From CRT TV To All-In-One Console

October 13, 2016 by Jenny List 8 Comments

When the Raspberry Pi first appeared there was some excitement among Raspberry Jam attendees at the prospect of a computer with a video output on a board small enough to be concealed inside a TV. But while the idea is a good one the prospect of poking around among the high voltages of an older CRT model has meant that surprisingly few such ideas turned into reality.

One person who made the idea into a reality was [Jon], who took a [Dora] The Explorer branded CRT/DVD combo in a fetching shade of red and turned it into an all-in-one retro console gaming system with an embedded Raspberry Pi.

This is however not merely a Pi stuffed inside the rear casing with a few holes for cables, instead he took away the substantial part of the DVD mechanism and mounted his Pi safely in a plastic box. Some USB extension cables bring all four USB sockets to the front panel through the DVD slot with a bit of Sugru to hold them in place. An HDMI panel-mount extension goes to the TV’s rear connector panel, as does a power switch for the Pi which is wired to a USB charger mounted on a trailing mains socket inside the case. The composite video from the Pi is wired to the TV’s AV in video socket.

We don’t blame [Jon] for not looking at the TV’s power rails to find power for his Pi, though a TV of this recent age would have safely mains-isolated rails that’s still a task fraught with hazards. The resulting unit is a high quality retro console, and as a final touch he’s given it a Nintendo logo and some storage for his gamepads on the rear.

We’ve had a few CRTs with integrated computers before here at Hackaday, but not all have been as they seemed. This Pi for instance sat in a vintage Singer TV, but the CRT was replaced with a modern LCD. Our favourite though it this Chromecast driving a 1978 GE model.

Raspberry Pi Boots CP/M

October 12, 2016 by Al Williams 78 Comments

Retrocomputing is an enjoyable and educational pursuit and — of course — there are a variety of emulators that can let you use and program a slew of old computers. However, there’s something attractive about avoiding booting a modern operating system and then emulating an older system on top of it. Part of it is just aesthetics, and of course the real retrocomputing happens on retro hardware. However, as a practical matter, retrocomptuters break, and with emulation, you’d assume that CPU cycles spent on the host operating system (and other programs running in the background) will take away from the target retrocomputer.

If you want to try booting a “bare metal” Z80 emulator with CP/M on a Raspberry Pi, you can try EMUZ80 RPI. The files reside on an SD card and the Pi directly boots it, avoiding any Linux OS (like Raspian). It’s available for the Raspberry Pi Model B, A+, and the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Unlike the significant boot times of the standard Linux distros on the earliest models of Pi, you can boot into CP/M in just five seconds. Just like the old days.

The secret to this development is an open source system known as Ultibo, a framework based on Open Pascal which allows you to create bare metal applications for the Raspberry Pi. The choice of Free Pascal will delight some and annoy others, depending on your predilections. Ultibo is still very much in active development, but the most common functions are already there; you can write to the framebuffer, read USB keyboards, and write to a serial port. That’s all you really need to make your own emulator or write your own Doom clone. You can see a video about Ultibo (the first of a series) below.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Raspberry Pi Zero Smart Glass

October 8, 2016 by Jenny List 4 Comments

Some of the more interesting consumer hardware devices of recent years have been smart glasses. Devices like Google Glass or Snapchat Spectacles, eyewear incorporating a display and computing power to deliver information or provide augmented reality on an unobtrusive wearable platform.

Raspberry Pi Zero Smart Glass aims to provide an entry into this world, with image recognition and OCR text recognition in a pair of glasses courtesy of a Raspberry Pi Zero. Unusually though it does not take the display option of other devices of having a mirror or prism in the user’s field of view, instead it replaces the user’s entire field of view with a display and re-connects them to the world through the Raspberry Pi camera.

The display in question is an inexpensive set of “3D Virtual Stereo Digital Video glasses”, of the type that can be found fairly easily on your favourite auction site. They aren’t particularly high-resolution, but the Pi can easily drive them with its composite video output. The electronics and camera are mounted on a headband, in a custom 3D-printed enclosure. All files can be downloaded from the project page.

There is some Python software, but it’s fair to say that there is not a clear demo on the project page showing it working. However this is no reason to disregard this project, because even if its software has yet to achieve its full potential there is value elsewhere. The 3D-printed Raspberry Pi enclosure should be of use to many other similar wearable projects, and we’d almost say it’s worthy of a project all of its own.

Orka Controls The (Pi) World

October 7, 2016 by Al Williams 12 Comments

If you deploy a lot of Raspberry Pi computers, you might find it inconvenient to log into each one to perform different tasks. Orka, an open source project by [Karthik K], is a server that runs on a desktop PC (Windows, Linux, or Mac) and can control multiple Orka clients (that can run on a Pi, or a desktop PC). We understand that [Karthik K] is looking for Mac testers, by the way.

From the server, you can execute commands and create tasks. You can also receive notification when a client PC reaches a threshold (for example, over temperature or too much CPU or RAM usage). You can open a shell on a client and do other operations.

