Raspberry Pi

1853 Articles

New Version Of Raspberry Pi Thin Client

August 16, 2015 by 18 Comments

It is funny how many times you use your full-blown PC as a terminal to another computer (which is quite often not as capable as the terminal computer). If all you need is a remote display and keyboard, a Raspberry PI would be enough. One of the newer Pi 2 boards would be even better.

You could roll your own set of remote access software, but you don’t have to. [Gibbio] has already created a thin client image called RPiTC and recently released version 1.4. The build supports diverse remote protocols including Microsoft Remote Desktop, Citrix, VMWare, and even X3270.

It supports WiFi and VPN. We were a little disappointed that it didn’t seem to have any serial communication programs (in case we wanted to build one into an old TeleType case). Of course, it is just a Linux system so you can install anything you want or need.

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Commodore C16 Resurrection With A Raspberry Pi

August 16, 2015 by 27 Comments

[lactobacillusprime] had a non-working Commodore C16 and too many Raspberry Pi computers, so he decided to bring the C16 back to life by emulating it on the Pi. At the heart of the project is the Pi, along with a small board that converts the old style Commodore keyboards (and joysticks) to a USB port.

Once you have the keyboard as a USB port, the rest of the project is more or less mechanics and software. [lactobacillusprime] did a nice job of getting everything in the new case, along with all the I/O wires routed through the existing ports. For software, Emulation Station does the job of launching the Commodore emulation on the Pi.

Of course, there’s no reason to limit yourself to just the Commodore emulator. Emulation Station along with the right back end emulators will allow this machine to play games that no real Commodore C16 could.

Of course, we were happiest to see him boot up Commodore 64 BASIC. Perhaps we should complete all those half finished C64 BASIC projects we started back in the 1980’s. In general, we hate to see old computers gutted instead of repaired, but at least this one will continue running its software. If you are upset about seeing a machine gutted,  you can always switch over to our previous coverage of putting Commodore guts in a new box.

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Covert Cricket Score Tracker Gets Around Office Rules

August 15, 2015 by 15 Comments

[Rohit Gupta] was looking for a stealthy way to keep up with the scores for his favorite game: cricket. Unfortunately, his office blocked access to most sites where he could watch the game, so he came up with a covert way to track the score on a small LCD screen. Using a Raspberry Pi and the web scraping program BeautifulSoup, he wrote a program that grabbed the score once a minute, and displayed it on a screen salvaged from a Nokia 5510 cell phone, driven through the Adafruit 5510 Python display library. Web scraping is a technique where a program grabs a web page, scrapes all of the content off it and processes it so only the data that is needed remains.

[Rohit] doesn’t name the web site that he scraped the score from, but there are two good reasons for that. Firstly, this hack relies on his office not blocking it, and secondly, many web sites frown on web scraping like this, as doing it too often can overload their servers, and you obviously don’t see the ads that the site is running. So, it is a technique that should be used with some caution. That aside, this is  a great example of a stealthy way to display information that you want to track, but without obnoxious (and obvious) alerts popping up on screen. And, given that cricket games can often go on for several days, that’s a good way to keep track of the game you love and keep your job.

Need a little primer on web scraping? Check out this guide.

Junked Inspection Camera Given 15-Year Face-lift With Raspberry Pi

August 13, 2015 by 28 Comments

The nice thing with having a hacker cred is that family and friends are always on the lookout for stuff they think might be useful to you. [Craig Hollabaugh]’s son-in-law found an inspection camera and thought it would be handy for his hobby work. The MagniSight Explorer was first introduced in 2001. It is good for surface mount board work and inspection, except that its analog 480p video is quite dated by today’s standards. So [Craig] upgraded it for crystal clear 1080P/30 video and 5 megapixel images using a $35 Raspberry Pi 2 and a $26 Raspberry Pi Camera Module. After the upgrade, the unit is now a great tool for SMT rework.

