Hackers are buzzing with ideas from Pi-powered arcade machines and drones to the home automation and low-cost tablets. 10 coolest uses for the Raspberry Pi article tells that TechRepublic has delved into the Raspbery Pi’s developer forums, and here’s our round-up of the best ideas so far, ranging from the eminently achievable to the massively ambitious. You can use your Raspberry Pi for example as media streamer, arcade machine, tablet computer, robot controller and home automation controller. Rasberry Pi homepage offers also some more interesting projects like Retro games and a retro joystick.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Piana – Musical Synthesis For The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/02/24/piana-musical-synthesis-for-the-raspberry-pi/
For the last 15 years or so, software synths have slowly yet surely replaced those beatboxes, drum machines, and true synthesizers. It’s a loss for old hardware aficionados, but at least everyone with a MacBook is now a musician, amiright?
The Raspberry Pi and Pi2 already have more processing power than a desktop from ’99, so it’s no surprise that all of those classic synths, from a Moog. Yamaha DX, Casio CZ, Linn drum machine, Fairlight, and a mellotron, can all be stuffed into a Pi thanks to the work of [Phil Atkin] and his Raspberry Pi synthesizer.
http://raspberrypisynthesizer.blogspot.nl/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get yourself connected: GrovePi+ Starter Kit
Raspberry Pi projects made easy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/24/review_grovepi_plus_kit_raspberry_pi_expansion/
hen it comes to hacking hardware, there’s an easy way and there‘s a hard way. The hard way involves connecting peripherals direct to one of the standard buses supported by your Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone or whatever. Buses like I²C, SPI, UART and 1-Wire. You’ll need to take care with your wiring: have you got the right pull-up or pull-down resistor? Is there too much capacitance in the line?
These days, a fair few of the most commonly used data sources – light-level sensors, temperature and pressure readers, motion detectors and such – are well supported with open source driver libraries written by the many companies who mount the raw components on break-out boards, add some interface logic and sell the result as a unit rather than a raw component.
Adafruit and SparkFun, for example, both offer dozens of such modules, all accessible in your project software through driver code you cut and paste out of code repositories on websites like GitHub.
The really hard way, of course, is to grab a component, its datasheet and work it into your project without the help of folk with a greater knowledge and experience of electronics and/or software than you.
Alternatively, you can go the really easy way and use a product that integrates a bunch of sensors (light, sound, ultrasonics, temperature and pressure), readouts (LED and LCD) and inputs (button and potentiometer) and control (relay); hooks them all up through a common connector to a board that drops right onto your platform’s GPIO pins; and makes all the modules accessible through a simple software interface.
That’s what China’s Seeed Studio and America’s Dexter Industries would like you to do, and they’ve jointly devised the Grove system to provide what they call a Lego-like approach to developing electronics projects: just build it up, functional block by functional block.
All of the component modules designed by Dexter and sold by Seeed connect to a board, the GrovePi+, using the same type of four-wire cable: two wires for data, one for power, the other for Ground. That means you can grab any Grove cable, fix it to any Grove sensor and plug in into pretty much any port on the GrovePi+ board.
No prizes for guessing this product is for the Raspberry Pi, but there’s an equivalent Shield for Arduino and Cape for Beaglebone.
The GrovePi+ board has seven digital, three analogue, three I²C and two serial ports, all designed to take said standard four-wire cable.
It’s quick and easy. I built a simple Pi protection system with the ultrasonic ranger and a red LED in just a few minutes and with a handful of lines of code. Then I plugged in the buzzer and set that to sound when the LED lit up – and pretty pronto a button to reset the system and turn off the noise. It took me longer to wrack my brains for Python‘s string formatting syntax than it did to hook up and code the character LCD as a simple time-stamped alarm incident log.
The Starter Kit costs £39, the GrovePi+ on its own £15.60.
I tested a pre-release version of the GrovePi+, which communicates with the Pi via I²C. I experienced a number of IO errors, all related to I²C communications, during the time I spent with the Kit. Dexter Industries Forum posts relating to the GrovePI+’s predecessor suggest this is not uncommon but at least can be caught and managed in the core Python code.
So, the easy way or the hard way? For me, the GrovePi+ way is too easy: it’s all done for you, so you learn nothing that’ll help you when you come to connect a peripheral that isn’t included in the selection of GrovePi sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Upgrade To A Raspberry Pi Media Server
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/01/an-upgrade-to-a-raspberry-pi-media-server/
The build consists of a Raspi 2, a HiFiBerry Dac to address the complaints of terrible audio on the Pi, an aluminum enclosure, and some electronics for IO and a real software shutdown for the Pi. The Arduino also handles an IR remote and a rotary encoder on the front of the enclosure.
