What’s In A Raspberry Pi Processor Update?

September 30, 2021 by Jenny List 21 Comments

Those of us who have followed the Raspberry Pi over the years will be familiar with the various revisions of the little board, with their consequent new processors. What may be less obvious is that within the lifetime of any chip there will often be minor version changes, usually to fix bugs or to fine-tune production processes. They’re the same chip, but sometimes with a few extra capabilities. [Jeff Geerling] didn’t miss this when the Raspberry Pi 400 had a BCM2711 with a newer version number than that on the Pi 4, and now he’s notices the same chip on Pi 4 boards.

Why might they run two different revisions of the chip in parallel? It seems that the update changes the amount of memory addressable by the eMMC and the PCIe bus, the former could only see the first 1GB and the latter the first 3Gb. For the lower-spec Pi 4 boards this doesn’t present a problem, but for those with 8 gigabytes of memory it could clearly be an issue. Thus the Pi 400 and the top spec Pi 4 now have a newer BCM2711 version. This will almost certainly pass unnoticed for the average Raspberry Pi OS user, but the extra memory addressing space should be of interest for hardware experimenters wishing to expose that PCIe bus and talk to peripherals such as a GPU. That said, though he suggests the Compute Module 4 has the newer revision, his own experiments were unsuccessful.

[Editor’s Note: our own overclocking experiments show the C-version SOCs to run cooler/faster than their B counterparts, so it’s nice to have the better chips in the “normal” Pi form factor and not just the Pi 400 and compute modules.]

A conventiongoer plays Pokemon on a working Color Game Boy costume.

Convention Plays Pokemon On Giant Color Game Boy Costume

September 29, 2021 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Standard cosplay is fun and all, but what is there for admirers to do but look you up and down and nitpick the details? Interactive cosplay, now that’s where it’s at. [Jaryd Giesen] knows this, and managed to pull together a working color Game Boy costume in a few days.

The original plan was to use a small projector on an arm, like one of those worm lights that helped you see the screen, but [Jaryd] ended up getting a secondhand monitor and strapping it to his chest. Then he took the rest of the build from there. Things are pretty simple underneath all that cardboard: there’s a Raspberry Pi running the RetroPie emulator, a Pico to handle the inputs, and two batteries — one beefy 12,000 mAH battery for the monitor, and a regular power pack for the Pi and the Pico.

As you’ll see in the build and demo video after the break, nearly 100 people stopped to push [Jaryd]’s buttons. They didn’t get very far in the game, but it sure looks like they had fun trying.

Since we’re still in a pandemic, you may want to consider incorporating a mask into your Halloween costume this year. Just a thought.

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A Raspberry Pi-based COVID Green Pass validator verifies a QR code on a phone.

COVID Green Pass Validator With Raspberry Pi

September 25, 2021 by Kristina Panos No comments

It seems like every nation is dealing with the plague a little differently. In June, the EU instated a COVID Green Pass which comes in the form of a paper or digital QR code. It was designed to grease the wheels of travel throughout Europe and allow access to nursing homes. As of early August, the Green Pass is now required of those 12 and older in Italy to gain access to bars and restaurants, museums, theaters, etc. — anywhere people gather in sizeable groups. The Green Pass shows that you’ve either been vaccinated, have had COVID and recovered, or you have tested negative, and there are different half-lives for each condition: nine months for vaccinated, six for recovered, and just forty-eight hours for a negative test.

[Luca Dentella] has built a Green Pass validator using a Raspberry Pi and a Raspi camera. Actual validation must be done through the official app, so this project is merely for educational purposes. Here’s how it works: the user data including their status and the date/time of pass issuance are encoded into a JSON file, then into CBOR, then it is digitally signed for authenticity. After that, the information is zipped up into a base-45 string, which gets represented as a QR code on your phone. Fortunately, [Luca] found the Minister of Health’s GitHub, which does the hard work of re-inflating the JSON object.

[Luca]’s Pi camera reads in the QR and does complete validation using two apps — a camera client written in Python that finds QRs and sends them to the validation server, written in Node.js. The validation server does formal verification including verifying the signature and the business rules (e.g. has it been more than 48 hours since Karen tested negative?) Fail any of these and the red LED lights up; pass them all and you get the green light. Demo video is after the break.

Are you Canadian? Then check this out, eh?

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Even Faster Fourier Transforms On The Raspbery Pi Zero

September 22, 2021 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Oftentimes in computing, we start doing a thing, and we’re glad we’re doing it. But then we realise, it would be much nicer if we could do it much faster. [Ricardo de Azambuja] was in just such a situation when working with the Raspberry Pi Zero, and realised that there were some techniques that could drastically speed up Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) on the platform. Thus, he got to work.

The trick is using the Raspberry Pi Zero’s GPU to handle the FFTs instead of the CPU itself. This netted Ricardo a 7x speed upgrade for 1-dimensional FFTs, and a 2x speed upgrade for 2-dimensional operations.

The idea was cribbed from work we featured many years ago, which provided a similar speed up to the very first Raspberry Pi. Given the Pi Zero uses the same SoC as the original Raspberry Pi but at a higher clock rate, this makes perfect sense. However, in this case, [Ricardo] implemented the code in Python instead of C as suits his use case.

[Ricardo] uses the code with his Maple Syrup Pi Camera project, which pairs a Coral USB machine learning accelerator with a Pi Zero and a camera to achieve tasks such as automatic licence plate recognition or facemask detection. Fun!

