Teletext on a BBC computer in 2024 #VintageComputing #Teletext #BBCmicro @LinuxJedi

Before the Internet, if you wanted to read up-to-the-minute news or weather in Europe, there was Teletext. It is a low-bandwidth text standard that used to be sent via the hidden black border on TV signals.

BBC Micro and Master computers had a Teletext character generator chip and mode, which they actually booted into by default. Therefore, Teletext was easy to implement via a small ROM and a modem.

Andrew Hutchings (LinuxJedi) managed to get it running, despite Teletext in the UK being killed off years ago.

It turns out that there are web services that generate up-to-date Teletext feeds, and there is a project to turn a Raspberry Pi into a Teletext transmitter based on these feeds.

As for a Raspberry Pi, I have a spare 3A+ which I used to use to test PiStorms, but I accidentally fried the GPIO on it. The rest of the Pi is fully functional, so it is ideal for this.

See how the project was done and how a vintage BBC Micro can still display Teletext in the post here.

Happy 12th Birthday Raspberry Pi (or is it a 3rd birthday) #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Happy birthday to Raspberry Pi. They’re a leap-year baby, so while today marks only the third time the official birth date of 29 February has rolled around, they’re actually twelve years old.

Products have been very successful, chalking up 61 million units in sales.

To celebrate, the Raspberry Pi Maker in Residence Toby made a birthday cake & card. Moth projects use Raspberry Pi Pico W and Adafruit NeoPixel strips to light them up.

A video can be seen below. You can read more on the birthday from Raspberry Pi here. And additional coverage on Tom’s Hardware.

Porting Synth_Dexed to the Raspberry Pi Pico #RaspberryPi #RaspberryPiPico @diyelectromusic

For a while, Kevin has wanted to get Synth_Dexed up and running on a Raspberry Pi Pico. It is the library written by Holger Wirtz for use with the Teensy microcontroller, and the core synth engine used for MiniDexed.

This is how I got everything up and running although it is too early to know if this is a worthwhile activity or not!

And the performance isn’t what anyone would call stellar… I can currently manage 4-note polyphony if the sample rate is dropped.

• Part 1: Building Synth_Dexed for the Pico.
• Part 2: Assessing the performance and analysis of the Pico audio library.
• Part 3: MIDI and some basic usability (finally).
• Part 4: More MIDI; Bank and Voice loading; SysEx support; and USB-MIDI.
• Part 5: Details of how to build the hardware.

Seeing as MiniDexed exists for the Raspberry Pi and MicroDexed exists for the Teensy, PicoDexed seemed the obvious choice!

See the video below, more in the post here and code on GitHub under an MIT license.

Audiophile Pi Music Streamer in Old Tuner

Great build that uses a lot of Adafruit gear!

Project and write-up by Alan Boris, via Hackster.io:

A network music streamer using the case and controls from an old stereo tuner.

Iceland’s Harpa Concert Hall is the Pinnacle of Glass Architecture #ArtTuesday

Harpa Concert Hall is a stunning architectural landmark that has become a symbol of the cultural scene in Iceland. The design of the building is influenced by the crystalline structures found in Iceland’s volcanic rock. Via Yahoo

Completion of Harpa stemmed from the efforts of multiple engineering and design agencies. For starters, Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson designed the south facade, developing the principle for the remaining three and roof in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects and Batteríið Architects. On top of that, Eliasson designed multiple interior lighting fixtures that work both artistically and functionally in conjunction with the exterior elements.

The concert hall epitomizes the concept of contemporary design with a layered glass facade around its exteriors and roof. The entire design also appears to float above the foundation with very few points of contact. Colors reflect through and from the columns of glass to form a continually eye-catching display.

Not only does this glass structure offer striking visual components, but it also works to reduce lighting costs. That’s because the high quantity of glass creates playful shadows and striking lighting effects all throughout interiors. Of course, this design does work in direct contrast to some functional aspects, so the designers really had to consider how to protect the building from often-harsh Icelandic weather conditions, including rain, snow, sleet, and high winds. In addition to this, the location of Harpa next to a busy road meant the design also had to buffer against vehicle noise from the outside. This was tackled by leaving the sound to Artec Consultants Inc, a US consulting firm responsible for the acoustics and sound design of the main theater, as well as the sound equipment in all the Harpa’s venues.