The software is the Logitech Media Server along with Squeezeslave.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BitScope Micro
http://www.raspberrypi.org/bitscope-micro/
This is the BitScope Micro, built especially for the Raspberry Pi. It turns your Pi into a dual channel digital oscilloscope, a multi-channel logic analyser, a waveform and clock generator and a spectrum analyser; it comes bundled with BitScope’s full suite of software (well worth a look if you’re even slightly interested – this thing has features coming out of the wazoo), and it’s probably the cheapest digital scope we’ve ever seen, coming in at USD $95 if you buy in volume, and $145 at one-off retail. You can read much more at BitScope’s website.
BitScope Micro Oscilloscope & Analyzer
http://bitscope.com/product/BS05/
Just like BS10 this is a fully featured mixed signal test & measurement system, a mixed signal scope in a probe!
20 MHz Bandwidth.
40 MSps Logic Capture.
2 Analog Scope Channels.
2 Analog Comparator channels.
6 Logic/Protocol Analyzer channels.
8 & 12 bit native analog sample resolution.
Decodes Serial, SPI, I2C, CAN and more.
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X & Raspberry Pi.
Built-in analog waveform & clock generators.
User programmable, C/C++, Python, VM API.
Tiny, light weight (14g) and water resistant.
Standard oscilloscope probe adapters available.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EVA: What’s on Telly for the Visually Impaired
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/04/eva-whats-on-telly-for-the-visually-impaired/
[chewabledrapery] has certainly used his Raspberry Pi for good. His girlfriend’s grandfather is growing more visually impaired as time goes on. He likes to watch telly, but has trouble reading the on-screen information about the channel and programming. To that end, [chewabledrapery] has built an electronic voice assistant called EVA, who fetches the telly schedule from a web service and reads it aloud in her lovely voice that comes courtesy of Google Translate’s TTS function.
Under EVA’s hood is a Raspberry Pi.
[chewabledrapery]’s scripts make formatted requests to a web service called atlas, which returns JSON objects with the TV schedule and content descriptions. EVA then turns to Google Translate, speaking the formatted text through a small amplifier and salvaged PC speaker.
EVA (Electronic Voice Assistant)
I made a thing, its reads out the TV schedule for visually impaired people, I’ve called it EVA (Electronic Voice Assistant)
http://hackaday.io/project/4514-eva-electronic-voice-assistant
Tomi Engdahl says:
RFID Audio Book Reader For the Visually Impaired
http://hackaday.com/2014/08/23/rfid-audio-book-reader-for-the-visually-impaired/
Essentially, the box you see above contains a Raspi and an RFID reader. He created different ‘books’ by placing RFID cards inside of DVD boxes, which makes them more tangible and accessible. When a book is placed on the box, the RFID reader tells the Pi which mp3 files to load.
RFID audio book reader for my nearly blind grandfather
An RFID controlled audio book reader to help the visually impaired enjoy audio books. Already in use by my nearly blind grandfather.
http://hackaday.io/project/2698-rfid-audio-book-reader-for-my-nearly-blind-grandfather
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using Cheap Displays With The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/05/using-cheap-displays-with-the-raspberry-pi/
The Raspberry Pi B+ has a native VGA connection. Sure, it’s hidden away in binary blobs and device trees, and you need to wire up the GPIO pins just right, but it’s possible to connect a VGA monitor to a Raspi B+ naively. For the brave, smart, or foolish, this means you can also drive raw DPI displays. [Robert] had a few of these dirt cheap displays sitting around and decided to give the entire thing a go. It worked, and he’s written down how to do it.
Let’s add a dirt cheap screen to the Raspberry Pi B+
http://blog.reasonablycorrect.com/raw-dpi-raspberry-pi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Erica The Cyber Rhino
http://hackaday.io/project/299-erica-the-cyber-rhino
An interactive artwork built to help with the goals of rhino conservation and electronics and computer science outreach
Erica is powered by five raspberry pi computers.
Two of these are used for controlling the eyes and performing computer vision on the video allowing Erica to recognise things like faces and QR codes.
One controls the mechatronics inside the rhino, controlling the state of the LEDs and moving the ears.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Remote Controlled Weather Station
http://hackaday.io/project/4525-remote-controlled-weather-station
Raspberry Pi + Temp Sensor + RockBLOCK =
Today we’ll be creating a remote controlled satellite weather station using a Raspberry Pi, a temperature sensor and a RockBLOCK. The envisioned application would be a weather station in a really remote location (i.e. outside of mobile/cellular coverage) – maybe in the middle of the desert, the jungle, or even the arctic – sending its data back to some kind of central weather system.
The weather station application will periodically transmit its sensor readings using the RockBLOCK. For those of you who don’t know the RockBLOCK, it’s an awesome little module that enables small amounts of data to be sent/received via satellite from anywhere in the world.
