Hackaday Links: Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

June 2, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Who knew you could build your own digital computer out of paperclips? EMSL did a great feature on the guide which was published in 1968.

Trying to keep your Raspberry Pi from overheating? Make it log its core temperature on the web.

[Lennart] must be some kind of Eagle CAD guru. Check out these PCBs that incorporate his logo in a very artsy way.

No need for a tripod when you can just strap the video camera to your safety glasses for some POV project videos.

Turn your Pogoplug E-02 into a Shairport (Airplay clone) music hub. Just follow this guide which installs Arch Linux and all the supporting packages you need.

We don’t have the background to judge the quality of this build. But you have to admit it’s pretty neat to see a radio telescope built using a tin can and an umbrella.

Dead rodent email: get a notification every time your mouse trap springs.

Adding AirPlay To A Shelf System

January 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

adding-airplay-to-a-shelf-system

AirPlay is a great system. It allows you to send whatever media is playing from one device to another. Sure, we wish it were a bit more open (Apple is certainly not known for that) but there are several option for creating your own AirPlay receivers. After coming across a project that does just that, [Matt Shirley] decided to turn his shelf system into an AirPlay receiver.

The path to his goal depends on the Raspberry Pi’s ability to receive AirPlay audio using the Shairport package (we just looked in on another player that does this last week). He uses an Edirol UA-5 USB audio interface as an amplifier for his record player. He wasn’t using the USB port for it and knew that it would be simple to connect the RPi USB as a host for the device.

Wanting to keep the look of the system as clean as possible he popped the lid off of the amp. There is just enough room to fit the small RPi board inside. He hacked (literally, look at the pictures) an opening for the USB ports into the side of the metal enclosure. A short patch cable connects from one port to the USB jack on the back of the amplifier. The white cable leaving the side of the case provides power to the Rasperry Pi. The surgery was a success and now he can listen to his tunes with a tap of his finger.

Dedicated Pandora Player Plus AirPlay Built Around The Raspberry Pi

January 4, 2013 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

rpi-pandora-radio

[Shaun Gehring] wanted an Internet radio player. Although he did have some troubles along the way, the final project turned out very well. Housed inside this case which used to house a spindle of bland CDs is a Raspberry Pi that plays Pandora radio and serves as an AirPlay receiver.

The GPIO header of the RPi makes this project a lot easier. [Shaun] used Adafruit’s breakout board to solder connections for the six buttons and the character LCD screen. Plug some speakers into the audio jack and the hardware end of the deal is finished. The software side of things is very similar to the BeagleBone Pandora player we looked at in September. It uses a Linux distribution (Rasbian Weezy) and the Pianobar package.

Pianobar is very versatile. You can control it using a First-In First-Out file. Once [Shaun] figured out how to use mkfifo to set up the file, he was able to control it from a script by monitor button presses and echoing the associated command to the FIFO. The finishing touch was to add AirPlay support via the shairport package.