Raspberry Pi

1842 Articles

Atari Tape Drive Turned Security DVR

November 1, 2019 by 11 Comments

We know that a lot of our beloved readers don’t take kindly to abuse of vintage hardware, so the Atari fans in the audience may want to avert their eyes for this one. Especially if they’re particularly keen on spinning up their Jawbreaker cassette on authentic hardware, as [iot4c] has gutted an Atari XC12 Program Recorder to turn it into an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi video storage device.

Step one of this conversion was, as you might expect, removing all the original hardware from the cassette recorder case. From there, [iot4c] fitted the Raspberry Pi, a USB hard drive, and a YDS-5A DC-DC converter to power them. Depending on what the drive setup looks like, it might also make sense to add a USB powered hub. A length of Ethernet cable was left hanging out the back of the Atari XC12 so it could be plugged into the network, but a panel mount RJ45 connector could spruce things up a bit.

Of course, gutting an old piece of hardware and sticking a Pi into it isn’t exactly breaking any new ground at this point. But we did appreciate that [iot4c] went the extra mile to wire it up so the “Save” LED now doubles as a network activity indicator. Which pretty much brings it full circle in terms of functionality for a network-attached video recorder.

Earlier in the year [iot4c] converted a 65XE into a USB keyboard with the help of an Arduino Leonardo, but the vintage Atari aficionados will be happy to note that at least in that case the donor machine remained fully functional.

Raspberry Pi NAS Makes Itself At Home In Donor PC

November 1, 2019 by 49 Comments

It’s safe to say that most of us have at least one Raspberry Pi hanging from a USB cable someplace, silently hammering away at some unglamorous task that you’d rather not do on a “real” computer. With as cheap as they are, it’s not like there’s a big concern about where it sets up shop. But if you’re like [Jeremy S. Cook] and want your $35 Linux computer to be a permanent member of the family, then his tips on turning an old PC into a gloriously overkill Pi NAS may be of interest.

The main component [Jeremy] salvages from the old Lenovo desktop PC is, obviously, the case itself. Stripped of its original components, the case gives him plenty of room to mount the Pi as well as a couple of hard drives and a powered USB hub. To prevent the bottom of the Raspberry Pi from shorting out against the metal computer case, he designed and 3D printed a mount for it. Everything else is held down with hook and loop fastener, making it quick and easy to move things around and make adjustments.

While it might not be strictly necessary, [Jeremy] also took the time to salvage the computer’s old heatsink. Being far too large to fit on the Pi as-is, he ran a line down the back of it with his mill and snapped it in half. He uses a bit of thermal tape to hold the bisected heatsink onto the Pi’s SoC, with a couple pieces of electrical tape to make sure it doesn’t short out on anything.

Raspberry Pi NAS builds are exceptionally popular, and we’ve seen more than we can count over the years. You can build one out of parts from IKEA, and if you don’t mind plastic, you can always 3D print the whole thing. If you really want to go minimal, you can even hang some files on the network with little more than a Pi Zero stuck into a USB port.

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RPi4: Now Overclocked, Net-Booted, And Power-Sipping

October 30, 2019 by 58 Comments

It has now been a few months since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, and it would only be fair to describe the launch as “rocky”. While significantly faster than the Pi 3 on paper, its propensity for overheating would end up throttling down the CPU clock even with the plethora of aftermarket heatsinks and fans. The Raspberry Pi folks have been working on solutions to these teething troubles, and they have now released a bunch of updates in the form of a new bootloader, that lets the Pi 4 live up to its promise. (UPDATE: Here’s the download page and release notes)

The real meat of the update comes in an implementation of a low power mode for the USB hub. It turns out that the main source of heat on the SoC wasn’t the CPU, but the USB. Fixing the USB power consumption means that you can run the processor cool at stock speeds, and it can even be overclocked now.

There is also a new tool for updating the Pi bootloader, rpi-eeprom, that allows automatic updates for Pi 4 owners. The big change is that booting the Pi 4 over the network or an attached USB device is now a possibility, which is a must if you’re installing the Pi permanently. There are some fixes that caused problems with certain HATs, in which the Pi 4’s 3.3 V line was cycled during a reboot.

With a device as complex as a Raspberry Pi it comes as no surprise that it might ship with a few teething troubles. We’ve already covered some surrounding the USB-C power, for example. And the overheating. Where the Pi people consistently deliver though is in terms of support, both official and from the community, and we’re very pleased to see them come through in this case too.

Mozilla WebThings: An Open Platform For Building IoT Devices

October 29, 2019 by 24 Comments

Mozilla recently officially released their IoT platform. This framework comes with “Gateway” software that can run on a Raspberry Pi and a framework that can run on any number of devices.

As we’ve seen, IoT is a dubious prospect for consumers. When you throw in all the privacy issues, support issues, and end-of-life issues; it gets even worse. Nobody wants their light bulbs to stop working because a server in faraway land shut down, but that’s an hilariously feasible scenario.

WebThings comes with a lot out of the box. It comes with a user interface, logging, rules, and an easy-to-understand API. Likewise the actual framework allows for building on many common devices and can be written in Node, Python, Java, Rust, Micropython, and used as an Arduino library. This opens it up for everything from a eBay ESP32 to a particle board.

We’ve started to notice some projects that use it trickling in on the tip line and on hackaday.io. We’re interested to see what kind of community grows around this, and are curious if it won’t be too long before easy-to-hack kits start showing up on your favorite online retailers.

