PocketPi Is Exactly What It Sounds Like

May 16, 2019 by Lewin Day 39 Comments

The Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers are remarkably useful things, but they generally require some accessories to be hooked up to become a useful computing platform. [Ramin Assadollahi] wanted a pocket-sized computer to work on without the distractions so common on smartphones, so whipped up the PocketPi to do the job.

It’s a testament to the popularity of the Raspberry Pi platform that [Ramin] was able to put this project together with so many off-the-shelf parts. A Pi Zero W was chosen for its compact size, while a HyperPixel 4.0 screen was chosen for its high resolution in a small package. These parts were combined with a 3000 mAh battery, Adafruit Powerboost 1000C and a small USB keyboard and hub. It’s all wrapped up in a tidy 3D printed package, giving the pocket-sized computer a classic late-1980s look, albeit with much more horsepower under the hood.

It looks like a fun and useful machine to have when out and about, and the full QWERTY keyboard makes input easy. We’ve seen [Ramin]’s work before – with last year’s StickPi implementing an e-paper display. Video after the break.

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This Is The Raspberry Pi Mini Laptop That We Want

May 14, 2019 by Jenny List 52 Comments

In the seven years since the Raspberry Pi was first launched to an expectant audience we have seen many laptops featuring the fruit-themed single board computers. Some of them have been pretty jaw-dropping in their quality, so for a new one to make us stop and gape it needs to be something really special. On cue, here comes [Igor Brkić] with one of the neatest efforts we’ve seen, a high quality Pi laptop that’s smaller in frontal area than many smartphones.

At its heart is a Pimoroni Hyperpixel touchscreen HAT, and a Pi sitting behind it that has been stripped of all bulky connectors to reduce its height. The keyboard is a mini Bluetooth affair, and power comes courtesy of a deconstructed USB power bank with a lithium-ion pouch cell. The whole is contained within a neatly designed 3D-printed clamshell enclosure, making for a tiny and very neat laptop. We want one, and now you probably do too. (We wouldn’t say “no” to some level shifters and a GPIO port…)

If we had to pick another high-quality Pi laptop to compare this one with, it would have to be this one with a Psion-inspired hinge.

Wii Nunchuk Gets A Built-in Raspberry Pi Zero

May 13, 2019 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

The Wii controller will likely go down in history as the hacker’s favorite repurposed input device, and there’s no question that the Raspberry Pi is the community’s top pick in terms of Linux single board computers. So it should come as little surprise that somebody has finally given us the cross-over episode that the hacking community deserves: the PiChuk, a Pi Zero inside of Nintendo’s motion-sensing “nunchuk”.

Veterans of Wii Sports might be wondering how the hero of our story, a hacker by the name of [keycaps], managed to pull off such a feat. The Pi Zero is small, but it’s not that small. The trick is that the case of the nunchuk has been extended by way of a new 3D printed bottom half.

There’s more than just a Pi Zero along for the ride, as well. [keycaps] has manged to sneak in a 750 mAh LiPo and an Adafruit Powerboost, making the device a completely self-contained system. Interestingly, the original nunchuk PCB remains more or less untouched, with just a couple of wires connected to the Pi’s GPIO ports so it can read the button and stick states over I2C.

We know you’re wondering why [keycaps] went through the trouble of breaking out the HDMI port on the bottom. It turns out, the PiChuk is being used to drive a Vufine wearable display; think Google Glass, but without the built-in computing power. The analog stick and motion sensing capabilities of the controller should make for a very natural input scheme, as far as wearable computers go.

So not only could the PiChuk make for an awesome wireless input device for your next project, it’s actually a pretty strong entry into the long line of wearable computing devices based on the Pi. Usually these have included a DIY version of the distinctive Google Glass display, but offloading that onto a commercially available version is certainly a lot easier.

Python And Pi Provide Heads Up Display For Your Experimental Airplane

May 10, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

You shouldn’t be looking at screens when you’re driving, but what about a heads-up display? A screen that could put relevant information in your field of vision would be great, even more so if it used a Raspberry Pi. That’s exactly what [John] did, only he did it with an airplane.

First up, the legality of this build. [John]’s plane is registered as experimental, which, provided you know what you’re doing, is pretty close to ‘anything goes’ as you would want in a manned aircraft. [John] has a sufficient number of hours in his log book, and he’s built a Zenith 701.

For hardware, the hard part of this build is constructing a heads-up display. Fortunately, aftermarket HUDs exist, and [John] is using a Kivic projector, a $200 piece of equipment that’s readily available on Amazon. If you need a HUD for your car, there you go. The software is another thing entirely, with the goal of having the software decoupled from the display and data sources. This is somewhat easy to accomplish with a Raspberry Pi; the display is actually just some minimal text-based blocky graphics built in PyGame. This build is also decoupled from the data sources by building this as a user interface for Stratux, an independent Raspberry Pi-based ADS-B receiver for pilots.

