Toddler Jukebox Requires No Quarters Or Button Mashing

October 9, 2014 by Kristina Panos 18 Comments

Ahh, toddlers. They’re as ham-fisted as they are curious. It’s difficult to have to say no when they want to touch and engage with the things that we love and want them to play with. [Shawn] feels this way about his son’s interest in the family Sonos system and engineered an elegant solution he calls Song Blocks.

The Sonos sits on a dresser that hides a RasPi B+. Using bare walnut blocks numbered 1-12, his son can use the Sonos without actually touching it. Each block has a magnet and an NFC tag. When his son sticks a block on the face of the right drawer containing embedded magnets and an NFC controller board, the B+ reads the tag and plays the song. It also tweets the song selection and artist.

The blocks themselves are quite beautiful. [Shawn] numbered them with what look like Courier New stamps and then burned the numbers in with a soldering iron. His Python script is on the git, and he has links to the libraries used on his build page. The Song Blocks demo video is waiting for you after the jump.

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120 Node Rasperry Pi Cluster For Website Testing

October 7, 2014 by Adam Fabio 36 Comments

[alexandros] works for resin.io, a website which plans to allow users to update firmware on embedded devices with a simple git push command. The first target devices will be Raspberry Pis running node.js applications. How does one perform alpha testing while standing up such a service? Apparently by building a monster tower of 120 Raspberry Pi computers with Adafruit 2.8″ PiTFT displays. We’ve seen some big Raspberry Pi clusters before, but this one may take the cake.

The tower is made up of 5 hinged sections of plywood. Each section contains 24 Pis, two Ethernet switches and two USB hubs. The 5 sections can be run on separate networks, or as a single 120 node monster cluster. When the sections are closed in, they form a pentagon-shaped tower that reminds us of the classic Cray-1 supercomputer.

Rasberry Pi machines are low power, at least when compared to a desktop PC. A standard Raspi consumes less than 2 watts, though we’re sure the Adafruit screen adds to the consumption. Even with the screens, a single 750 watt ATX supply powers the entire system.

[alexandros] and the resin.io team still have a lot of testing to do, but they’re looking for ideas on what to do with their cluster once they’re done pushing firmware to it. Interested? Check out their Reddit thread!

Feed That Shoulder Boom Box With A Wrist Tune Transmitter

October 5, 2014 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Next time you’re strutting down the block with that hi-fi on you shoulder, don’t subject yourself to the limitations of a radio station’s tight playlist or the short run time of a cassette tape. Pack your tunes on your wrist and beam them directly with this wearable FM transmitter. No wires… it’s like the future is now!

The Raspberry Pi has proven itself to be a dependable FM transmitter. This project follows in those footsteps but moves the goal line a few leaps further. The build has a full user interface which will make it easy to adapt to just about any application you can imagine. And the added twist is shown in the latter third of the video after the break. [Navic209] has included a microphone in the design which allows the wearer to transmit voice to an appropriately tuned radio. It gives the device a very Dick Tracey-esque feel.

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Supercapacitors For The Raspberry Pi

October 4, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 45 Comments

As versatile as the Raspberry Pi is, it has a weakness when it needs to be able to shut down properly during a power outage, especially when handling data-sensitive or industrial applications. To solve this problem, [Pavol Sedlacek] has created a supercapacitor-based UPS specifically for the Raspberry Pi that gives it enough time to properly halt its processes and shut down if it detects a power failure.

The device is called the Juice4Halt. It uses a DC-DC converter to provide power to the Pi from the normal power supply and to charge the supercapacitors during normal operation. It is bidirectional, so in the event of a power failure it works in reverse to take power from the capacitors and feed it back to the Pi. A second DC-DC converter handles power from an external power supply.

A side effect of using supercapacitors as a UPS is that they can also help the Pi survive brownouts. The project site has an incredible amount of detail about the functionality of the device, including circuit diagrams and the source code. We’ve seen other supercapacitor-based UPS units before but this particular one is much more robust and would be truly at home in any industrial or other sensitive setting.

Camera Mod Lets This Raspberry Pi Shoot In Different Spectrums

October 3, 2014 by James Hobson 7 Comments

For [Peter Le Roux’] first “real” electronics project, he decided to make a camera based off the venerable Raspberry Pi platform. But he didn’t just want a regular camera, he wanted something that could shoot in near IR wave lengths…

It’s a well-known fact that you can remove the IR blocking filter from most cameras to create a quasi IR camera hack – heck, that hack has been around nearly as long as we have! The problem is even if you let the IR light into the camera’s sensor, you still get all the other light unless you have some kind of filter. There are different ways of doing this, so [Peter] decided to do them all with an adjustable wheel to flip through all the different filters.

He designed the case after the PiBow enclosure – you can see our full Pi Case Roundup here – and had it all laser cut out of wood. Stick around after the break to see a nice explanation of the light spectrum and the various filters [Peter] uses.

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Sweet Stepper Of [Jeremy]’s Rocks Out With Its Box Out

September 18, 2014 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

Inspired by the floppy drive orchestras of others, [Jeremy] has built a Pi-driven MIDI music box with stepper motor resonators and outlined the build on hackaday.io.

Control for the motors comes from an Iteaduino Mega 2560. The music starts as a MIDI file, gets processed into a text file, and is played over serial by a Raspberry Pi. He’s added percussion using K’NEX instruments and 9g servos, which we think is a nice touch. It can be powered via LiPo or from the wall, and [Jeremy] baked in protection against blowing up the battery. As he explains in the tour video after the break, the box is clamped to a wooden table to provide richer sound.

[Jeremy]’s favorite part of the build was enclosing the thing as it was his first time using panel-mount components. Stick around to see a walk-through of the guts and a second video demonstrating its musical prowess.

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LEDs Turn This Paper Map Into A Tram Tracker

September 15, 2014 by Rick Osgood 14 Comments

Public transit can be a wonderful thing. It can also be annoying if the trains are running behind schedule. These days, many public transit systems are connected to the Internet. This means you can check if your train will be on time at any moment using a computer or smart phone. [Christoph] wanted to take this concept one step further for the Devlol hackerspace is Linz, Austria, so he built himself an electronic tracking system (Google translate).

[Christoph] started with a printed paper map of the train system. This was placed inside what began as an ordinary picture frame. Then, [Christoph] strung together a series of BulletPixel2 LEDs in parallel. The BulletPixel2 LEDs are 8mm tri-color LEDs that also contain a small controller chip. This allows them to be controlled serially using just one wire. It’s similar to having an RGB LED strip, minus the actual strip. [Christoph] used 50 LEDs when all was said and done. The LEDs were mounted into the photo frame along the three main train lines; red, green, and blue. The color of the LED obviously corresponds to the color of the train line.

The train location data is pulled from the Internet using a Raspberry Pi. The information must be pulled constantly in order to keep the map accurate and up to date. The Raspberry Pi then communicates with an Arduino Uno, which is used to actually control the string of LEDs. The electronics can all be hidden behind the photo frame, out of sight. The final product is a slick “radar” for the local train system.