Raspberry Pi

1886 Articles

Python Keeps A Gecko Happy: Terrarium Automation With Raspberry Pi

November 21, 2017 by 8 Comments

For better or worse, pets often serve as inspiration and test subjects for hardware hacks: smarten up that hamster wheel, tweet the squirrel hunting adventures from a dog’s point of view, or automate and remote control a reptile enclosure. [TheYOSH], a gecko breeder from the Netherlands, chose the latter and wrote TerrariumPi for the Raspberry Pi to control and monitor his exotic companion’s home through a convenient web interface.

The right ecosystem is crucial to the health and happiness of any animal that isn’t native to its involuntarily chosen surroundings. Simulating temperature, humidity and lighting of its natural habitat should therefore be the number one priority for any pet owner. The more that simulation process is reliably automated, the less anyone needs to worry.

TerrariumPi supports all the common temperature/humidity sensors and relay boards you will find for the Raspberry Pi out of the box, and can utilize heating and cooling, watering and spraying, as well as lighting based on fixed time intervals or sensor feedback. It even supports location based sunrise and sunset simulation — your critter might just think it never left Madagascar, New Caledonia or Brazil. All the configuration and monitoring happens in the browser, as demonstrated in [TheYOSH]’s live system with public read access (in Dutch).

It only seems natural that Python was the language of choice for a reptile-related system. On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be strictly used for reptiles or even terrariums; TerrariumPi will take care of aquariums and any other type of vivarium equally well. After all, we have seen the Raspberry Pi handling greenhouses and automating mushroom cultivation before.

Distributed Air Quality Monitoring Via Taxi Fleet

November 20, 2017 by 11 Comments

When [James] moved to Lima, Peru, he brought his jogging habit with him. His morning jaunts to the coast involve crossing a few busy streets that are often occupied by old, smoke-belching diesel trucks. [James] noticed that his throat would tickle a bit when he got back home. A recent study linking air pollution to dementia risk made him wonder how cities could monitor air quality on a street-by-street basis, rather than relying on a few scattered stations. Lima has a lot of taxis, so why wire them up with sensors and monitor the air quality in real-time?

This taxi data logger’s chief purpose is collect airborne particulate counts and illustrate the pollution level with a Google Maps overlay. [James] used a light-scattering particle sensor and a Raspi 3 to send the data to the cloud via Android Things. Since the Pi only has one native UART, [James] used it for the particle sensor and connected the data-heavy GPS module through an FTDI serial adapter. There’s also a GPS to locate the cab and a temperature/humidity/pressure sensor to get a fuller environmental picture.

Take a ride past the break to go on the walk through, and stick around for the testing video if you want to drive around Lima for a bit. Interested in monitoring your own personal air quality? Here’s a DIY version that uses a dust sensor.

Continue reading “Distributed Air Quality Monitoring Via Taxi Fleet” →

FatPiBoy: Respin Game Boy With A Pop-Out Controller

November 20, 2017 by 5 Comments

Have you ever found yourself wishing you had a clone of the Game Boy, except it was actually twice as wide, and instead of holding it in your hands you pop a tiny separate controller out of the middle and play it that way? No? Well, neither have we. But that didn’t stop [Christian Reinbacher] from designing and building exactly that, and by the looks of the finished product, we have to say he might be onto something.

To be fair, the charmingly-named FatPiBoy is not really meant to be played like the GameBoy of yesteryear. It’s more like a game console with built in display; you prop the console up on something, and then remove the controller from the system and play that way.

The controller itself is a commercial product, the 8bitdo Zero, but [Christian] based the rest of the system on parts intended for the Adafruit PiGRRL. For the battery, [Christian] used a 4,500 mAh pack that was originally from his Nexus 7 tablet; a tip to keep in mind next time you’re looking for a big and cheap lithium-ion battery.

[Christian] notes that the case design isn’t perfect. There’s currently no external access to the Pi’s USB ports, and the recess for the 8bitdo Zero could be a few millimeters deeper. Still, we think he did an excellent job finishing the case and giving it a professional look; the case and controller look like nearly a perfect match.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Raspberry Pi put on a GameBoy costume, but the FatPiBoy does bring something new to the table with its removable controller. Of course, if you think the controller [Christian] selected for this build is a bit too small, you can always substitute your own…

Play A Claw Machine From Your Armchair

November 19, 2017 by 18 Comments

Have you ever been seduced by a claw machine in an arcade, only to have your hopes of a cuddly toy dashed as it fails to hang onto your choice? Then you’re in luck, because now you can play to your heart’s content online. [Ryan Walmsley] wants you to control his Raspberry Pi-driven claw machine.

Hardware-wise he’s replaced the original 8052 microcontroller and relay control with the Pi and a custom H-bridge PCB. We particularly light the warning: “Highish voltage”, and we feel it should appear more often. There is some code in his GitHub repository, but we suspect it doesn’t have everything.

We had a lot of fun digging into the documentation on this one. From his initial thoughts through some prototyping and a board failure, to the launch of the online version and finally a run-down of how it all works, he’s got it covered.

Sadly the machine itself isn’t online all the time, it seems to be only online when [Ryan] is at home, so if you live on the other side of the world from his British base you may be out of luck. Fortunately though his previous live streams are online, so you can see it in action on a past outing below the break.