There are several views available with this HUD, with the AHRS + ADS-B providing information on the aircraft’s attitude and altitude, along with a few indicators of the nearest planes. The traffic view expands on the ADS-B data, showing the nearest eight or so aircraft in the air, with a range, bearing, and difference in altitude. There’s a diagnostic window, and since [John]’s plane is a backcountry STOL thingamado that can hover in a strong wind, there’s also a digital version of a norden bombsight. It’s for dropping bags of flour onto a grass strip. You can check out [John]’s entire AirVenture presentation of the build below, with all the code available here.

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Building A Raspberry Pi Rover: My Big Fat Linux Weekend

May 9, 2019 by Lewin Day 46 Comments

Linux! Such a wonderful, rich, capable operating system has blessed us, and all for the low, low cost of absolutely free. It’s under the hood of countless servers, computers, phones, and embedded devices, and is the go-to solution for when you want to get the job done right. Why, then, does it curse me so?

Prologue

The penguin giveth, and the penguin taketh away.

My experience with the almighty penguin stretches back to the late 90s. Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, so most weekends were spent installing whatever came on the front of the latest computer mags. I wish I was kidding, but I’m really not.

Way back when, us kids would load the latest Red Hat or Fedora distribution onto our hand-me-down Pentium IIs, trying not to accidentally wipe our hard drive in the process. Limited to dial-up internet and very few help resources, it was pretty common that you’d spend hours watching progress bars tick over, only to wind up with no working mouse, or an X server that simply refused to start for man or God. Did I mention we did all this for fun?

Trying To Get Some Work Done

Of course, after growing up, real life and real responsibilities take over. Now, if I’m using Linux, it’s because I’ve got a job to do, not just because there’s nothing good to watch on Cartoon Network this weekend. I consider myself to be a fairly intermediate user. I’ve compiled a few things successfully, understood how to work with a variety of package managers, and once, just once, even managed to connect to a wireless network from the command line. There’s not a whole lot that phases me in this realm anymore.

For the past few years, I’ve been slowly working on a little rover by the name of TKIRV, powered by a Raspberry Pi. It was overdue for a camera upgrade, as I’d been using an old Microsoft webcam for far too long. I ordered a nice 1080p Raspberry Pi camera, and naturally the parts marinated in their boxes for a good couple of years. Finally, after much procrastination, I was eager to get my wheely boi back out on the road.

This was but the beginning my weekend slaying embedded Linux dragons.

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Wandel Weaponizes Waste With Lego And A Raspberry Pi

May 9, 2019 by Inderpreet Singh 6 Comments

Before 3D printers, there was LEGO. And the little bricks are still useful for putting something together on the quick. Proof is YouTuber [Matthias Wandel]’s awesome bottle cap shooter build that uses rudimentary DIY computer vision to track you and then launch a barrage of plastic pieces at you.

This is an amazing project that has a bit of something for everyone. Lets start with the LEGO. [Matthias Wandel] starts with making a crossbow designed launcher and does an awesome job with showing us how it works in a video. The mechanism is an auto reloading and firing system that can be connected to a stepper motor. Next comes the pan and tilt mechanism which allows the turret to take better aim at moving targets: more LEGO and stepper motors.

The target tracker uses color matching in a program that curiously uses no OpenCV. It compares consecutive frame and then filters out red objects – the largest red dot is it. Since using a fisheye lens on the Raspbery Pi camera adds distortion, [Matthias Wandel] uses a jig made with more Legos to calibrate the image.

The final testing involved having his own child walk around the room being hunted but the autonomous machine. Kids do love toys even if they are trying to shoot bottle caps at them.

Want more Lego inspiration? Check out the Lego Quadcopter Mod and the Lego Tank with the ESP8266.

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Thumbs Up For This CRT Handheld Gaming Console

May 6, 2019 by Sven Gregori 10 Comments

Despite all the progress video game graphics have made, it is safe to say that we won’t see any decline in oldschool 8-bit games any time soon. For some it’s about nostalgia, for others it’s just a great and simple-enough first step into game development itself. For [gocivici] it was a bit of both when he built this camcorder style, one-button gaming console.

With a Raspberry Pi Zero running PICO-8 at its core, [gocivici] salvaged the viewfinder of an old camcorder for the display, and that way turned it into a whole other kind of handheld console. For full ergonomic handling, one single, thumb-operated push button serves as only control option. This of course makes it a bit challenging to re-use existing games that would require more input options, so he and some friends decided to just write a suitable game on their own with the hopes that others might follow.

Unfortunately we don’t see a lot of projects using these old camcorder viewfinders, and considering modern LCD and OLED options it’s not really that surprising, but there’s just something intriguing about these tiny CRTs. So in case you want to see more of them, have a look at this tiny Atari display, and the DIY night vision monocle from a few years back. And to keep your eyes safe and sound, [gocivici] got you covered as well.

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