There’s not a lot to the upgrade, but [Craig] gives a nice rundown in the 15 minute video of the MagniSight’s internals. He shows us the original analog camera module and its video card, which is able to do some additional processing like black and white output and reverse video (negative). As he mentions, it would be easy for him to do the same via software on the Raspberry Pi. A video camera lens takes care of magnification and two shafts coupled to it via flat belts (rubber bands?) take care of zoom and focus. A front coated mirror angled 45 degrees in front of the lens turns the optical path 90 degrees to allow the lens/camera to “look down”. After experimenting a bit to find the correct focal spot behind the lens unit for the Raspberry Pi camera, he covered the camera module with insulation tape and then just glued it to the old camera mount. After hooking it up to an HDMI monitor, the results are quite nice and he reckons he can easily work with components down to 0402 in size.

He’s got a couple of more upgrades in mind to make the system even better. He plans to replace the existing compact fluorescent lamps with a string of LED’s which will provide more uniform illumination. Plus, he can control their brightness, and selectively turn them on or off to get the optimum lighting. The other interesting upgrade would be to add stepper motors to the X-Y translation stage and automate their movement. After looking up a board file and its BoM, he may even be able to search for a part designator and move the stage to bring the part into focus.

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Raspberry Pi And Windows 10 IoT Core: A Huge Letdown

August 13, 2015 by 222 Comments

Last Spring, Microsoft unveiled their plan for Windows and the Internet of Things. It starts with the Raspberry Pi and Windows 10 IoT Core – a stripped down system with Windows API calls running on an ARM architecture. Yes, Microsoft is finally moving away from the desktop, building a platform for a billion Internet of Things things, or filling the gap left by tens of thousands of POS terminals and ATMs running XP being taken offline. Either one is accurate.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the first public release of Windows 10 IoT Core. This is the review, but here’s the takeaway: run. Run as fast as you can away from Windows IoT. It’s not worth your time unless you have a burning desire to write apps for Windows, and even then you could do a better job with less effort with any Linux distro.

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Raspberry Pi Field Unit (RPFU)

August 13, 2015 by 35 Comments

Raspberry Pis are great for tons of projects, but if you want to use them outside, you’re going to need a waterproof enclosure. Not happy with what was available, [Jay Doscher] went all out and created the Raspberry Pi Field Unit — a piece of tech that looks straight out of the Call of Duty franchise.

Wanting it to be extra durable, [Jay] started with a Pelican Case 1300 — the standard in electronics protection. These come with a Pelican panel mount, so he had some plastic laser cut specifically to fit the panel mount, and attach all of his components. Speaking of components, he got only the best — inside is:

  • A Raspberry Pi 2 with a few PIHATs (permanent prototyping shield)
  • A 10.1″ IPS display
  • A high power wireless USB dongle
  • Weather proof USB and LAN connectors
  • An RTC for when it’s off the network
  • A 12V power supply for running off solar panels
  • DC-to-DC adapters to bring it down to 5V
  • A whole bunch of hardware from McMaster-Carr

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Polarization Camera Views The Invisible

July 28, 2015 by 55 Comments

Light polarization is an interesting phenomenon that is extremely useful in many situations… but human eyes are blind to detecting any polarization. Luckily, [David] has built a polarization-sensitive camera using a Raspberry Pi and a few off-the-shelf components that allows anyone to view polarization. [David] lists the applications as:

A polarimetric imager to detect invisible pollutants, locate landmines, identify cancerous tissues, and maybe even observe cloaked UFOs!

The build uses a standard Raspberry Pi 2 and a 5 megapixel camera which sits behind a software-controlled electro-optic polarization modulator that was scavenged from an auto-darkening welding mask. The mask is essentially a specialized LCD screen, which is easily electronically controlled. [David] whipped up some scripts on the Pi that control the screen, which is how the camera is able to view various polarizations of light. Since the polarization modulator is software-controlled, light from essentially any angle can be analyzed in any way via the computer.

There is a huge amount of information about this project on the project site, as well as on the project’s official blog. There have been other projects that use polarized light for specific applications, but this is the first we’ve seen of a software-controlled polarizing camera intended for general use that could be made by pretty much anyone.

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