Read more!

Macro Video of Glitter and Ink Transformed into an Exploration of Space #ArtTuesday

Many more people have easy access to macro photography, thanks to the bug-eyed reverse side of today’s smartphones. Access doesn’t equal sheer gumption, time, and dedication. Here’s Vadim Sherbakov with an amazing macro film that uses suprrising materials and macro photography to explore the cosmos. Here’s more from Sherbakov:

Exploration of a macro cosmos is a theme for this short film. The ink and glitter make the compositions like the outer space and I love to dive into that. I started that journey in my previous film called Velocit…and continue the journey in this one. I implemented new techniques and new materials including the magnets and different liquids and inks. A total of 12 hours of footage was captured for this film and only less than 1% of best shoots were used in edit.

See more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Is it worth water cooling a Raspberry Pi 5? #RaspberryPi5 @Raspberry_Pi @seeedstudio

Michael Klements at The DIY Life takes a look at a new Seeed Studio water-cooling kit that has been designed for a Raspberry Pi 5. The custom water block and its performance are tested against a DIY solution built for a Pi 4 a few years ago as well as the official Raspberry Pi heatsink/fan cooler.

The water cooling kit that we’re going to be using has just been launched, it is available from Seeed Studio’s web store and currently costs $120.

It includes a fan and water pump assembly, a cooling block, a 12V power adaptor, the installation hardware like some thermal pads and screws as well as some flexible tubing to run to the water block.

The water block is a custom design for the Pi 5 and the kit comes with a black aluminium heatsink for the bottom of the Pi as well.

Both the water cooling kit and the DIY solution worked significantly better than the active cooler on an overclocked Pi. That’s not to say that the active cooler isn’t a good option, it is actually quite capable of cooling an overclocked Pi at full load as well.

See the video below and the post here.

The Great Search: Simple Resistor-Set Lipoly Charger Chip #TheGreatSearch #DigiKey @DigiKey @adafruit

This week we worked on some Picowbell designs, including a prototyping plate that includes a battery charger. We recycled charging and switch-over designs from our Feathers but then we realized we never showed off the charger chip itself!

We tend to use the MCP73831, but there’s approximately 4902 different variants! Let’s take a look at how to select a charger that matches your battery: voltage and charge rate are the biggest things to check. There’s also other extras like LED indicators, time-outs, and load-sharing/prioritization.

See the video on how Ladyada finds the right part below. And see the chosen part on DigiKey.

 

Desk of Ladyada – Picowbell Party is Hoppin’ #DeskOfLadyada #Adafruit @Adafruit

This week we spent a lot of time getting a bunch of Picowbell designs done – including a camera cowbell that lets us share some of great camera-interfacing CircuitPython libraries and examples from the MEMENTO ESP32-S3 to the RP2040.

As we were working on that, we realized it would be handy to also have some ‘doubler‘ or ‘tripler’ plates that allow plugging in a Pico into one side and then one or two ‘cowbells on the other. This way we could have a camera bell and maybe a display bell. Or an Adalogger plus a set of sensors. We cloned over our prototyping Bell and removed/added extras to make for some luxurious work-boards!

Also on The Great Search this week: Simple Resistor-Set Lipoly Charger Chip

Catch Desk of Ladyada live on YouTube every week Sunday evenings and past episodes on YouTube.

See the video below:

Drawing With Soundwaves: Sonolithography @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

The Decepticon Soundwave had some cool powers. He could read minds, jam radio signals, remember anything with his photographic memory, read the electromagnetic spectrum, and perform his microcasette operations. Actual soundwaves can’t do any of those things, but they can make some wild patterns, through a process called sonolithography. Here’s more from hackaday:

Sonolithography is a method of patterning materials on to a surface using finely-controlled sound waves. To achieve this, [Oliver] created a circular array of sixteen ultrasonic transducers controlled via shift registers and gate driver ICs, under the command of a Raspberry Pi Pico. He then created an app for controlling the transducer array via an attached computer with a GUI interface. It allows the phase and amplitude of each element of the array to be controlled to create different patterns.

