raspberry pi

1631 Articles

The Pi Zero Mass Storage Picture Frame

March 25, 2016 by 39 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero – and the not-perpetually-out-of-stock Raspberry Pi A+ – only have one USB port, but behind that port is a lot of functionality. This is an OTG USB port, and just like the USB port on your smartphone, this little plug can become any kind of USB device. Transforming the Pi into a USB gadget allows it to be a serial connection, MIDI device, audio source or sink, or a USB mass storage device.

[Francesco] was especially interested in the USB mass storage capability of the Raspberry Pi Zero and built a small project to show off its capabilities. He turned a Pi Zero into the controller for a digital picture frame, constantly displaying all the image files on a small screen.

The build started with [Andrew Mulholland]’s guide for Pi Zero OTG modes, with just a few modifications. When the Pi is plugged into a PC, it automatically becomes a 100 Megabyte USB storage device. You don’t need that much space on a digital picture frame, anyway.

While setting up a digital picture frame is easy enough, there’s still a tremendous amount of untapped potential in using the Pi Zero as a USB gadget. With enough buttons, switches, and sensors, the Pi can become a wearable MIDI device, or with the Pi camera module, an IP webcam. Neat stuff, and we can’t wait to see what the community comes up with next.

Building A Better Game Boy With A Pi

March 24, 2016 by 23 Comments

The most collectible Game Boy, by far, would be the Game Boy Micro. This tiny Game Boy is small enough to lose in your pocket. It can only play Game Boy Advance games, the screen is tiny, but just look at the prices on eBay: it’s one of the few bits of consumer electronics that could be seen as an investment in retrospect.

The popularity of the Game Boy Micro, the ability for the Raspberry Pi to emulate old game consoles, and the introduction of the Raspberry Pi Zero could only mean one thing. It’s the PiGrrl Zero, a modern handheld to play all your retro games.

The design goals for the PiGRRL Zero were simple enough: a 2.2 inch 320×240 display, a d-pad, four buttons on the face and two shoulder buttons. There’s a big battery, audio output, and a 3D printed case. This would be somewhat unremarkable if it weren’t for the PCB designed for PiGRRL Zero. It’s designed to be soldered directly onto the Raspberry Pi Zero, taking advantage of the mostly component-free back side of this tiny single board computer.

With this PCB, the Pi Zero is turned into a tiny battery-powered computer running emulations of all the classics. NES, SNES, Sega, and of course Game Boy Advance games are readily playable on this devices, and for a price that’s a fair bit lower than what a mint condition Game Boy Micro goes for. Our judges thought it was cool enough to be one of the winners of the Pi Zero Contest. Check it out!

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The Raspberry Pi Zero contest is presented by Hackaday and Adafruit. Prizes include Raspberry Pi Zeros from Adafruit and gift cards to The Hackaday Store!
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BlinkenBone Meets The PiDP8

March 23, 2016 by 10 Comments

Years ago when the old mainframes made their way out of labs and into the waiting arms of storage closets and surplus stores, a lot got lost. The interesting bits – core memory boards and the like – were cool enough to be saved. Some iconic parts – blinkenlight panels – were stashed away by techs with a respect for our computing history.

For the last few years, [Jörg] has been making these blinkenlight panels work again with his BlinkenBone project. His work turns a BeagleBone into a control box for old console computers, simulating the old CPUs and circuits, allowing them to work like they did thirty years ago, just without the hundreds of pounds of steel and kilowatts of power. Now, [Jörg] has turned to a much smaller and newer blinkenlight panel, the PiDP-8.

The PiDP-8 is a modern, miniaturized reproduction of the classic PDP 8/I, crafted by [Oscar Vermeulen]. We’ve seen [Oscar]’s PiDP a few times over the last year, including a talk [Oscar] gave at last year’s Hackaday Supercon. Having a simulated interface to a replica computer may seem ridiculous, but it’s a great test case for the interface should any older and rarer blnkenlight panels come out of the woodwork.

Mobile Text Reader With OCR And Text To Speech

March 21, 2016 by 7 Comments

There are devices out there that will magnify text using fancy cameras and displays, devices that will convert these to Braille, and text-to-speech software has been around for thirty years. For his entry into our Raspberry Pi Zero contest, [Markus] decided to combine all these ideas into a simple device that will turn the printed word into speech.

