Raspi Zero

3 Articles

Raspberry Pi Zero Drives Tiny RC Truck

January 24, 2018 by 17 Comments

We’re not sure which is more fun – putting together a little RC truck with parts laying around on your workbench, or driving it around through a Linux terminal. We’ll take the easy road and say they’re both equally fun. [technodict] had some spare time on his hands and decided to build such a truck.

He started off with a great little chassis that can act as the base for many projects. Powering the four motors is a cheap little dual H bridge motor driver and a couple rechargeable batteries. But the neatest part of this build is that it’s controlled using a little bit of python and driven directly from a terminal, made possible by the Raspberry Pi Zero of course.

With Raspberry Pi Zero now having built in WiFi and Bluetooth – we should see a lot more projects popping up with one at its heart. Be sure to visit [technodict’s] blog for full source and details. And let us know how you could use that little chassis for your next mobile project!

USB-less WiFi For The Pi Zero

April 21, 2016 by 27 Comments

Since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi Zero, the hacker, maker, and hobbyist electronics world has been thrown into turmoil. ‘The Raspberry Pi Foundation is corrupt,’ the detractors said, ‘and the Pi Zero is just a marketing ploy to get their name out.’ Others chimed in that the Raspberry Pi Zero doesn’t even exist. Despite what a million monkeys on a million keyboards say, the Raspberry Pi Zero does exist and is very cool, despite how limited it is. There’s only one USB port, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have WiFi. [ajlitt] came up with a WiFi hat for the Pi Zero that goes right through the GPIO pins, and shouldn’t cost more than a few dollars to implement on any Raspberry Pi.

There is no Ethernet port on the Pi, and apart from a single USB OTG port, no apparent high-speed interfaces to the outside world. On the other hand, there’s a few things hidden deep down in the SoC on the Pi including two MMC controllers. One of these controllers is used for the SD card, but the second can be broken out on a few GPIO pins. By tapping into those pins and configuring the kernel just right, SDIO is available on the GPIO pins, giving the Pi WiFi through a cheap ESP8266 module.

We’ve seen [ajlitt]’s work on SDIO devices on the Pi before, but he’s slowly been reworking this build with the Pi Zero in mind. It didn’t begin as a project for the Hackaday Prize, but already it’s one of the more popular entries so far. Of course there are thousands of projects on Hackaday.io that aren’t entered into the Hackaday Prize this year, and if you’re behind one of those, this is your call to step up.

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Yet Another Pi Zero USB Hub

December 30, 2015 by 16 Comments

The Raspberry Pi Zero was back in stock at Adafruit this week – for about eight minutes. That means a few more people get Pi Zeros, many more will put them up on eBay, and everyone is working on their own version of a Pi Zero USB hub. The latest version of a Pi Zero hub comes from [Nate], and he’s doing this one right. His Pi USB adapter adds four USB ports and features not found in other DIY USB hubs like fuses and ESD protection.

As with other Pi Zero USB hub add-ons, this build relies on a USB hub controller, a few passives, and not much else. The chip used in this hub is the FE1.1s chip, a highly integrated 4-port hub controller that can be found through the usual Chinese resellers. This hub controller doesn’t require much, just a 12MHz crystal, a few passives, and four USB jacks.

Of particular interest is how [Nate] is connecting this hub to the Pi Zero. He’s left the option open for using either a USB cable, or soldering the USB’s differential pairs directly between the Pi and the hub. In either case, the hub should work, and with the addition of the zeners, fuses, and other parts that keep the hub from frying itself, [Nate] might have a very nice project on his hands.