Creating a pattern is then a simple matter of placing the array on a surface, firing it up in a given drive mode, and then atomising some kind of dye or other material to visualize the pattern of the acoustic waves.

See and hear more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Drawing With Soundwaves: Sonolithography @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

The Decepticon Soundwave had some cool powers. He could read minds, jam radio signals, remember anything with his photographic memory, read the electromagnetic spectrum, and perform his microcasette operations. Actual soundwaves can’t do any of those things, but they can make some wild patterns, through a process called sonolithography. Here’s more from hackaday:

Sonolithography is a method of patterning materials on to a surface using finely-controlled sound waves. To achieve this, [Oliver] created a circular array of sixteen ultrasonic transducers controlled via shift registers and gate driver ICs, under the command of a Raspberry Pi Pico. He then created an app for controlling the transducer array via an attached computer with a GUI interface. It allows the phase and amplitude of each element of the array to be controlled to create different patterns.

Creating a pattern is then a simple matter of placing the array on a surface, firing it up in a given drive mode, and then atomising some kind of dye or other material to visualize the pattern of the acoustic waves.

See and hear more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Rugged Case for Raspberry Pi

feiticeir0 shared this 3D printed case on Thingiverse!

I’ve designed this case put it outside with my Raspberry PI Zero 2 W running a Machine Learning model to discovery the cat that’s making my garden its toilet.

It takes inspiration from the NatureBytes case – that I love – but it is not the same.

It has support for a tripod so it can stand. On the back there’s space for a 10400 mAh battery. On the front, holes for a Adafruit 1000c power boost, and 2 types of Raspberry PI.

The cover has a hole for a camera and support to screw it in place. You can use a plastic dome to protect the camera from the elements. The diameter should be between 38/40mm

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

5 Useful Raspberry Projects For Your Bedroom #PiDay #RaspberryPi @slashgear @Raspberry_Pi

With the Raspberry Pi’s versatility, it’s not surprising that the board has become a common sight in a diverse range of projects out there. You can find a slew of unusual Raspberry Pi projects in the wild, from piano stairs that musicalize your steps to bird repellants that keep those pesky birds away. This single-board computer is also a favorite in education settings as it’s an accessible tool for those learning to code, kids eager to experience hands-on electronics practice, and instructors teaching Linux and basic command-line skills.

Beyond quirky and educational purposes, the Raspberry Pi extends its footprint to household applications too. Some of the more notable ones include security cameras, smart doorbells, and kitchen displays. But the Pi’s capabilities aren’t just limited to the living room, front door, and kitchen. You can actually make a host of projects for your bedroom as well.

Slashgear lists five of the best ones to upgrade your bedroom with Pi. Read more here.

• Home intercom (VoIP)
• Smart mirror
• Rain box (Python)
• Alarm clock (MicroPython)
• Sunrise lamp (NeoPixels)

Considerations for a long-running Raspberry Pi #RaspberryPi @raspberry_Pi

Chris Dzombak uses a number of Raspberry Pis around the home. How does one keep a Raspberry Pi online and working with zero intervention for weeks, months, or years?

Several classes of things can go wrong, and you need to consider how your Pi will recover from each of them — and weigh the risks of each solution against its benefits.

This new set of posts in my Raspberry Pi Reliability series covers each class of issues I’ve run into, and what I’ve done to solve them. As a bonus, these posts also include some tips on monitoring, mainly using Uptime Kuma.

See the recommended reliability tips in the post here.

Technical Equipment, Brain Cells, and Bacteria As Artistic Materials #ArtTuesday

(PANCREAS (2012) by Thomas Feuerstein, glass, metal, plastic, technical equipment, brain cells, bacteria.)