The impetus for [Markus]’ project came to him in the form of a group of blind computer science  students. These students used a specialized program that used specialized hardware and software such as mobile Braille terminals, OCR, and oral exams that allowed these students to study the same thing as everyone else. [Markus] wanted to produce something similar, using simple text-to-speech software instead of a complicated Braille display.

The physical design of [Markus]’ project is uniquely functional – a hand-held device with a camera up front, a Pi in the middle, and a speaker and headphone jack on the back. The hand grip includes a large battery and a trigger for telling the Pi to read a few words aloud.

The software is built around the SnapPicam and includes a lot of the functionality already needed. OCR is largely a solved problem with Tesseract, and text-to-speech is easy with Festival.

Although [Markus] is just plugging a few existing software modules together, he’s come up with a device that is certainly unique and could be exceptionally useful to anyone with a vision impairment.

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The Raspberry Pi Zero contest is presented by Hackaday and Adafruit. Prizes include Raspberry Pi Zeros from Adafruit and gift cards to The Hackaday Store!
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Raspberry Pi Zero Contest Grand Prize Winners!

March 21, 2016 by 17 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero Contest presented by Adafruit and Hackaday came to a close last week, as the clock struck 11:59 am on Sunday, March 13, 2016. Since then our team of judges has been working to pick the top three entries. It was a hard job sorting through nearly 150 amazing creations.  In the end though, the judges were able to pick three grand prize winners. Each winner will receive a $100 gift card to The Hackaday Store.  So let’s get to the winners!

[JohSchneider] and [Markus Dieterle] both won Pi Zero boards and went on to win $100 gift certificates. [shlonkin] didn’t win a Pi Zero, but persevered and continued working on the classroom music teaching aid even without a Zero board. The top winners aren’t the only ones who are doing well. Everyone who entered has a head start on a great project for The 2016 Hackaday Prize.

I’d like to thank Hackaday’s own [Dan Maloney], [Kristina Panos], [Sophi Kravitz] and [Brian Benchoff] who joined me to judge the contest. The entire Hackaday staff is indebted to [Limor Fried] and [Phil Torrone] over at  Adafruit for coming up with 10 live videos, and providing 10 hard to find Pi Zero boards for our winners. The biggest thanks go to the entrants. If I could send a prize out to each and every one of you, I would!

Bartop Arcade RetroPie Powered Laser Cut

March 18, 2016 by 8 Comments

[hhtat] wanted to build an arcade cabinet since his days in high-school. Only recently have the tech planets aligned. Looking into the night sky he saw a laser cutter, the Raspberry Pi, and lowering prices on key components and thought, “this is the year.”

Much like an arcade cabinet we posted earlier, this one sits on a counter top. With full controls and a nice screen, it provides a lot of the experience without the additional explaining to the SO why the living space should house a giant decaled MDF box.

The frame was designed in SketchUp and vectors were made in Inkscape. The frame was lasercut out of MDF and Acrylic. Decals were printed and applied. The resulting case, build from tab and slot construction, is attractive.

The internals are simple. A Raspberry Pi with a fast SD card acts as the brain. Rather than make it difficult on himself, [hhat] bought a pre-made controls kit from eBay. Apparently there is a small market for this stuff. He also purchased an IPS screen with built in controller. The IPS panel gives the arcade cabinet a desireable wide viewing angle.

The final product looks like a lot of fun and we can see it turning at least one person into an unintentional loner at any house party.

Steam-Powered Raspberry Pi Zero Doesn’t Get Any More Steampunk

March 17, 2016 by 22 Comments

Steampunk usually involves sticking a few old valves on your laptop and riding a penny farthing, but [Alexzpro] understands the real thing: he just created a steam powered Raspberry Pi Zero (translated).

His setup is a little lashed together, but works it’s a throwback to electricity generation of old and deserves the steampunk moniker. A steam boiler drives a steam turbine, which turns a motor, generating electrical power. This feeds into a regulator and a bank of capacitors that smooths the voltage out to a nice even 5 Volts, which powers the Pi.

It’s not exactly efficient, but running the steam boiler using two propane blowtorches sure makes us grin. Usually we see people trying to go the opposite direction and power their projects with renewables. We can appreciate this for what it is too, and it’s certainly not the first time we’ve see a Raspberry Pi burning through electricity for little apparent gain.

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