Satellite communication with RockBLOCK
http://www.makersnake.com/rockblock/
The RockBLOCK Mk2 is one awesome module. It literally houses everything you need to send and receive data from anywhere on the planet (Iridium satellite modem, compact antenna and power circuitry) in a module smaller than the Raspberry Pi (the de facto measuring implement for these kind of things) at an equally micro price of £159/€199/$269 – available to buy online from Rock 7
Tomi Engdahl says:
Convert a Rotary Phone to VOIP using Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/09/convert-a-rotary-phone-to-voip-using-raspberry-pi/
There’s something so nostalgic about the rotary phone that makes it a fun thing to hack and modernize. [Voidon] put his skills to the test and converted one to VoIP using a Raspberry Pi. He used the RasPi’s GPIO pins to read pulses from the rotary dial – a functional dial is always a welcome feature in rotary phone hacks. An old USB sound card was perfect for the microphone and handset audio.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kali Linux On a Raspberry Pi (A/B+/2) With LUKS Disk Encryption
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/03/09/1850235/kali-linux-on-a-raspberry-pi-ab2-with-luks-disk-encryption
https://www.offensive-security.com/kali-linux/raspberry-pi-luks-disk-encryption/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The many uses of the Raspberry Pi
http://www.edn.com/collections/4425938/The-many-uses-of-the-Raspberry-Pi?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150313&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20150313&elq=6412832c9cf943e298e665f2a168b1a2&elqCampaignId=22069&elqaid=24776&elqat=1&elqTrackId=12fd397191af45c3a7b15026643dc104
The inexpensive Raspberry Pi single-board computer has been used for environmental sensing, robotics, gaming, and many things in between.
This collection includes EDN’s coverage of the many products and projects that have taken advantage of the Raspberry Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
pi-top
http://pi-top.com/
Build and understand your own Raspberry Pi Model powered laptop. We take you through each component and its functionality, so that you can use the pi-top as a tool for your own build projects in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
GCHQ Builds a Raspberry Pi Super Computer Cluster
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/03/16/1740257/gchq-builds-a-raspberry-pi-super-computer-cluster
GCHQ, the UK equivalent of the NSA, has created a 66 Raspberry Pi cluster called the Bramble for “educational” purposes. What educational purposes isn’t exactly clear but you do associate super computers with spooks and spies. It seems that there was an internal competition to invent something and three, unnamed, GCHQ technologists decided that other Pi clusters were too ad-hoc.
GCHQ Builds A Raspberry Pi Cluster
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/8385-gchq-builds-a-raspberry-pi-cluster.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pi-Raq creates a rack-mountable monitor for your Raspberry Pi
Now you can put your Pi on the rack – too cool
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2398479/pi-raq-creates-a-rack-mountable-monitor-for-your-raspberry-pi
RASPBERRY PI has taken the jump into the data centre with a rack-mountable Pi and monitor combo.
The Pi-Raq (geddit?) is the invention of EarthLCD, and is designed to be a 1U rack-mountable appliance and enclosure for the EarthLCD 10x1in colour TFT display creating an easily programmable controller and interface for rack-mounted equipment.
The open source hardware project is available as a series of CAD files allowing you to source your own bits (including, of course, EarthLCD’s display) and build your own Raspberry Pi controller in a rack.
The applications of this are many and manifest, including anything from audio controller to network hub.
EarthLCD CEO Randy Schafer said: “Using the Raspberry Pi allows us to get this incredible display into potential users’ hands fast and allow them to design high value internet appliances very rapidly by just adding their software and application specific I/O via USB or I2C interfaces.”
Pi-Raq
http://store.earthlcd.com/Pi-Raq
The Pi-Raq is a 1U Raspberry Pi based 1U appliance with a metal enclosure for the EarthLCD 10×1 inch Color TFT display which includes a user interface control utilizing a jog wheel. The Solid Works CAD files are included for this metal enclosure. With the innovation of the Pi-Raq and existing EarthLCD 10×1 display, Rack mount equipment, such as power controllers, network hubs and routers, can now have an easily programmable front panel.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transmitting HD Video From A Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/transmitting-hd-video-from-a-raspberry-pi/
It’s been a few years since the RTL-SDR TV Tuner dongle blew up the world of amateur radio
Now, we have a transmitting dongle. It’s only being used to transmit live HDTV from a Pi, but that in itself is very interesting and opens up a lot of possible builds.
The key piece of hardware for this build is a UT-100C TVB-T modulator. It’s a $169 USB dongle capable of transmitting between 1200-1350 MHz, and with a special edition of OpenCaster it’s possible to transmit over-the-air TV. There’s no amplifier, so you won’t be sending TV very far, but it does work.
On the Raspberry Pi side of the build, the standard camera captures H.264 video with raspivid, which is converted to a DVB compliant stream using ffmpeg.
Turn your Raspberry Pi into a live HDTV transmitter
http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/dvb/490-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-live-hdtv-transmitter
In a previous post I wrote about using the UT-100C DVB-T modulator on linux and I promised to follow up how to use the modulator with live video sources. In this post I am going to describe how to setup the modulator on a Raspiberry Pi equipped with a RaspiCam camera module, effectively turning the Pi into a live HDTV transmitter.
The setup can be made small enough to be carried by a medium size drone and the range can be increased using power amplifiers.
Your best bet is to get a ham radio license and use the 23 cm band.