Thomas Feuerstein make art out of the biological processes. Here’s more from Art the Science:

I am interested in making social, digital, and biological processes speak on various levels in my work. Artwork operates not only metaphorically on the symbolic level of signs, images, and significations, but also on a material and molecular level…. For example, I have been cultivating green algae for over twenty years. These organisms bind carbon dioxide and produce ingredients that form the basis for food, energy, or material resources. For me, these small plant cells act as a narrative knot that connects to the big problems of the present – climate, food, scarcity of resources. From these cultures, I have harvested pigments for paintings, sugars for fruit fly cultures, an alcoholic drink, and ingredients for a new molecule. A team of microbiologists is developing a bioplastic from this for a new project.

See more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

African Diaspora International Film Festival: Black History Month 2024 #BlackHistoryMonth

African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF), a non-profit based in Harlem, is celebrating black history through film all weekend long at the Teachers College at Columbia University. The festival line-up features a broad range of powerful narratives (both documentary and drama). Tickets and event details on eventbrite:

Get ready for an unforgettable celebration of Black History Month 2024 with ADIFF – it’s gonna be lit!

Raspberry Pi Pico Automatic pet feeder #Raspberrypi

techtronic3d on instagram created an automatic pet feeder to make sure his adorable Chihuaha never misses a meal, Via Raspberrypi.com

The Raspberry Pi Pico is programmed to activate a stepper motor at Píkíta’s preferred meal times, rotating it for the duration necessary to dispense the exact right amount of food into her bowl.

Riciery determined the right duration by activating the motor then counting how many seconds it took to fill the dog bowl to the right level. He then fed [LOL] this information into his MicroPython code. You can tweak the code very easily to adjust the food quantity and feeding frequency for any pet.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

A Retro PC with Raspberry Pi @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

If you happen to have a Raspberry Pi and a 3D printer, it’s easy to outfit that Raspberry Pi for some retro-lookin’ computing. Here’s more from fantasticmrdavid via Hackaday:

This second iteration of his printable Raspberry Pi enclosure is designed to look like the 286 desktop that he had in his youth, complete with a functional “floppy drive” in the front that takes an SD card. With a 3.5 inch MPI3508 LCD up in the “monitor” and a copy of DOSBox on the SD card, you’re well on your way to booting up a copy of Windows 3.11 or building some contraptions in The Incredible Machine.

While the external aesthetics of the design are impeccable, we appreciate that [fantasticmrdavid] didn’t skimp on the internals. There’s mount points for dual 25 mm fans to keep the more powerful variants of the Raspberry Pi cool, and a speaker expansion board that plugs into the GPIO header to provide era-appropriate bloops and bleeps. The tiny details here really shine, like the fact that the face plates for the dual drives are designed as separate pieces so they can be printed in a different color than the main case.

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Massive magic mirror made from 576 glass crystals #Raspberrypi

This huge magic mirror is powered by a 7″ Raspberry Pi Touch Display. Raspberry Pi shared this video on Youtube!

We wanted a big project for the lobby at Pi Towers: something large and visually impactful. Our Maker in Residence Toby Roberts was inspired by Alex’s (aka SuperMakeSomething) NeoPixel LED mirror, and wanted to do something similar but with a blingy twist. He thought designing something that requires 576 glass crystals was the way to go.

It’s a 24 × 24 grid of NeoPixels, each with one crystal stuck in front of it. The NeoPixels are in an array configuration so they can be individually addressed to do all sorts of fun things. Like the project that inspired it, it can work as an LED mirror, and these functions are controlled by a 7″ Raspberry Pi Touch Display, which shares an enclosure with the power supply on the back of the frame.

It’s a hefty build. The whole thing including the frame weighs about 70kg, because each of the 576 crystals is real glass. That’s as much as many adult humans. Toby spent an entire day blunting the pointy end of each individual crystal with a bench sander so he could fix them to the LED board’s flat surface. He was quite patient about it, but will not be planning any more 576-crystal builds in the near future.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Replacing an Old Honeywell Thermostat with a Raspberry Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

Check out this impressive project + write up from Ievgenii Tkachenko. Definitely bookmark this one if you live in a house with an outdated heating system!

