Never look a gift horse in the mouth

One of the best things about the internet is free stuff!

 

I'm thinking specifically of information and software.

But its sometimes not good enough for some people.

ZeroLiPo: Pi push-button battery power control

The ZeroLiPo is a Lithium-ion Polymer battery power manager for the Raspberry Pi from Pimoroni.

It does not handle battery charging, it simply converts the LiPo 3.7Volts to 5Volts, and provides a low voltage alarm.

Although I've had one of these for ages, I've only just considered using it, possibly for my Bat Call Logger.

Replacing the DHT22 with a Bosch BME280

I compared the humidity readings from two DHT22 and was alarmed by the difference between them.

Although they are cheap, the Bosch BME280 doesn't have to cost that much more, and provides pressure measurement in addition to humidity and temperature.

Although many of the BME280s available cost around £20, I splashed out £7.61 and bagged a bargain on Amazon.

Internet Radio example using Gambas cli

Now that I'm taking Gambas command-line programming more seriously, I thought I might rewrite the software on my internet radios.

As mentioned in a recent post, Gambas can be used to write cli programs (command-line interface) as well as the more usual gui (graphical) applications.

So this post just describes the software aspects of this project, while the other design details can be found in earlier posts.

Gambas: command-line programming

I must have been using Gambas for small projects since I fully switched to Linux for my home computing needs almost 10 years ago.

Gambas was a natural choice for me as I'd spent several years in industry using Visual Basic, Delphi and Turbo Pascal.

But up until quite recently, it had not occurred to me that there might be some benefit in using Gambas for command-line programming.

Raspberry Pi GPIO: Gambas + pigpio library

There are now a number of ways of controlling the Raspberry Pi general purpose I/O.

Libraries such as wiringPi and pigpio are written in the C programming language, but can also be used with other languages including Gambas.

I have covered wiringPi previously, and this short post is just a basic introduction to using the pigpio library with Gambas.

Raspberry Pi: servo motor control via PWM

Following a question raised in response to a recent post on PWM, I hooked up a small servo motor to a Pi.

The motor in question is a 3 wire jobbie that needs a short pulse to control its position.

This short post explains how to drive the servo motor using wiringPi with a touch of Gambas.

BirdBox2016: what's happening?

There has been plenty of interest shown by a number of local blue tits in both of our Pi powered bird boxes.

I've also added some enhancements to our bird box monitor which sits in a corner of our kitchen and raises the alarm if a box is triggered by a visitor.

It is the 12th March, so we may only be 2 or 3 weeks away from some real nest-building action!

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.

Barometric Pressure, the BMP180 & Gambas

Some birds and other animals are thought to be sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure.

This year I plan to monitor & record pressure, in addition to activity in and around my bird nesting boxes.

The BMP180 is a very small, low cost sensor which can be used to determine temperature and atmospheric pressure. ...looks like a great place to start!

Bat Detector Overhaul: Logging Bat Data

I have to admit to being a lazy person, so even the effort of standing in the garden pointing my bat detector at the sky is too much for me.

It can also be a bit boring. Especially when its 11pm and I'm not seeing (let alone detecting) any bats!

So the next step is to leave the bat detector outside unattended and try to log any activity on a computer.

Raspberry Pi Serial Comms: Gambas + wiringPi

I've been playing around with serial comms on my Pi/Picaxe dev rig.

Using Gordon's wiringPi library makes it easy to open the gpio serial comms port on the Pi and write code with Gambas.

So this post involves writing a simple Picaxe program, and then using wiringPi and Gambas on the Pi to communicate with the Picaxe.

RaspberryPi, Serial Comms & PHP

I've been playing around with serial comms on 2 Raspberry Pi computers for the last couple of days.

And I now understand a little of the black-art required to get this working, including how to send serial data via a PHP web page.

So I thought I'd write up the details before I have time to forget it all again!

Raspberry Pi GPIO control with PHP

When I setup my Raspberry Pi server 8 months ago, one of its potential uses was for me to play with PHP and hopefully learn more about this language.

I found a bit of time this week, so decided to try making a minimal PHP program to control the Pi gpio from a remote computer or phone.

What I've come up with is a simple file using HTML and a few lines of PHP code.

DHT22 Temperature/RH Sensor on the RaspberryPi

The DHT22 is a low cost, single wire sensor which measures temperature and relative humidity.

I started out just playing around with this thing, just wiring it to a Pi to see it working.

But I got sucked in much deeper into thinking about how it worked and assessing its limitations.

RaspberryPi + wiringPi + Gambas + 16x2LCD module

There are plenty of 16 character, 2 line LCD modules available for home projects using controllers like PICs or Arduino.

In this post I'm using a RaspberryPi with Gambas, while relying on Gordon's wiringPi api to do the heavy lifting.

It turned out to be a bit tricky using the existing wiringPi libraries, but I think I've found a usable work-around.

RaspberryPi inputs: to poll or to interrupt?

One of the best features of the RaspberryPi is the GPIO (General Purpose Inputs & Outputs).

Reading the input levels on the GPIO is pretty easy, especially using Gordon's wiringPi library.

But you need to think carefully about how best to do this in the software for your chosen project.

RaspberryPi Web server: GPIO access

Controlling the RaspberryPi GPIO remotely, over a network or across the internet, seems like an interesting trick.

I copied some code from the net and gave it a try, but unfortunately it didn't want to play.

So I went back to basics and created my own simple test routine.

The Pi-Mote 433MHz control unit for the RaspberryPi

This controller allows a user to remotely control power sockets via a simple program.

Having just received my kit from Energenie, this post is basically an introduction to using the system, driven by a Gambas program.

I've also included information on the serial data format, which was captured using the method described in an earlier post.

My Portable Pi-Cam

Well, when I say "portable" I wouldn't want to lug it around London on a site-seeing trip.

Maybe transportable is a better description. At least I can move it around the garden and film the wildlife.

This post provides more technical detail on this system, and a few more video clips.