Raspberry Pi on Bald Engineer

Pi Cap Hands On Review

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:05:52 +0000

The Pi Cap adds capacitive touch buttons to your Raspberry Pi. Bare Conductive was kind enough to send me one. I do not have a project in mind right now, so here are my first impressions. What is the Pi Cap? Arduino tends to call daughter cards shields, while the Raspberry Pi community calls them hats. The Pi Cap is a hat. It plugs into the GPIO header of a Raspberry Pi and provides 13 capacitive touch pads. There is a traditional push button, an LED, and a prototyping area. While the Pi Cap does consume all of the GPIO pins, several are broken out near the GPIO header.

Raspberry Pi Soft Power Controller - The Circuit

Wed, 03 May 2017 23:18:56 +0000

The RetroPie project enables retro-gaming with a Raspberry Pi. All of the Pi models have enough computing power to emulate the major 8-bit and 16-bit computers of the 80s and 90s. With the Pi 3 I have even been able to play PS1 games with no problem. My current project is to put my Raspberry Pi running RetroPie into an old Super Famicom (SFC), or SNES, case. The catch? I want the original SPST power switch to work. And by work, I mean allow the Raspberry Pi to shutdown properly when the switch goes into the off position. To accomplish this task, I am building a Raspberry Pi soft power controller.

MQTT Tutorial for Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and ESP8266

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:00:45 +0000

This week’s MQTT Tutorial connects a Raspberry Pi, ESP8266 (or Arduino), and a PC together. Remember last week’s post provided an overview of message brokers and MQTT. We learned that MQTT is a hub and spoke protocol for sending messages between IoT devices. Clients can subscribe or publish messages to a central server, called a broker. Now it’s time to connect our IoT devices together! For this MQTT tutorial, I have three main elements: • My Computer, which will act as the broker. • Raspberry Pi running Python • ESP8266 controlling an LED

MQTT Introduction and Tutorial Part One

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 16:00:25 +0000

MQTT is an easy way for Internet of Things (IoT) devices to communicate with each other. This light-weight protocol can be used with a simple 8-bit Arduino to a Raspberry Pi to a multi-core PC to Amazon Web Services. It is that versatile. This MQTT Tutorial is broken into two parts. Part one is an MQTT Introduction. You’ll understand how publish/subscribe message brokering works. Next week, Part two will be a tutorial on using MQTT to communicate between a PC, Raspberry Pi, and ESP8266.

Raspberry Pi GUI Tutorial

Wed, 03 Feb 2016 17:58:53 +0000

My favorite Raspberry Pi add-on is the PiTFT from Adafruit. With it, you easily get a Raspberry Pi GUI interface and touch screen. The PiTFT software install is just a few things and it is good to go. Adafruit PiTFT - Click for more info This screen is what I needed for my IoT project. The Pi+Screen will act as the primary controller for all of my things. The problem is I didn’t know much about writing GUI applications in Linux. So what could I do to create a Raspberry Pi GUI?

Is the Raspberry Pi Zero worth $5?

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 16:00:57 +0000

What makes the Raspberry Pi so attractive? At $35 it is an unbelievable value for a single board computer. Since its introduction, a price race to the bottom has begun. The C.H.I.P. claims to have started shipping the $9 computer. Which, many pointed out, doesn’t cost $9 once you add things like support for display. I would like to point out, I was an early backer and have yet to receive one.

AddOhms #7 - Comparing Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 12:00:59 +0000

The seventh AddOhms TutorialCast has gone “live”. (Gone “uploaded” sounds wrong.) Being able to understand difference between an Arduino and a Pi is a critical point for many new electronics hobbyist. The boards seem so similar, but they are so different. AddOhms #7: Comparing the Arduino and Raspberry Pi Full Episode Notes are available on the Episode’s homepage.

Raspberry coming to a Hackerspace near you

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:58:51 +0000

One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s developers, Rob Bishop, is heading out on a Hackerspace tour in the US. Looks like he’ll be visiting a couple of spaces on the west coast, east coast, and my home town: Austin, TX. [Via raspberrypi.org Raspberry Pi Foundation US Hackspace Tour | Raspberry Pi]