Upgrading an old thermostat to a smart system featuring an HTTP server on a Raspberry Pi and a mesh network of ESP32 thermometers.

See more details here on Hackster.io

Hackaday hands on: the Bus Pirate 5 #RP2040 @Hackaday

Tom Nardi at Hackaday gets hands-on with the newly released Bus Pirate 5, based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip.

I was able to grab one of the first all-new Bus Pirates off the production line in January, and have been spending the last week or so playing around with it. While there’s definitely room for improvement on the software side of things, the hardware is extremely promising, and I’m very excited to be see how this new chapter in the Bus Pirate story plays out.

…you don’t have to look inside the Bus Pirate 5 to see the most obvious new feature. The ST7789V 240 x 320 IPS LCD is front and center, and acts as a multi-purpose display depending on what the device is doing. Most of the time, it functions as a dynamic label, showing what each pin does given the current mode that the Bus Pirate is in. For example, when you switch to UART mode, you’ll instantly be able to see which pins have been set to TX and RX.

You don’t need any special software to access the Bus Pirate interface; just open up your favorite serial terminal and point it to the USB device that’s created when you plug it in. If you’re using a Chrome-based browser you can even connect to it via the Web Serial API.

The software is under active development with nightly builds for feature testing.

Check out the article with videos on Hackaday here.

Tutorial: Monster Matrix with WLED #Adafruit Products #AdafruitLearningSystem @Adafruit

Check out the latest tutorial from Erin St Blaine: Make your own DIY furry wall art with an LED matrix inside. Program and control it with the free WLED app and fill your room with light and patterns, with no coding required.

Full tutorial link: https://learn.adafruit.com/Monster-Matrix-with-WLED

From the guide:

Make a statement for your home or office that pulses with furry, glowy goodness. It’s pettable, programmable, and controllable with your phone or any internet-enabled device, including Alexa or a Philips Hue Bridge. The WLED software is easy to install and set up and comes with dozens of premade animations that can be customized for nearly unlimited color and pattern variations.

We’re using a Feather ESP32 V2, which connects to your phone or computer via your WiFi network, so everyone in your home can take control and create their own presets and patterns.

The software for this project is easy, but there is a fair bit of tricky soldering involved. Hang in there — you will love your new furry friend in the end.

Adafruit Products Summary:
– The Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP32 V2 is used as the microcontroller to control the LED matrix. [Feather Huzzah ESP32 V2](https://www.adafruit.com/product/5400)
– DotStar LED strips are arranged in a serpentine pattern and connected to the Feather using a Stemma QT connector. [DotStar LED Strips](https://www.adafruit.com/category/885)
– A Stemma QT to JST SH 4-pin cable is used to connect the LED strip to the Feather’s Stemma QT port. [Stemma QT to JST SH 4-pin Cable](https://www.adafruit.com/product/4397)

Read more at Monster Matrix with WLED

See it in action on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2T_BtFlZwVA

Raspberry Pi Pico enhances a vintage Radio Shack microcomputer kit #RaspberryPi #RadioShack @AllAboutCircuit

Don Wilcher uses a Raspberry Pi Pico to build an adjustable clock with an LED display then integrate the clock with a vintage Radio Shack Science Fair Microcomputer Trainer programmed to function as a 7-bit binary counter.

Long before the Heathkit 6800 microcomputer learning system, the Arduino Uno, or the Basic Stamp, there was Radio Shack’s Science Fair Microcomputer Trainer kit. Introduced in 1985, this easy-to-program kit was intended to teach users how microcomputers worked.

In this project article, we’ll upgrade this vintage microcomputer by building and adding an adjustable Raspberry Pi Pico clock with an LED display. After assembling the hardware, we’ll program the trainer to operate as a 7-bit binary counter. Before any of that, though, let’s spend some time learning about the trainer’s features—and, in particular, about the TMS1100 microcontroller at its core.

Don adds a Raspberry Pi Pico programmed in MicroPython, making an adjustable digital clock.