In the example I am using 1.28 GHz carrier frequency which is in the DATV segment of the 23 cm amateur radio band. If you don’t have a DVB-T receiver that works at that frequency you can change it to some UHF frequency and use your regular digital television to receive it provided that it can do DVB-T and you are only transmitting in your lab with very low power. Check the regulations in your country to know for sure what you may and what you may not do.
I have modified the RTL2832, R820T and E4000 drivers to allow tuning to L-band frequencies as supported by these tuners.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Raspberry Pi Wearable Revolution
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/01/the-raspberry-pi-wearable-revolution/
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Smartphone
http://hackaday.io/project/5083-diy-smartphone
DIY Smartphone using Raspberry Pi A+ Pi, Camera, PiTFT, and Adafruit FONA with custom mobile OS.
Introducing the tyfone: A DIY smartphone anyone can make. The tyfone uses the Raspberry Pi for processing and has a 3.5in touchscreen. The tyfone uses an Adafruit Fona to give the tyfone the capability to make calls, send sms messages, and get the time using a RTC. The tyfone also has a 5mp camera module giving it the power to take HD photos and send them to dropbox over WiFi. Speaking of Wifi, the tyfone has a USB wifi adapter so it can communicate with the internet along with cellular networks. All this technology is enclosed in a 3D printed case.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TTBN Alpha
Remote presence robot using a Raspberry Pi and 3d printed tracked platform
http://hackaday.io/project/2846-ttbn-alpha
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Python Controller
A simple controller for the Raspberry Pi with multiple buttons.
http://hackaday.io/project/1618-raspberry-pi-python-controller
Tomi Engdahl says:
TyFone – a DIY Smartphone
https://www.raspberrypi.org/tyfone-a-diy-smartphone/
One of the most popular projects we’ve featured here was Dave Hunt’s PiPhone. It’s a working mobile phone built around a Raspberry Pi; it does all the telephony you’d expect, but it’s a smart-ish phone, not a complete smart phone, which made some of you sad.
In the year since the PiPhone was first built, Tyler Spadgenske has been beavering away at his own version, which improves on the original. We think it’s rather splendid.
Build Your Own Smartphone
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-Your-Own-Smartphone/
Tomi Engdahl says:
VCF East X: Minicomputing With The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/19/vcf-east-x-minicomputing-with-the-raspberry-pi/
The Vintage Computer Festival in Wall, New Jersey doesn’t just attract locals; [Oscar] came all the way from Switzerland to show off his PiDP-8/I. It’s a miniature minicomputer, emulated in SimH, with blinkenlights and toggle switches mounted to a Raspberry Pi Hat.
Although the PiDP-8 is emulating a machine with thousands of discrete transistors, the design is exceptionally simple. On the board is 92 LEDs, a bunch of diodes, 26 toggle switches, a driver chip, and that’s about it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter
http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter
connect a 70cm (optimally, ~20cm will do) or so plain wire to GPIO 4 (which is pin 7 on header P1) to act as an antenna, and tune an FM radio to 103.3Mhz.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meshing Pis with Project Byzantium
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/28/meshing-pis-with-project-byzantium/
[B1tsh1fter] has put together a set of hardware for running Byzantium on Pis in emergency situations. A Raspberry Pi 2 acts as a mesh node, using a powerful USB WiFi adapter for networking. Options are provided for backup power, including a solar charger and a supercapacitor based solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DOTS Uses Paint to Control Raspberry Pi 2
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/28/dots-uses-paint-to-control-rapsberry-pi-2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
DOTS Uses Paint to Control Raspberry Pi 2
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/28/dots-uses-paint-to-control-rapsberry-pi-2/
Two tables down from us at SXSW Create the Raspberry Pi foundation had a steady stream of kids playing Minecraft on Raspberry Pi, and picking up paint brushes. The painting activity was driven by a board they spun for the event that used conductive paint to control the Raspberry Pi 2.
The front side exposes several circular pads of copper which build up a “connect-the-dots” game that is played by painting conductive ink on the surface. This results in an airplane being pained on the board, as well as displayed on the computer. There is a set of pads that allow the user to select what color is painted on the monitor.
We like this as a different approach to education. Kids are more than used to tapping on a touchscreen, clicking a mouse, or pounding a keyboard. But conductive ink provides several learning opportunities; the paint simply connects the inner circle with the outer circle; one of these circles is the same on every single dot (ground); anything that connects these two parts of the dot together will result in input for the computer. Great stuff!