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Galaga Cabinet Is Out Of This World

October 6, 2016 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

Like many of us, [Alex] spent a large part of his childhood feeding coin after coin into one arcade game or another. Galaga is one of his all-time favorites, and he has wanted to build a Galaga cabinet for a long time. Once his workshop was ready for the job, it was time to cross it off the list.

The cabinet is built to 4/5 scale. This is a great size because he gets the stability and feel of a full-size machine, but it’s much easier to move it around. As you might expect, there’s Pi in the cabinet. The display is an old TV that [Alex] found in a Dumpster. And although it works great, it would go into standby instead of powering off along with everything else. To get around this, [Alex] built an automatic remote control with an IR LED and an Arduino Diecimila. After a five-second wait, it sends the power-on code to the TV and switches the input. The TV is supposed to be in portrait mode for Galaga, but this proved to be a challenge. Changing the orientation at the Pi level resulted in poor performance and choppy sound, so he changed it at the game execution level.

We are continually impressed by the diversity of [Alex]’s builds and the care that goes into them. Who could forget his beautiful sidewalk graffiti machine or the time he showed us how to photograph stuff that’s not there? Make the jump to see a brief demonstration followed by a two-part build video.

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Win Loot With The Enlightened Raspberry Pi Contest

October 5, 2016 by Adam Fabio 14 Comments

Have an awesome Raspberry Pi project in mind (or maybe sitting on your bench right now)? Show it off for the Enlightened Raspberry Pi contest and you can score some excellent loot.

The Raspberry Pi has changed the face of experimental computers. These little $35 Linux powered boards can do incredible things. An active community has sprung up around the Pi. With it have come thousands of projects published on the web, in books, and in magazines. Many of the best Raspberry Pi projects are seen right here on Hackaday and published on Hackaday.io, which boasts over 1000 user created Pi powered projects (yes, we counted). Show us how you pull off those projects and you’ll be eligible to win.

Prizes and Judges

One thing we’d like to see more are really well documented projects — showing off everything anyone with an average skill set needs to perform the cool hack themselves. Do that and you’re well on your way to claiming one of eight great prizes! The grand prize winner gets a Pi-top Raspberry Pi laptop. First prize is the new Pi-top Ceed all in one. Second place is a 32×32 RGB Matrix kit. And the list goes on.

Pi-Top

Pi-Top CEED

32×32 RGB Matrix Kit

Submit your entry as a project on Hackaday.io and use the “Submit Project To…” option on the left sidebar of your project page to add it to the Enlightened Raspberry Pi contest. When entries close on November 9th, the Hackaday Staff will begin judging, bringing in some help to choose the top winners. This help comes in the form of a few VIP judges!

Alvaro Prieto

Matt Richardson

Ken Shirriff

[Alvaro Prieto] is a Firmware/Electrical engineer who works on electronics for work and for fun. He previously worked at TI, Apple, and Planet. You’ve seen him hacking micro quadcopters, and as a presenter at the 2015 Hackaday SuperCon,

[Matt Richardson] is a Product Evangelist for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi. We’ve seen [Matt] building heads up displays for bicycles, and removing celebrity gossip from our TV’s.

[Ken Shirriff] writes a popular blog (righto.com) on reverse engineering everything from chargers to microprocessors. Ken was formerly a programmer at Google and has a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley. We’ve covered his microprocessor work as well as his teardowns of knockoff laptop chargers.

It’s All in the Details:

Entries are open now, show us the details that make great Raspberry Pi projects happen! The full rules can be found on the Enlightened Raspberry Pi Contest page. Fire up your soldering irons, warm up your 3D printers, and load up your favorite code editor. It’s time to start hacking!

Hackaday Prize Entry: Making A Book Reader That Can Survive Kindergarten

October 4, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 5 Comments

[atomicthomas] is a dedicated teacher. One only has to look at the work he’s been putting into book readers for for the past sixteen years. With hardware like the Pi Zero threatening cheap computers just over the supply chain horizon, he’s begun to set his sights higher.

It all started with headphones and audio tapes. For all of us who got to use tapes and school headphones, we know the flaws with this plan. Nothing lasted the sticky and violent hands of children for long. When video recordings of book became available, DVD players suffered similar fates.

So, he began to rip his tapes and DVDs to his computer. However, the mouse has a warning about small parts on it for a reason, and didn’t last long either. So, he built a computer with arcade buttons and a Raspberry Pi. This one ran a heavily simplified version of a media manager and worked well. Even the special needs children had no problem navigating. A second exploration with an iMac and a Nintendo controller worked even better. Apparently all five year olds instinctively understand how to use a Nintendo controller.

Using the user test data, in his most recent iteration he’s working on a sub-twenty-dollar reading computer in a Nintendo controller. It’s not the most technically in depth hack we’ve ever covered, but it certainly ranks up there for harsh environments.