Read the details in the post here.

 

Making your own doggy buttons #AdafruitPlayground #CircuitPython #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Over on the new Adafruit Playground, user cadet702 shows how to make large buttons which signal you if pushed. Folks are training their dogs to use the buttons to signal various desires.

This project was born from two desires. One, see if our dog could be taught to use buttons without spending piles of money. Two, to make use of an ancient Raspberry Pi.

Lots of people have done a project like this, and it isn’t necessary to use a Raspberry Pi. That just happened to be the only unused piece of electronics I had on hand with audio output. But, I will say that I definitely recommend this approach for a couple reasons. Firstly, it’s very easy to get running in Python with Adafruit’s Blinka library. Second, it leaves lots of room for growth (both in number of buttons and features like button presses sending digital messages).

Catch the entire how-to in the tutorial on Adafruit Playground.

Oliver Hagen’s DivingBoard MIDI controller #Music #Python #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

DivingBoard is a homemade MIDI controller aiming to solve the lack of parameter accessibility on the Roland JD-Xi synthesiser. It differs from other solutions – customizability and potential ease-of-use are greater, and general use with a range of synthesisers is possible, rather than just with the JD-Xi.

The project uses an Arduino Nano running Arduino and a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W running Python.

See the video below and read more on hackster.io and the project website.

See What Your Brain Does When You Look at Art

…if you’re in the UK that is. BBC News recently published this video on YouTube covering the headsets that will make their way around museums and galleries allowing art viewers to see their own brainwaves.

Automate Everything: migrating to Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi #HomeAutomation #RaspberryPi

Darren Poulson has had an automated home for a rather long time. He migrated to Home Assistant and describes the process of moving all previous hardware and automations to the new platform.

Home Assistant has been around for a while, but I was loathe to move from OpenHAB as I already had a lot set up. However, as OpenHAB fell behind I finally bit the bullet and installed HAOS on a spare Raspberry Pi. This turned out to be a good thing.

The main core of the system is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant OS. This is a simple install onto a Pi and is fully managed by Home Assistant. Everything runs in containers and gives you everything you need to get started.

The Pi is run from PoE in a rack, to keep things simple, and also has everything installed onto an SSD drive as it is a lot more reliable that using an SD Card (My old OpenHAB system was on SD Card and I had to rebuild it every now and again as the SD card wore out). Plugged into the Pi are two USB dongles, one for z-wave and one for Zigbee/Matter. This direct connection lets me control the majority of the devices I have.

I have a second Pi 4 running a system called Frigate. This is an open source CCTV system that integrates really nicely with Home Assistant.

Check out the systems and how they are managed in the post here.

DIY Star Wars Arcade Cabinet #SciFiSunday

Who doesn’t want a Star Wars cabinet game? We could spend all day playing, and our housemates could just stand behind us saying “Stay on target! Stay on target!” But as time goes on, working versions of these cabinets are harder and harder to find. So make James Milroy just made one, with a little help from a Raspberry Pi. Here’s more from the Raspberry Pi Blog:

“My project was to build a replica, or as close as I could reasonably manage, of the Atari Star Wars arcade cabinet,” James Milroy tells [MagPi]. “I really wanted to build a cockpit as that’s what I played on in the eighties, but sadly I didn’t have the room to house it, so the compromise was to build a stand-up cabinet instead…. Initially, I had toyed with sourcing an original cabinet and restoring it, but soon gave up on that idea after finding it nigh on impossible to source a cabinet here in the UK,” James explains. “Almost all cabinets for sale were located in the USA, so they were out of the question due to the high cost of shipping. Atari only made just over 12,500 cabinets worldwide, so their rarity meant that they commanded top dollar, effectively putting them out of my price range. It was at this point that I decided that if it was going to happen, then I would have to make it myself.”

See project!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

BitLocker encryption broken in 43 seconds Raspberry Pi Pico #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Tom’s Hardware shares how YouTuber stacksmashing shares how the reliance on a Trusted Platform Module makes it easier to sniff out data.