Dots Board – Developer Giveaway!
https://www.raspberrypi.org/dots-board-giveaway/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi 2 observed with modded Flir E4 thermal imager
https://blog.noq2.net/raspberry-pi-2-observed-with-modded-flir-e4-thermal-imager.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Star Trek TOS Picorder
Turning a toy “Star Trek” Tricorder into the real thing with a Raspberry Pi
https://hackaday.io/project/5437-star-trek-tos-picorder
This project aims to upgrade a licensed toy replica of the tricorder from the original “Star Trek” series into a functional and undeniably stylish tool.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Project Robie Rover
Retrofitting a Raspberry Pi in to an old Radio Shack Robie Junior robot.
https://hackaday.io/project/4263-project-robie-rover
Goals for the project include real-time motor control via an Android smart phone, real time streaming video feed from the Raspi Cam, ws2812 LED integration and integration with the existing switches.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi et al, DIY-style
How to create your own IoT gadgets and gizmos
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/09/book_review_iot_diy_at_home_projects_for_arduino_pi_beaglebone/
The Internet of Things (IoT) is all the rage at the moment, with dozens of manufacturers throwing out kit like remote-control lightbulbs, weather stations, thermostats and plenty more. Some of those are great products and some of them are also-rans.
Quite a lot, it turns out, are actually simple enough that you could probably build something like that at home.
That’s what this new book, The Internet of Things: Do-It-Yourself at Home Projects for Arduino, Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black by Donald Norris, is all about. It sets out to show how you can use small computer systems and link them up to sensors, switches and relays to build your own IoT projects. The ubiquitous Raspberry Pi is one of the systems featured, but it also covers Arduino and BeagleBone Black as well.
You could be forgiven from that for thinking that the book will cater for complete beginners, but while it does explain some concepts that may well be new – like abstract classes and interfaces – it’s certainly not a complete programming tutorial.
It’s not all Raspberry Pi in the book, though. There are also projects using Arduino, with both the Uno IDE and Visual Studio 2012 Express. There’s a good explanation of how to use an Ethernet shield to run a web server, and controlling items using a relay board connected to the GPIO pins too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pis And A Video Triptych
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/19/raspberry-pis-and-a-video-triptych/
A filmmaker friend of [Thomas] mentioned that she would like to display a triptych at the 2015 Venice Art Walk. This is no ordinary triptych with a frame for three pictures – this is a video triptych, with three displays each showing a different video, and everything running in sync. Sounds like a cool engineering challenge, huh?
The electronics used in the build were three Raspberry Pi 2s and a trio of HDMI displays.
http://www.relentlessplay.com/video-tryptic/
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Wireless Power Outlet with Raspberry Pi
http://www.eeweb.com/project/eeweb/diy-wireless-power-outlet-with-raspberry-pi
Wirelessly control your power outlets from your phone with Tim’s DIY wireless power outlet built with Raspberry Pi. This device will control your power outlets via Wifi and RF.
Steps:
Connect wires to Rf transmitter and receiver chips. If you use different gpio pins the programs CodeSend and RFSniffer will not work. If you would like to use different pins check out Ninjablocks 433Utils
Install Rasbian on Raspberry Pi
Install Wiring Pi
Install Apache and PHP on the Raspberry Pi
Clone web files
Use RFSniffer to find RF codes for your devices
Change permission of codesend program so sudo isn’t required:
Browse to Raspberry Pi ip address ‘http:///rfoutlet/ App demo
Now you should be able to power on/off your outlets from a web browser. If you would like more range you can add an antenna to the transmitter chip. I cut a 12 inch wire from a cat 5 cable and it worked great.
If you would like to schedule the outlets on or off you could use crontab.
Wireless Power Outlets
http://timleland.com/wireless-power-outlets/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi 2: 10 Unusual & Interesting Projects
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326653
Tomi Engdahl says:
MAMEFrame – Sweet All In One Portable MAME System
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/28/mameframe-sweet-all-in-one-portable-mame-system/
Video game enthusiast [NEIN] loves MAME. The one thing he doesn’t like much about MAME is moving large heavy MAME cabinets around. So what do you do if you want to take your games on the road?
It may appear that this is a standard 2-player DIY controller, however, it is anything but. The display is housed inside the encloure — a video projector that connects to the Raspberry Pi via an HDMI cable.
MAMEFrame – The battery-powered MAME system
http://www.instructables.com/id/MAMEFrame-The-battery-powered-MAME-system/?ALLSTEPS
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Augmented Reality Device
… with video pass-through …
https://hackaday.io/project/5935-diy-augmented-reality-device
Hi makers !
What about building an Augmented Reality Helmet, with off the shelf components ?
Display quality will be lower than Occulus or similar products, but it should be a lot of fun to build and use.
Comment:
Arcadia Labs wrote 3 days ago
Hi Mike, thanks ! The Raspberry Pi B I’m currently using could drive both displays at 50fps but I slowed them down to 30fps because of the long cables. I was really surprised to notice both displays are perfectly synced.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Braille Computer
A low cost Raspberry Pi powered all in one Braille computer with a full page display.
https://hackaday.io/project/5617-braille-computer
A traditional Braille terminal links to a PC and provided a single line of text. These devices cost upwards of £1800 plus the cost of a computer and require training putting them out of reach of most blind people. In 2007 it was found that only 10% of blind children could read Braille, due to access in education compared to 50% in the 1960′s. My solution it to build a low cost all in one system which can also teach, much like the Khan Academy.
