raspberry pi

1734 Articles

Using The Raspi As An Ethernet Shield

June 24, 2012 by 47 Comments

[Alexandre] wanted to set up a web-based temperature logger with his Arduino, but found the Arduino Ethernet shield a little finicky. Since his Raspberry pi was just delivered, he figured he could use the Raspi as an Ethernet shield with just a little bit of coding.

After [Alexandre] set up his Arduino to send a thermocouple through the USB, the only thing left to do was to add node.js to the Raspi’s Debian installation. Every five minutes, the Arduino wakes up, takes a temperature reading, and sends it over to the Raspberry pi. From there, it’s easy parse the Arduino’s JSON output and serve it up on the web.

In the end, [Alexandre] successfully set up his Raspberry pi as an Ethernet shield to serve a web page displaying the current temperature (don’t F5 that link, btw). One interesting thing we have to point out is the cost of setting up this online temperature logger: the Arduino Ethernet shield sells for $45 USD, while the Raspberry pi is available for $35. Yes, it’s actually less expensive to use a Raspberry pi as an Ethernet shield than the current Arduino offerings. There you have it, just in case you were still on the fence about this whole Raspi thing.

Checking Out The Temperature Of A Raspberry Pi

June 23, 2012 by 32 Comments

[Remy] has access to a very nice Fluke thermal camera, so when his Raspberry pi came in he pointed the thermal camera at the Raspi (Spanish, Google translation) to see how far this neat computer could be pushed before it overheated.

There are three main sources of heat on the Raspberry Pi: the voltage regulator, the USB/Ethernet controller and the Broadcom SoC. At idle, these parts read 49.9° C, 48.7° C and 53° C, respectively; a little hot to the touch, but still well within the temperature ranges given in the datasheets for these components.

The real test came via a stress test where the ARM CPU was at 100% utilization. The Broadcom SoC reached almost 65° C while the Ethernet controller and regulator managed to reach the mid-50s. Keeping in mind this test was performed at room temperature, we’d probably throw a heat sink on a Raspberry Pi if it’s going to be installed in an extreme environment such as a greenhouse or serving as a Floridian or Texan carputer.

Thanks [Alberto] for sending this in.

Gooseberry Is The Latest ARM Linux Board

June 22, 2012 by 20 Comments

It looks like we’re finally seeing the proliferation of single board computers take off. The latest is called the Gooseberry. While it will cost about £40/$62 USD at release, it greatly outperforms the current crop of tiny Linux boards.

As the latest in what will be a long line of these ARM-ified single board computers, the Gooseberry hugely outperforms the VIA APC and Raspberry Pi with a Allwinner A10 CPU running at 1.2 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, and built-in WiFi. Basically, the Gooseberry has all the features you would expect from an Android tablet; the reason for this is because the Gooseberry actually is the board found in a few Chinese tablets.

There’s a few very nice features like an LVDS output to add LCD displays without hogging the HDMI output, and the form factor is incredibly thin making it perfect for building a small portable device.

After the break you can check out a walkthrough of the Gooseberry board along with evidence of it running Ubuntu.

Continue reading “Gooseberry Is The Latest ARM Linux Board” →

Bringing Chromium To The Raspberry Pi

June 22, 2012 by 11 Comments

If you’re in possession of a Raspberry Pi, you may want to check out the new Chromium support for your tiny pocketable computer. With its terrifically minimal hardware requirements, the Chromium OS seems like just the thing for this $35 computer.

The new Raspberry Pi supported Chromium build comes from the fruitful desktop of [Hexxeh], a.k.a. [Liam McLaughlin]. In the world of Chromium devs, [Hexxeh] has already made a name for himself by getting Chromium working on a Macbook Air, putting it in a VirtualBox, and generally being the resident wizard of the Chromium project

The Chromium OS should provide a much faster computing experience for the Raspi compared to the current Debian and Arch Linux-based builds.   Right now, the Chromium support for the Raspberry Pi is very much a work in progress but a slimmed-down, browser-only operating system may be just what the underpowered but useful 700 MHz ARM computer with 256 MB of RAM needs.

Turning A Raspberry Pi Into A Laptop With A LapDock

June 21, 2012 by 40 Comments

Being a $35, full-fledged Linux computer, the Raspberry Pi brings a lot to the table. There’s one problem, though: this computer doesn’t come with a keyboard, mouse, display, or even a battery. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to add these devices with the help of a Motorola LapDock and turn a RasPi into a fully portable computing platform.

The Motorola LapDock is the latest take on the dumb terminal. Consisting of only a 1366 x 768 display, keyboard, touch pad and 38Wh battery, the LapDock is meant to serve as a docking station and breakout for a few select Motorola cell phones. There are only two connections on the LapDock – a micro USB and micro HDMI port – connecting the peripherals to the cell phone. With just a few adapters, it’s possible to plug the Raspi into the LapDock, and have a Raspberry Pi-based laptop for under $100.

Interestingly, the Raspi can also be powered over the USB connection to the LapDock, meaning an external power supply isn’t required. Right now the state of a LapDock-ified Raspi is a bit inelegant, but we’ll expect someone to come up with a proper docking adapter to get rid of all the wires and add a WiFi module shortly.

via adafruit

Adding Wireless To The Raspberry Pi

June 15, 2012 by 19 Comments

For those of us who haven’t received their Raspberry Pis yet, it may come as a bit of a shock to realize the RasPi doesn’t have an on board WiFi adapter. While the Model B RasPi has an RJ45 Ethernet plug, but the Model A must rely on USB-bound networking dongles. [Mike] over at Mitch Tech put up a great guide to using a Realtek WiFi dongle with his Raspberry Pi.

Stock, the standard Debian install recommended by the folks at Raspberry Pi has the drivers for the Realtek WiFi adapter, but no firmware. [Mike] goes over how to get the firmware for this series of WiFi adapters to keep the kernel from complaining. Interestingly, [Mike]’s instructions also work for a slew of Realtek-based wireless dongles, so the installation instructions should work for a bunch of adapters available from DealExtreme or eBay.

[Mike] also has a guide for installing Quake 3 on a RasPi. Combine these two builds and you’ve got the perfect setup for a Raspberry Pi LAN party. Anyone want to host?

Raspberry Pi Finds Itself Inside A TRS-80 Model 100

June 14, 2012 by 18 Comments

This TRS-80 Model 100 is a lot more powerful than you might think. That’s because [Karl Lunt] is using it as an enclosure for his Raspberry Pi board. Since the ARM-powered device comes sans-enclosure it’s fun to see a retro choice like this one. And having had to go out and buy a USB keyboard to use our own RPi, we appreciate [Karl’s] solution for using the original keyboard as an input device.

Above you can see that he’s using an LCD tv as the display. For now that connection is made using the composite video output, which explains the fuzzy image. To the right of the TRS-80 a standard wall wart connects to the barrel jack to provide power. [Karl] scrapped a USB cellphone charger in order to connect from the barrel jack to the micro-USB jack on the Pi board. The ribbon cable to the left lets him get at the I/O header without opening the case.

In order to use the keyboard he patched into it with a Teensy board. That connects to the USB port on the RPi, sending HID keyboard commands based on what it received from the user. We like this option as it give you the ability to pre-process keystrokes (ie: you can code your own custom macros that the Teensy will listen for). Right now the Model 100’s LCD screen isn’t hooked up but he may add that in the future.