Bitlocker is one of the most easily accessible encryption solutions available today, being a built-in feature of Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 Pro that’s designed to secure your data from prying eyes. However, YouTuber stacksmashing demonstrated a colossal security flaw with Bitlocker that allowed him to bypass Windows Bitlocker in less than a minute with a cheap sub-$10 Raspberry Pi Pico, thus gaining access to the encryption keys that can unlock protected data. After creating the device, the exploit only took 43 seconds to steal the master key.

Read more.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Tiny Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

A proper cyberdeck should look like it was kludged together in an alley in the Sprawl, under a sky the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. It should look like you can close it up, run through a crowd, jump onto a subway, and disappear into the night. It should look like anyone can make it, but only you can use it. Mike Horne’s little Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck checks all those boxes. Here’s more from Raspberry Pi Pod:

A 3S LiPo gives approx 11.1V, which is obviously too much for the Pi which wants 5-5.2V. I grabbed hold of an adjustable buck converter that takes a high power feed and converts it (steps it down) to whatever voltage you need, courtesy of a small adjustment pot at the top. Here it is with the pot turned to approximately what I needed. I later adjusted it to 5.1V to give the Pi some headroom.

You’ll see that the output of the converter goes into an Enviro+ board that is plugged into the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. This is where things get a little convenient. I knew I wanted some kind of sensor display for the project, and I happened to have an Enviro+ already. With a little experimentation, I found that I could take the voltage out of the converter and “shove” it into the GND and 5V pins of the Enviro+ and this would power the Pi. Marvellous. There is a cheaper board – the plain Enviro – so you might want to consider that. I also realised that I could add a control button to the Enviro+ by soldering a button to the other GND and #4 (GPIO 4), so I did that as well. The nice thing about the Enviro is that it breaks out “just enough” pins to make it easy to add things on. Those I2C (SDA/SCL) pins are just begging for more sensors – I don’t have any more room in the case, though!

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

The Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: subscribe for free #CircuitPython #Python #RaspberryPi @micropython @ThePSF

The Python for Microcontrollers Newsletter is the place for the latest news involving Python on hardware (microcontrollers AND single board computers like Raspberry Pi).

This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with CircuitPython, MicroPython, and Python information (and more) that you may have missed, all in one place!

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6 Raspberry Pi projects that won’t break the bank #RaspberryPi @SlashGear

SlashGear writes about six Raspberry Pi projects one can do without spending large amounts.

Browsing through the thousands of Pi projects online, you’ll probably notice that several come with a laundry list of components, some of which have hefty price tags. If you’re just dipping your toes into the realm of Raspberry Pi and don’t want to invest heaps of cash on a trial run, fear not. There’s a host of budget-friendly Raspberry Pi projects at your disposal, perfect not only for electronic beginners but also those who want to test out their newly learned programming skills. Here are six of the best ones to get you started.

Listed are:

• Wall-Mounted Google Calendar
• Pi Camera Doorbell
• Security System with Motion Detection via Camera
• Grandpa Scarer
• Automated Plant Watering with a Website
• Two-Player Arcade Coffee Table

Check out the details in the article here.

See many more projects on learn.adafruit.com

PCWorld reviews the Raspberry Pi 5 #RaspberryPi @PCWorld

PCWorld today reviewed the Raspberry Pi which came out late last year. Their conclusions:

With Model 5 and the new Raspberry Pi OS, the Raspberry Pi Foundation does almost everything right: even demanding program such as Firefox, Chromium, and VS Code run absolutely smoothly on the desktop. Working is simply fun. In normal use, the mini computer is still silent. If a fan is installed, it only starts during longer CPU-intensive work. The Pi 5 is ideal for server use (NAS), as a media center, for home automation, or as a desktop.

The biggest disadvantage is its price. While an impulse purchase for experimentation was still conceivable with earlier models, a clear purpose is now required to justify the cost. The predecessor models are better suited to hobbyists and makers. They are sufficiently fast, less fussy about the power supply, don’t run as hot, are cheaper, and are currently more readily available.

See the full review in the article here.