The reason a Braille terminal is so expensive is the cells which push each dot on demand. What I will do is use a cnc type mechanism to push cheap resettable ‘pins’ in order to provide a full page of information. A complete computer should hopefully come in under £200.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Augmented Reality Device
… with video pass-through …
https://hackaday.io/project/5935-diy-augmented-reality-device
What about building an Augmented Reality Helmet, with off the shelf components ?
For sure, display quality will be lower than HTC Vive or similar products, but it should be a lot of fun to build and use.
Tomi Engdahl says:
KeyMouSerial Solves Your Raspberry Pi Keyboard Problems
http://hackaday.com/2015/06/27/keymouserial-solves-your-raspberry-pi-keyboard-problems/
KeyMouSerial
http://peterburk.herokuapp.com/keymouserial/
KeyMouSerial is an app to copy keystrokes and mouse events to a serial line, allowing an Arduino to send those to a second computer over USB.
This is particularly useful for people who need to use the Raspberry Pi but don’t want to carry a USB keyboard everywhere.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Synergy
http://synergy-project.org/?utm_expid=35973112-4.Khyun2WzTqSV1Ug1o9pgDg.0&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fhackaday.com%2F2015%2F06%2F27%2Fkeymouserial-solves-your-raspberry-pi-keyboard-problems%2F
Synergy combines your devices together in to one cohesive experience.
Seamlessly move your mouse to any computer and start typing.
Works on all major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).
Share your clipboard (copy and paste) between your computers.
Drag and drop files from one computer to another (Windows and Mac OS X).
Encryption keeps sensitive data safe on public networks.
Network-based (IP) software KVM switch (non-video).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home Automation with Raspberry Pi
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/home-automation-raspberry-pi
The Raspberry Pi has been very popular among hobbyists and educators ever since its launch in 2011. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single-board computer with a Broadcom BCM 2835 SoC, 256MB to 512MB of RAM, USB ports, GPIO pins, Ethernet, HDMI out, camera header and an SD card slot. The most attractive aspects of the Raspberry Pi are its low cost of $35 and large user community following.
In this article, I briefly describe the requirements of the project that I outlined, and I explain the various tools I decided to use to build it. I then cover the hardware I chose and the way to assemble the parts to realize the system. Next, I continue setting up the development environment on the Raspbian image, and I walk through the code and bring everything together to form the complete system. Finally, I conclude with possible improvements and hacks that would extend the usefulness of a Pi home automation system.
The Internet of Things
An ongoing trend in embedded devices is to have all embedded devices connected to the Internet. The Internet was developed as a fail-safe network that could survive the destruction of several nodes. The Internet of Things (IoT) leverages the same redundancy. With the move to migrate to IPv6, the IP address space would be large enough for several trillion devices to stay connected. A connected device also makes it very convenient to control it from anywhere, receive inputs from various sensors and respond to events. A multitude of IoT-connected devices in a home has the potential to act as a living entity that exhibits response to stimuli.
Raspberry Pi Home Automation
Inspired by the idea of having a home that has a life of its own, I settled on a home automation project to control the lights in my living room. The goal of my project was to be able to time the lights in my living room and control them remotely over the Internet using a Web browser. I also wanted to expose an API that could be used to control the device from other devices programatically.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Build A ProxyHam Despite A Cancelled DEFCON Talk
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/14/how-to-build-a-proxyham-despite-a-cancelled-defcon-talk/
A few days ago, [Ben Caudill] of Rhino Security was scheduled to give a talk at DEFCON. His project, ProxyHam, is designed for those seeking complete anonymity online.
With the ProxyHam, the link between IP addresses and physical locations is severed. ProxyHam uses a 900MHz radio link to bridge a WiFi network over miles. By hiding a ProxyHam base station in a space with public WiFi, anyone can have complete anonymity online; if the government comes to take you down, they’ll first have to stop at the local library, Starbucks, or wherever else has free WiFi.
The talk has been killed, and no one knows why. Speculation ranges from National Security Letters to government gag orders to a far more pedestrian explanations like, “it doesn’t work as well as intended.”
That doesn’t mean this knowledge is lost – you can build a ProxyHam with equipment purchased from Amazon, Newegg, or any one of a number of online retailers.
The ProxyHam box contains something with an RJ45 connector on one end, and two RF connectors on the other. A quick perusal of Newegg lands on this, a radio base station designed to bridge networks via 900MHz radio. You’ll need to buy two of those to replicate the ProxyHam.
The Wired article describes the ProxyHam further: “…a Raspberry Pi computer connected to a Wi-Fi card and a small 900 megaherz antenna…”
To set up the ‘throwaway’ part of the ProxyHam, you’ll need to first connect to the desired WiFi network, then bridge the WiFi and wired connections.
Of course the 900MHz base station must also be configured
That’s also how to violate the FCC Part 97 prohibition against encryption – you can not use SSH or HTTPS over amateur radio. It’s also how you can be charged with the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act; connecting to a library’s WiFi from miles away is most certainly, “exceeding authorized access.”
