Raspberry Pi

1853 Articles

Behind The Pin: How The Raspberry Pi Gets Its Audio

July 13, 2018 by 54 Comments

Single board computers have provided us with a revolution in the way we approach computing as hardware creators. We have grown accustomed to a world in which an entire microcomputer has become a component in its own right rather than a complex system, and we interface to them as amorphous entities through their exposed interfaces. But every pin or socket on a single board computer has something behind it, so following up on a recent news-inspired item in which we took a look at what lies behind the Ethernet jack on a Raspberry Pi, we’d like to continue that theme by looking behind more pins and interfaces. So today we’ll stay with the Raspberry Pi, and start with an easy target by taking a look down its audio jack.

All the main Raspberry Pi board releases since 2012 with the exception of the Pi Zero series, have featured a 3.5mm jack carrying line-level audio. The circuits are readily accessible via the Raspberry Pi website, and are easy enough to understand because of course all the really hard work is done within the silicon of the Broadcom system-on-chip. Looking at the audio circuitry, we’ll start by going back to the original Pi Model B from 2012 (PDF) because though more recent models have seen a few changes, this holds the essence of the circuitry.

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Old Time Traffic Signal Revived With A Raspberry Pi Controller

July 12, 2018 by 28 Comments

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the classic animated shorts of the 1940s will recognize the traffic signal in the image above. Yes, such things actually existed in the real world, not just in the Looney world of [Bugs Bunny] et al. As sturdy as such devices were, they don’t last forever, though, which is why a restoration of this classic Acme traffic signal was necessary for a California museum. Yes, that Acme.

When you see a traffic signal from the early days of the automotive age like this one, it becomes quickly apparent how good the modern equivalent has become. Back in the day, with a mix of lights distributed all over the body of the signal, arms that extend out, and bells that ring when the state changes, it’s easy to see how things could get out of hand at an intersection. That complexity made the restoration project by [am1034481] and colleagues at the Southern California Traffic Museum all the more difficult. Each signal has three lights, a motor for the flag, and an annunciator bell, each requiring a relay. What’s more, the motor needs to run in both directions, so a reversing relay is needed, and the arm has a mechanism to keep it in position when motor power is removed, which needs yet another relay. With two signals, everything was doubled, so the new controller used a 16-channel relay board and a Raspberry Pi to run through various demos. To keep induced currents from wreaking havoc, zero-crossing solid state relays were used on the big AC motors and coils in the signal. It looks like a lot of work, but the end results are worth it.

Looking for more information on traffic signal controls? We talked about that a while back.

Smart Power Strip Revived With Raspberry Pi

July 6, 2018 by 19 Comments

We’re all for buying broken stuff from eBay to save yourself a few bucks: buy it cheap, fix it, and reap the rewards of being a step ahead of the average consumer. Searching through the “For parts or not working” categories is nearly the official pastime here at the Hackaday Bunker. But buying an eBay find only to have it give up the ghost in a couple weeks? That hurts.

That’s precisely what happened to [idaresiwins] when he bought this beefy looking “Web Power Switch” on the Electronic Bay. After two weeks, the controller board blew and his “smart” power strip became very stupid indeed. But with the addition of a Raspberry Pi, he’s got it back up and running. Not only that, but given the extra horsepower this device now contains, it now doubles as a basic server for the home lab.

This conversion was helped by the fact that the original controller was on a separate board from the relays, and connected with a small ribbon cable. All [idaresiwins] had to do was figure out which wire in the cable went to each of the eight relays, and fire them off with the Pi’s GPIO pins. In an interesting detail, he opened up one of the ends of the ribbon cable and used it as a punch down block of sorts to easily hook the wires up to the Pi’s pins. We might suggest some hot glue to keep everything from moving around, but otherwise it’s a neat tip.

[idaresiwins] found some information online about making a web-based GPIO interface, which he adapted to control the outlets on the power strip. He then wrapped the Pi up in plastic to keep it from shorting out, and tucked it inside the case. Note that he was able to pull 5 VDC from the relay board and run it to the Pi over the ribbon cable, so he didn’t need to bother with hacking a USB adapter in there.

Controlling AC devices over the Interwebs is an extremely popular project, and we’ve even seen a DIY device that looks quite similar to this product. Most of them are now using the ESP8266, but with the Pi onboard this hack is more like a super-sized version of the PowerPwn.