Of course what kind of swag do you load up in a claw machine like this one? On his Twitter feed we’ve seen tests of the aliens from Toy Story (who start their existence in a claw machine so quite fitting). The majority of items show in is recorded games — now numbering over 2000 — have been our beloved companion cube.

Continue reading “Play A Claw Machine From Your Armchair” →

Homebrew SNES Mini Aims For Historical Accuracy

November 15, 2017 by 8 Comments

While “normies” are out fighting in the aisles of Walmart to snap up one of the official “Classic Mini” consoles that Nintendo lets slip out onto the market every once and awhile, hackers have been perfecting their own miniature versions of these classic gaming systems. The “Classic Mini” line is admittedly a very cool way to capitalize on nostalgic masses who have now found themselves at the age where they have disposable income, but the value proposition is kind of weak. Rather than being stuck with the handful of generation-limited games that Nintendo packed into the official products, these homebrew consoles can play thousands of ROMs from systems that stretch across multiple generations and manufacturers.

But for those old enough to remember playing on one of these systems when they first came out, these modern reincarnations always lack a certain something. It never feels quite right. That vaguely uncomfortable feeling is exactly what [ElBartoME] is aiming to eliminate with his very slick miniature SNES build. His 3D printed case doesn’t just nail the aesthetics of the original (PAL) console, but the system also uses real SNES controllers in addition to NFC “cartridges” to load different ROMs.

The project’s page on Thingiverse has all the wiring diagrams and kernel configuration info to get the internal Raspberry Pi 3 to read an original SNES controller via the GPIO pins. He also gives a full rundown on the hardware and software required to get the NFC-enabled cartridges working with EmulationStation to launch the appropriate game when inserted. Though he does admit this is quite a bit trickier than the controller setup.

[ElBartoME] has put a video up on YouTube that shows him inserting his mock cartridges and navigating the menus with an original SNES controller. If it wasn’t for the fact that the console is the size of a smartphone and the on-screen display is generations beyond what the SNES could pull off, you’d think he was playing on the real thing.

We’ve seen some incredibly impressive emulation boxes based on the Raspberry Pi, and builds which tried to embrace original hardware components, but this particular project may represent the best of both worlds.

Continue reading “Homebrew SNES Mini Aims For Historical Accuracy” →

A Dreamcast VMU With A Secret

November 14, 2017 by 8 Comments

Since the Raspberry Pi range of boards first appeared back in 2012, we’ve seen them cleverly integrated into a host of inventive form factors. Today we bring you the latest offering in this space, [Kite]’s Raspberry Pi Zero W installed in the case of a Sega Dreamcast VMU. The result is a particularly nicely executed build in which the Pi with a few of its more bulky components removed or replaced with low-profile alternatives sits on the opposite side of a custom PCB from a small LCD display.

The PCB contains the relevant buttons, audio, and power supply circuitry, and when installed in a VMU shell makes for a truly professional quality tiny handheld console. In a particularly nice touch the Pi’s USB connectivity is brought out alongside the SD card on the end of the Zero, under the cap that would have originally protected the VMU’s connector. Some minimal paring away of Sega plastic was required but the case is surprisingly unmodified, and there is plenty of space for a decent-sized battery.

The VMU, or Visual Memory Unit, makes an interesting choice for an enclosure, because it is a relic of one of console gaming’s dead ends. It was the memory card for Sega’s last foray into the console market, the Dreamcast, and unlike those of its competitors it formed a tiny handheld console in its own right. Small games for the VMU platform were bundled with full titles, and there was a simple multiplayer  system in which VMUs could be linked together. Sadly the Dreamcast lost the console war of the late 1990s and early 2000s to Sony’s PlayStation 2, but it remains a console of note.

VMUs are not the most common of gaming survivors, but we’ve shown you one or two projects using them. There was an iPod conversion back in 2010, and much more recently some mind-blowing reverse engineering and emulation on the original VMU hardware.

Thanks [Giles Burgess] for the tip.

Raspberry Pi Learns Slow Morse Code

November 13, 2017 by 11 Comments

It wasn’t long ago that you needed to know Morse code to be a ham radio operator. That requirement has gone in most places, but code is still useful and many hams use it, especially hams that like to hack. Now, hams are using the Raspberry Pi to receive highly readable Morse code using very low power. The software is QrssPiG and it can process audio or use a cheap SDR dongle.

There are a few reasons code performs better than voice and many other modes. First, building transmitters for Morse is very simple. In addition, Morse code is highly readable, even under poor conditions. This is partly because it is extremely narrow bandwidth and partly because your brain is an amazing signal processor.

Like most communication methods, the slower you go the easier it is to get a signal through. In ham radio parlance, QRS means “send slower”, so QRSS has come to mean mean “send very slowly”. So hams are using very slow code, and listening for it using computerized methods. Because the data rate is so slow, the computer has time to do extreme methods to recover the signal — essentially, it can employ an extremely narrow filter. Having a QRSS signal detected around the world from a transmitter running much less than a watt is quite common. You can see a video introduction to the mode from [K6BFA] and [KI4WKZ], below.

Continue reading “Raspberry Pi Learns Slow Morse Code” →