Do not attempt this build. It’s illegal, it’s dumb, and the 900MHz band is flooded anyway.
The ProxyHam is this year’s BlackHat and DEFCON pre-game. A marginally interesting security exploit is served up to the tech media and devoured. This becomes a bullet point on the researcher’s CV, and if the cards land right, they’re able to charge more per hour. There is an incentive for researchers to have the most newsworthy talk at DEFCON, which means some speakers aren’t playing the security game, they’re playing the PR game.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tracking Nearly Every Aircraft With A Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/18/tracking-nearly-every-aircraft-with-a-raspberry-pi/
FlightAware is the premier site for live, real-time tracking of aircraft around the world, and for the last year or so, Raspberry Pi owners have been contributing to the FlightAware network by detecting aircraft flying overhead and sending that data to the FlightAware servers.
Until now, these volunteers have used Raspis and software defined radio modules to listen in on ADS-B messages transmitted from aircraft. With FlightAware’s new update to PiAware, their Raspberry Pi flight tracking software, Mode S transponders can also be detected and added to the FlightAware network.
Last year, FlightAware announced anyone with a Raspberry Pi, a software defined radio module, and an Internet connection would earn a free FlightAware enterprise account for listening to ADS-B transmitters flying overhead and sending that information to the FlightAware servers. ADS-B is a relatively new requirement for aviators that transmits the plane’s identification, GPS coordinates, altitude, and speed to controllers and anyone else who would like to know who’s flying overhead.
https://discussions.flightaware.com/ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/multilateration-mlat-now-available-on-piaware-t35637.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teensy Super Audio Board
Super high quality, 24 bit, 192kHz audio board for Teensy 3.x and Raspberry Pi
https://hackaday.io/project/5912-teensy-super-audio-board
Really high quality audio board for Teensy 3.x and Raspberry Pi.
Design is open sourced under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC v4.0 license.
The Teensy super audio board is based around the CS4272 audio codec.
One issue with the CS4272 is that it doesn’t include the analog input and output buffers that are commonly integrated into lower quality audio codecs. This necessitates a lot of additional external circuitry that must be carefully designed to avoid compromising the audio quality of the codec itself.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino And IR Remote Turn Off Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/18/arduino-and-ir-remote-turn-off-raspberry-pi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday Prize Entry: Synthetic Aperture Multispectral Imaging
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/22/hackaday-prize-entry-synthetic-aperture-multispectral-imaging/
[Conrad] was tasked with building a synthetic aperture multispectral imaging device by his professor. It’s an interesting challenge that touches on programming, graphics, and just a bit of electrical engineering.
Tucked inside a garish yellow box that looks like a dumb robot are five Raspberry Pis, a TP-Link Ethernet switch, three Raspberry Pi NOIR cameras, and a Flir Lepton thermal camera. With three cameras, different techniques can be used to change the focal length of whatever is being recorded – that’s the synthetic aperture part of the build. By adding different filters – IR pass, UV, visual, and thermal, this camera can record images in a huge range of wavelengths.
Synthetic Aperture Multispectral Imager
https://hackaday.io/project/6730-synthetic-aperture-multispectral-imager
Using a cluster of five raspberry pis, a Flir Lepton and three Raspberry pi NOIR cameras with appropriate filters, an imager was born.
The applications for this are numerous! Because it’s a modular system we can hot swap a lot of components. For example. We’re utilizing the camera as a multispectral imager. But since the unit functions as a synthetic aperture, we can also remove the filters and conduct three-dimensional imaging. The thermal camera gives us the opportunity to track hot objects and determine the distance of the hot object. Alternatively, we could apply the same filters to all of the cameras and only look at one spectra. The applications are pretty endless!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Polarization Camera Views the Invisible
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/28/polarization-camera-views-the-invisible/
Light polarization is an interesting phenomenon that is extremely useful in many situations… but human eyes are blind to detecting any polarization. Luckily, [David] has built a polarization-sensitive camera using a Raspberry Pi and a few off-the-shelf components that allows anyone to view polarization. [David] lists the applications as:
A polarimetric imager to detect invisible pollutants, locate landmines, identify cancerous tissues, and maybe even observe cloaked UFOs!
The build uses a standard Raspberry Pi 2 and a 5 megapixel camera which sits behind a software-controlled electro-optic polarization modulator that was scavenged from an auto-darkening welding mask. The mask is essentially a specialized LCD screen, which is easily electronically controlled.
https://hackaday.io/project/6958-dolpi-raspi-polarization-camera
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emulating a Hard Drive With The Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/11/emulating-a-hard-drive-with-the-raspberry-pi/
[Chris] recently moved a vintage IBM 5150 – the original PC – into his living room.
It sat unused for a while, simply because [Chris] didn’t want to swap out piles of floppies, and he doesn’t have a hard drive or controller card for this machine. After reviewing what other retrocomputer fans have done in this situation, he emulated a hard drive with a Raspberry Pi.