Home Automation Terminal With Cyberpunk Style

September 22, 2021 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

The OLKB-Terminal designed by [Jeff Eberl] doesn’t have a battery, can’t fold up (even if it seems like it could), and is only portable in the sense that you can literally pick it up and move it somewhere else. So arguably it’s not really a cyberdeck per se, but it certainly does look the part. If you need to be furiously typing out lines of code in a dimly lit near-future hacker’s den, this should do you nicely.

[Jeff] has provided everything you’d need to recreate this slick little machine on your own, though he does warn that some of the hardware decisions were based simply on what he had on-hand at the time, and that better or cheaper options may exist. So for example if you don’t want to use the Raspberry Pi 4, you can easily swap it out for some other single-board computer. Though if you want to change something better integrated, like the LCD panel, it will probably require modifications to the 3D printed components.

The rear electronics tray offers plenty of room for expansion.

The slim mechanical keyboard that [Jeff] used for the OLKB-Terminal, which in some ways set the tone for the whole design, is actually a completely separate open source project from [Victor Lucachi]. The VOID30 is a 3D printed, 30% handwired ortholinear keyboard that runs the popular QMK firmware on an Arduino Pro Micro. He’s implemented a couple tweaks, namely using a USB-C equipped Arduino clone, but otherwise it’s the same as upstream. So if you’re not in the market for a little bedside cyberpunk terminal but love its sleek keyboard, you’re in luck.

Software wise, [Jeff] has the OLKB-Terminal hooked into his larger Home Assistant system. This gives him an attractive status display of the whole network, and with just a tap on the terminal’s seven inch touch screen, he’s able to directly control devices around the home. That said, at the end of the day it’s just a Raspberry Pi, so it could really run whatever you want.

While cyberdeck builds might be all the rage right now, we do appreciate projects that bring those same design tenets to the desktop. From the gorgeous faux-retro designs of [Oriol Ferrer Mesià] to modernized pieces of vintage hardware, truly personal computers that can be easily upgraded and repaired don’t have to be limited to something you can lug around with a guitar strap.

Astro Pi Mk II, The New Raspberry Pi Hardware Headed To The Space Station

September 22, 2021 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

Back in 2015, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Tim Peake brought a pair of specially equipped Raspberry Pi computers, nicknamed Izzy and Ed, onto the International Space Station and invited students back on Earth to develop software for them as part of the Astro Pi Challenge. To date, more than 50,000 young people have had their code run on one of the single-board computers; making them arguably the most popular, and surely the most traveled, Raspberry Pis in the solar system.

While Izzy and Ed are still going strong, the ESA has decided it’s about time these veteran Raspberries finally get the retirement they’re due. Set to make the journey to the ISS in December aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon, the new Astro Pi MK II hardware looks quite similar to the original 2015 version at first glance. But a peek inside its 6063-grade aluminium flight case reveals plenty of new and improved gear, including a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8 GB RAM.

The beefier hardware will no doubt be appreciated by students looking to push the envelope. While the majority of Python programs submitted to the Astro Pi program did little more than poll the current reading from the unit’s temperature or humidity sensors and scroll messages for the astronauts on the Astro Pi’s LED matrix, some of the more advanced projects were aimed at performing legitimate space research. From using the onboard camera to image the Earth and make weather predictions to attempting to map the planet’s magnetic field, code submitted from teams of older students will certainly benefit from the improved computational performance and expanded RAM of the newest Pi.

As with the original Astro Pi, the ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have shared plenty of technical details about these space-rated Linux boxes. After all, students are expected to develop and test their code on essentially the same hardware down here on Earth before it gets beamed up to the orbiting computers. So let’s take a quick look at the new hardware inside Astro Pi MK II, and what sort of research it should enable for students in 2022 and beyond.

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Retro TV Shows Off Family Memories With Raspberry Pi

September 21, 2021 by Tom Nardi 21 Comments

Fascinated by the look and feel of vintage electronics, [Democracity] decided to turn an old Sony Micro TV into a digital picture frame that would cycle through old family photos in style. You’d think the modern IPS widescreen display would stick out like a sore thumb, but thanks to the clever application of a 1/16″ black acrylic bezel and the original glass still installed in the front panel, the new hardware blends in exceptionally well.

Driving the new display is a Raspberry Pi 4, which might sound overkill, but considering the front-end is being provided by DAKboard through Chromium, we can understand the desire for some extra horsepower and RAM. If it were us we’d probably have gone with a less powerful board and a few Python scripts, and of course there are a few turn-key open source solutions out there, though we’ll admit that this is probably faster and easier to setup.

[Democracity] provides some general information on how he took apart the TV and grafted in the new gear, but of course the exact steps will vary a bit depending on which old TV you end up sending to the big parts bin in the sky. We did like that he made sure to keep all the mechanisms for the buttons and knobs intact, so even if they don’t do anything, you can still fiddle around with them.

Otherwise, his steps for setting up a headless Chromium instance are probably more widely applicable. As are the tips about setting up this particular LCD module and getting the display rotated into the proper orientation. If you just follow along for that part of the guide, you can spin up your own stand-alone Raspberry Pi DAKboard endpoint to take the service for a test drive.

It probably won’t come as much of a surprise to hear that this isn’t the first time [Democracity] has upgraded a piece of vintage hardware. Back in 2017, we covered this gorgeous art deco speaker that he outfitted with RGB LEDs and an Amazon Echo Dot. As with the previous post, it’s likely some commenters will be upset that a vintage piece of gear has been gutted for this project. But we’d counter that by saying his family is going to get a lot more enjoyment out of this beautiful piece of hardware now than they would have if it was still collecting dust in a closet.