [NoshBar] packed in an ATX PSU and broke out the 3.3 V, 5 V, and 12 V lines to the front panel so he can use it as a bench power supply for his Arduino projects. It’s also home to a gigabit Ethernet switch and a Raspberry Pi acting as a file server.

We’re always amazed at what hackers are able to accomplish with parts they’ve literally pulled out of the trash, from a waterwheel to charge your phone to a functional CNC router. It seems there’s plenty of treasure in your local dumpster if you’re willing to get a little dirty.