Raspberry Pi: stuff I don't need in Jessie

They pack a lot of stuff into the current Raspbian Jessie Full distribution that I have no use for.

The down-side to this is two-fold: a lot of precious space is taken up on the SD card, and updates can take longer than necessary when any of these unused apps get updated.

So this post is just a place to save my list of packages that I'm happy to remove.

Tontec 7 inch LCD + RaspberryPi

I bought this LCD about 10 months ago for £35, so its about time I did something with it!

I've half an idea that I could use it in the kitchen to monitor the video feeds from my bird boxes.

The first problem is how to mount it into a panel, as the LCD module does not have any mounting points or lugs.

BirdBox2016: 2nd Pi Power box deployed

We fixed our second Pi-powered bird box to the Canadian Maple in our garden yesterday afternoon.

In the first few hours this morning, bathed in glorious winter sunshine, we had plenty of interest from a blue tit or two.

So this is a very promising start to the 2016 nest box season.

PWM on RaspberryPi with Gambas

The Raspberry Pi has a PWM (pulse width modulation) mode which can be put to use in Gambas with the help of Gordon's wiringPi library.

 

The wiringPi library allows access to the hardware controlled PWM feature which is output on wiringPi pin 1.

So here are some notes and a small Gambas test program to help explore its capabilities.

Whatever happend to the web browser?

It is over 20 years ago that Mosaic and Netscape opened our eyes to the internet.

By the end of the 1990's it looked like a tick-in-the-box. There were lots of different graphical web browsers and they all seemed to work and show web pages in much the same way.

So what a surprise to find in the 2010's that so many of the leading brands are just, well, broken!

BirdBox 2016: the season has started

I attached my PicaxePi powered bird box to the side of our pergola on Saturday afternoon.

When I checked the system on Sunday afternoon, I found it had been tripped five times.

So has the 2016 season started?