The traditional solution to the ‘old PC without a hard drive’ problem is the XTIDE project. XTIDE is a controller card that translates relatively new IDE cards (or an emulated drive on another computer) as a hard drive on the vintage PC, just like a controller card would.
Adding a Hard Drive to an Original IBM PC Using a Raspberry Pi
http://www.insentricity.com/a.cl/244/adding-a-hard-drive-to-an-original-ibm-pc-using-a-raspberry-pi
While searching to see how other people have dealt with using modern mass storage on an original PC, I came across an open source project called XTIDE which is both software and hardware which will let you connect IDE hard drives to old computers that only have 8 bit ISA slots. Another interesting feature of the XTIDE firmware is that it is able to use a serial port and an XP host to emulate disk drives!
The XTIDE firmware is only 8k and only needs a 2764 EPROM. The ROM socket on an EtherLink II however accepts a 27128 which is twice as large.
When the PC boots up it sees the XTIDE firmware and executes it†. The XTIDE then takes over the boot process and will scan the COM port to see if there is a special server connected and if so it will mount the disk image over the serial port and boot from it.
An emulated disk drive is a great idea, except when you don’t have a Windows XP box nearby.
I got the source code to the XTIDE Serial Server and started figuring out how it works and how hard porting the code to Linux would be.
To connect the Raspberry Pi to the PC I used a USB serial adapter and a null modem cable.
Seeing the PC boot and use the Raspberry Pi as a hard drive was very cool! The only downside is that the maximum speed I can get out of the AST SixPakPlus is 115200. And that’s only after I swapped out the original 8250 with a 16550. At that speed the emulated drive is slower than even the floppy drives.
Although the emulated hard drive is slow, it’s still nice for playing games. I created a 500MB HD and loaded it up with quite a few games.
XTIDE project
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?26393-XTIDE-project
The XT-IDE project is a Vintage Computer forum driven project to develop and manufacture an 8-bit ISA IDE controller. It allows any PC/XT class machine to use modern IDE hard drives or Compact Flash devices for long term storage.
The project is entirely open source, from the design, schematic, layout, bill of materials, BIOS, drivers and any utilities created.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Covert Cricket Score Tracker Gets Around Office Rules
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/15/covert-cricket-score-tracker-gets-around-office-rules/
[Rohit Gupta] was looking for a stealthy way to keep up with the scores for his favorite game: cricket. Unfortunately, his office blocked access to most sites where he could watch the game, so he came up with a covert way to track the score on a small LCD screen. Using a Raspberry Pi and the web scraping program BeautifulSoup, he wrote a program that grabbed the score once a minute, and displayed it on a screen salvaged from a Nokia 5510 cell phone, driven through the Adafruit 5510 Python display library. Web scraping is a technique where a program grabs a web page, scrapes all of the content off it and processes it so only the data that is needed remains.
CricPi- The (probably) MOST Minimalistic Live Cricket Ever
http://rohitg.in/2015/07/12/CrickPi/
http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Version of Raspberry Pi Thin Client
http://hackaday.com/2015/08/16/new-version-of-raspberry-pi-thin-client/
[Gibbio] has already created a thin client image called RPiTC and recently released version 1.4. The build supports diverse remote protocols including Microsoft Remote Desktop, Citrix, VMWare, and even X3270.
Raspberry Pi Thin Client project
http://rpitc.blogspot.fi/
Thin Client project want to create a very low price thin client over Raspberry Pi board! Microsoft RDC, Citrix ICA, VMWare View, OpenNX & SPICE
Tomi Engdahl says:
Student version of MATLAB/Simulink drives Raspberry Pi to new heights
http://www.edn.com/design/design-tools/development-kits/4440137/Student-version-of-MATLAB-Simulink-drives-Raspberry-Pi-to-new-heights?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150817&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150817&elq=1c672a6124d541d6956842d768f04170&elqCampaignId=24401&elqaid=27567&elqat=1&elqTrackId=f5e3decfd3a84e8f89959958f0b06ac7
The MATLAB and Simulink Student Suite-Raspberry Pi Bundle includes the Raspberry Pi Starter Kit and the MATLAB and Simulink Student Suite from MathWorks, allowing the student or self-learner to start a project with model-based block diagrams on the Raspberry Pi 2 using the same tools engineers and scientists use every day.
Claire Doyle, Global Head of Raspberry Pi at element14, distributor of the credit-card sized computer, said “Learning programming is the number one priority for Raspberry Pi users. Among students, Raspberry Pi is our most popular single board computer, so creating this bundle,”Learn to Program Pack with MATLAB and Simulink Student Suite”, makes it much easier for students to get started.”
The bundle is ready to use, out of the box, as it includes Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, Pi 2 SD Card, 2A power supply, Hammond clear case, starter guide, MATLAB, Simulink, and 10 add-on products. The 10 add-on products include toolboxes for control systems, data acquisition, DSP systems, image processing, instrument control, optimisation, signal processing, statistics, machine learning, and symbolic math. Hardware support packages for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and others are available free.
The bundle costs $169 from Newark element14