There’s good documentation and of course, being open source, you can check out the source for yourself.

Faux Cow Munches Faux Grass On A Faux Roomba

October 24, 2019 by 13 Comments

Out in the countryside, having a cow or to two wouldn’t be a big deal. You can have a cattle shed full of them, and no one will bat an eyelid. But what if you’re living in the big city and have no need of pet dogs or cats, but a pet cow. It wouldn’t be easy getting it to ride in the elevator, and you’d have a high chance of being very, very unpopular in the neighbourhood. [Dane & Nicole], aka [8 Bits and a Byte] were undaunted though, and built the Moomba – the Cow Roomba to keep them company in their small city apartment.

The main platform is built from a few pieces of lumber and since it needs to look like a Roomba, cut in a circular shape. Locomotion comes from two DC geared motors, and a third swivel free wheel, all attached directly to the wooden frame. The motors get their 12V juice from eight “AA” batteries. The free range bovine also needs some smarts to allow it to roam at will. For this, it uses a Raspberry Pi powered by a power bank. The Pi drives a 2-channel relay board which controls the voltage applied to the two motors. Unfortunately, this prevents the Moomba from backing out if it gets stuck at a dead end. For anyone else trying to build this it should be easy enough to fix with an electronic speed controller or even by adding a second 2-channel relay board which can reverse the voltage applied to the motors. The Moomba needs to “Moo” when it feels like, so the Raspberry Pi streams a prerecorded mp3 audio clip to a pair of USB speakers.

If you see the video after the break, you’ll notice that making the Moomba sentient is a simple matter of doing “ctrl+C” and “ctrl+V” and you’re good to go. The python code is straight forward, doing one of four actions – move forward, turn left, turn right or play audio. The code picks a random number from 0 to 3, and then performs the action associated with that number. Finally, as an added bonus, the Moomba gets a lush carpet of artificial green grass and it’s free to roam the range.

At first sight, many may quip “where’s the hack” ? But simple, easy to execute projects like these are ideal for getting younglings started down the path to hacking, with adult supervision. The final result may appear frivolous, but it’ll excite young minds as they learn from watching.

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The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear LCDs

October 22, 2019 by 18 Comments

Whether it was rays from the Sun that made a 150 million kilometer trip just to ruin your day or somebody’s unreasonably bright aftermarket headlights, at some point or another we’ve all experienced the discomfort of bright spots in our eyes. But short of wearing welder’s goggles all the time, what can we do? Luckily for us, [Nick Bild] has come up with a solution. Sort of.

Modifying the LCD so it can be seen through.

By adding LCDs to a pair of standard sunglasses, [Nick] has created something he’s calling “Light Brakes”. The idea is that the LCDs, having their backings removed, can essentially be used as programmable shutters to block out a specific part of the image that’s passing through them. With the addition of a Raspberry Pi and a camera, the Light Brakes can identify an unusually bright source of light and block it from the wearer’s vision by drawing a sufficiently large blob on the LCDs.

At least, that’s the idea. As you can see in the video after the break, the LCDs ability to block out a moving source of light is somewhat debatable. It’s also unclear what, if any, effect the “blocking” would have on UV, so you definitely shouldn’t try looking at the sun with a pair of these.

That said, a refined version of the concept could have some very interesting applications. For instance, imagine a pair of glasses that could actively block out advertisements or other unpleasant images from your field of vision. If this all sounds a bit like something out of an episode of Black Mirror, that’s because it is.

Attentive readers may have noticed that this isn’t the first time these fashionable frames have graced the pages of Hackaday. Over the summer they were used in a very interesting field of view home automation project that [Nick] was working on. This also isn’t the first time he’s stuck a pair of small LCDs in front of his eyes in the name of progress. We’re starting to identify something of a trend here, though we certainly aren’t complaining.

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Advertise Your Conference Schedule Via SSID

October 22, 2019 by 11 Comments

Whether it’s been a Python script running on a Linux box or an ESP8266, abusing using WiFi SSIDs to convey messages is hardly a new trick. But for DerbyCon 2019, [vgrsec] wanted to do put together something a little unique. Dare we say, even useful. Rather than broadcast out SSID obscenities or memes, this Raspberry Pi created fake WiFi networks that told everyone what talks were coming up.

The concept here is fairly simple: there’s a text file in /boot that contains the truncated names of all the talks and workshops in the schedule, one per line, and each line starts with the time that particular event is scheduled for. The script that [vgrsec] wrote opens this text file, searches for the lines beginning with the current time, and generates the appropriate SSIDs. With the number of tracks being run at DerbyCon, that meant there could be as many as five SSIDs generated at once.

Now in theory that would be enough to pull off this particular hack, but there’s a problem. The lack of an RTC on the Raspberry Pi means it can’t keep time very well, and the fact that the WiFi adapter would be busy pumping out SSIDs meant the chances of it being able to connect to the Internet and pull down the current time over NTP weren’t very good.

As the system was worthless without a reliable way of keeping time, [vgrsec] added an Adafruit PiRTC module to the mix. Once the time has been synchronized, the system could then run untethered via a USB battery bank. We might have put it into an enclosure so it looks a little less suspect, but then again, there were certainly far more unusual devices than this to be seen at DerbyCon.

Of course, if you’re OK with just dumping the entire schedule out at once and letting the user sift through the mountain of bogus SSIDs themselves, that’s even easier to accomplish.