How to install CircuitPython 9.0.0-beta.0 on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

YouTube user and blogger coXXect shows the steps to install CircuitPython 9.0.0-beta.0 on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. The installation is “bare metal” and not using Raspberry Pi OS (which can run CircuitPython with the Blinka compatibility layer for Python).

See the video below and step by step in a blog post here.

Raspberry Pi and Python powers first driverless car in Formula SAE Brazil competition #Python #RaspberryPi #ML

A Raspberry Pi running Python powers the first driverless car in Formula SAE Brazil competition. Team Ampera pushed through various prototypes before creating a Raspberry Pi-powered car capable of navigating the Formula SAE Brazil track completely autonomously.

“Python algorithms (are used) to build a map of the track. These algorithms don’t just calculate the best path to follow; they also determine control actions, such as steering and acceleration, and send these suggestions to the car’s electronic control unit (ECU).”

See the video below and more via Raspberry Pi News.

Robert Tinney computer art (other than in Byte Magazine) #ArtTuesday #VintageComputing

Robert Tinney is an artist best known for his monthly cover art for Byte Magazine. Starting in 1975, he created over 100 pieces of art for Byte, done by hand, consisting of drawn illustrations with tissue paper, oil painting, and designer wash and airbrush.

Robert Tinney was in great demand to do covers for companies other than Byte. Galactic Studios has a collection of other art on their website here which should be checked out.

You can read more about Tinney on his website and on Wikipedia.

A huge update for TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers on Raspberry Pi Pico #RaspberryPi #ML #AI @Raspberry_Pi

It’s been three years since the RP2040 port of TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers. The work was done by Pete Warden, who at that point headed up the TensorFlow mobile team at Google. Since, the RP2040 port has been languishing. But a couple of weeks ago, that all changed. Raspberry Pi News reports:

Now at Useful Sensors, Pete has been doing some interesting things with RP2040. He has just upstreamed the last three years of changes — after all, as he puts it, “We all love pull requests with 1,129 changed files, right?” — and he’s taking on maintenance of the port on a best-effort basis.

The code now uses both cores of the RP2040 microcontroller.

The upshot? These updates and changes reduce the time for the person detection benchmark code from 824ms to 588ms. That’s a ×1.4 speed increase!

Read more on Raspberry Pi News here and see the pull request on GitHub.

Making a tiny Raspberry Pi based Cyberdeck #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Michael Klements posts a detailed build of a tiny Cyberdeck using a Raspberry Pi. The device combines a Raspberry Pi 4B with a Pimoroni HyperPixel display and a Solder Party Blackberry Keyboard breakout.

When Atomstack reached out and asked me if I would like to try out their new Atomstack X30 Pro laser engraving and cutting machine, I thought that this would be a great project to build with it.

I’m going to make up the Cyberdeck in a clamshell design with the display mounted directly onto the Raspberry Pi in the top half and then a small keyboard in the bottom half.

See the video below and details on The DIY Life here.

MIDI-Controllable Synth Built From a Raspberry Pi Pico @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

Cornell University hosts a class humbly titled ECE 4760. It’s a class on microcontrollers. As you might imagine, these Cornell students make some pretty cool stuff. Recently, Pelham built a MIDI-controllable synthesizer out of a Raspberry Pi Pico. Here’s more from Hackaday:

[Pelham] coded a library to parse MIDI messages on the Pico, with the microcontroller’s UART charged with receiving the input data. MIDI is basically just serial at a baud rate of 31.25k, with a set message structure, after all. From there, the Pico takes the note data and plays the relevant frequencies by synthesizing square waves using a PWM output. A second PWM channel can also be blended with the first to generate more complex tones.  The synthesizer is designed to be used with a source of MIDI note data such as a keyboard controller; [Pelham] demonstrates the project in use with a Roland JD-XI. It’s a fairly basic synthesizer, but [Pelham] does a good job of explaining all the steps required to get this far. If you’ve never done an audio or MIDI project before, you might find his guide very helpful for the way it steps through the basics.

See more!