Solar Pi Cluster Scours Internet For Nudes

July 6, 2018 by 50 Comments

There seems to be a universal truth on the Internet: if you open up a service to the world, eventually somebody will come in and try to mess it up. If you have a comment section, trolls will come in and fill it with pedantic complaints (so we’ve heard anyway, naturally we have no experience with such matters). If you have a service where people can upload files, then it’s a guarantee that something unsavory is eventually going to take up residence on your server.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what [Christian Haschek] found while developing his open source image hosting platform, PictShare. He was alerted to some unsavory pictures on PictShare, and after he dealt with them he realized these could be the proverbial tip of the iceberg. But there were far too many pictures on the system to check manually. He decided to build a system that could search for NSFW images using a trained neural network.

The nude-sniffing cluster is made up of a trio of Raspberry Pi computers, each with its own Movidius neural compute stick to perform the heavy lifting. [Christian] explains how he installed the compute stick SDK and Yahoo’s open source learning module for identifying questionable images, the aptly named open_nsfw. The system can be scaled up by adding more Pis to the system, and since it’s all ARM processors and compute sticks, it’s energy efficient enough the whole system can run off a 10 watt solar panel.

After opening up the system with a public web interface where users can scan their own images, he offered his system’s services to a large image hosting provider to see what it would find. Shockingly, the system was able to find over 3,000 images that contained suspected child pornography. The appropriate authorities were notified, and [Christian] encourages anyone else looking to search their servers for this kind of content to drop him a line. Truly hacking for good.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Intel’s Movidius compute stick in the wild., and of course we’ve seen our fair share of Raspberry Pi clusters. From 750 node monsters down to builds which are far more show than go.

Shooting For The First Time With Help From A Raspberry Pi

July 5, 2018 by 15 Comments

Like many people, [Mike] has a list of things he wants to do in life. One of them is “fire a gun with a switch,” and with a little help from some hacker friends, he knocked this item off last weekend.

For those wondering why the specificity of the item, the backstory will help explain. [Mike] has spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that was supposed to end his life shortly after it began. Thirty-seven years later, [Mike] is still ticking items off his list, but since he only has voluntary control of his right eyebrow, he faces challenges getting some of them done. Enter [Bill] and the crew at ATMakers. The “AT” stands for “assistive technologies,” and [Bill] took on the task of building a rig to safely fire a Glock 17 upon [Mike]’s command.

Before even beginning the project, [Bill] did his due diligence, going so far as to consult the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and arranging for private time at a local indoor gun range. The business end of the rig is a commercially available bench rest designed to control recoil from the pistol, which is fired by a servo connected to the trigger. The interface with [Mike]’s system is via a Raspberry Pi and a Crikit linked together by a custom PCB. A PiCam allowed [Mike] to look down the sights and fire the gun with his eyebrow. The videos below show the development process and the day at the range; to say that [Mike] was pleased is an understatement.

We’re not sure what else is on [Mike]’s list, but we see a lot of assistive tech projects around here — we even had a whole category of the 2017 Hackaday Prize devoted to them. Maybe there’s something else the Hackaday community can help him check off.

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A Cartoon-ifying Camera For Instant Absurdism

July 3, 2018 by 12 Comments

We take photographs as a way to freeze moments in time and to capture the details that get blurred by our unreliable memories. There is little room for interpretation, and this is kind of the whole point.

[Dan Macnish]’s latest project, Draw This, turns reality into absurdity. It’s a Raspberry Pi-based instant camera that trades whatever passed in front of the lens for a cartoon version of same. Draw This uses neural networks to ID the objects in the frame, and then draws upon thousands of images from Google’s Quick, Draw! dataset to provide a loose interpretation via thermal printer. Seems to us like the perfect camera to take to DEFCON (or any other part of Las Vegas).

If you have a Raspi3, a v2 camera, and a thermal printer, you can make your own crowd-sourced, cartoonified memories using the code in [Dan]’s repo. Still into recording reality? You can use Pi cameras to see in the dark or even explore a body of water.

Aquarium Controller Starring Arduino Gets A Long Video Description

July 1, 2018 by 4 Comments

There’s an old saying that the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Sometimes we feel that way because we stay busy designing things for other people or for demos that we don’t have time to just build something we want. [Blue Blade Fish] wanted to build an Arduino-based aquarium controller. He’s detailed the system in (so far) 14 videos and it looks solid.

This isn’t just a simple controller, either. It is a modular design with an Arduino Mega and a lot of I/O for a serious fish tank. There are controls for heaters, fans, lights, wave makers and even top-off valves. The system can simulate moonlight at night and has an LCD display and keys. There’s also an Ethernet port and a Raspberry Pi component that creates a web interface, data storage, and configures the system. Even fail safes have been designed into the system, so you don’t boil or freeze expensive fishes. No wonder it took 14 videos!

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