Pan and Tilt with Dual Controllers

It wasn’t long ago that faced with a controller project, you might shop for something with just the right features and try to minimize the cost. These days, if you are just doing a one-off, it might be just as easy to throw commodity hardware at it. After all, a Raspberry Pi costs less than a nice meal and it is more powerful than a full PC would have been not long ago.

When [Joe Coburn] wanted to make a pan and tilt webcam he didn’t try to find a minimal configuration. He just threw a Raspberry Pi in for interfacing to the Internet and an Arduino in to control two RC servo motors. A zip tie holds the servos together and potentially the web cam, too.

You can see the result in the video below. It is a simple matter to set up the camera with the Pi, send some commands to the Arduino and hook up to the Internet.

The serial protocol for the Arduino is simple: The Pi sends a numeric position followed by a P (for pan) or T (for tilt) at 9600 baud. A web server and some Python handle the interface to the Internet and the human.

We’ve certainly seen our share of similar projects. Some of them have been a bit larger.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry Pi Hive Mind

Setting up a cluster of computers used to be a high-end trick used in big data centers and labs. After all, buying a bunch of, say, VAX computers runs into money pretty quickly (not even counting the operating expense). Today, though, most of us have a slew of Raspberry Pi computers.

Because the Pi runs Linux (or, at least, can run Linux), there are a wealth of tools out there for doing just about anything. The trick is figuring out how to install it. Clustering several Linux boxes isn’t necessarily difficult, but it does take a lot of work unless you use a special tool. One of those tools is Docker, particularly Docker Swarm Mode. [Alex Ellis] has a good video (see below) showing the details of a 28 CPU cluster.

It is easy to set up a swarm using the instructions on the Docker website. If you aren’t familiar with Docker, it is almost (but not quite) a light-weight virtual machine manager. A true virtual machine manager pretends to be a piece of hardware so that Linux (or another operating system) can boot on it and run applications. Docker is a container manager, which means it doesn’t pretend to be a piece of hardware, it pretends to be a running operating system. Programs see their own file system and other resources, but in reality, there is only one kernel running on the host hardware.

The idea is similar to running something in a chroot jail. The program can make changes to its file system without upsetting the rest of the system. Docker also provides other kinds of isolation. The real draw, though, is that it can automatically load images of predefined environments. This allows developers to provide packages that are essentially preinstalled in their own private operating system.

That’s important because it means that a service can run on any node in a cluster. That lets you do tricks like balancing load across multiple nodes. You can also do rolling updates and dynamically add or remove computers from the cluster.

We’ve seen clusters before, of course. Even the little Pi Zero can get in on the act. If you want to understand more about Docker, you can always read the official documentation. Given the prevalence of Linux in embedded systems, it might be an interesting way to deploy preconfigured applications.

Filed under: linux hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Hackaday Links: August 28, 2016

E-paper looks awesome, but it’s a pain to work with. You need only look at the homebrew implementations of e-paper drivers and the mess of SMD components for proof of that. [jarek] wanted to play around with e-paper and developed this tiny little driver for a Teensy. It’s a fun toy, and the simplest possible circuit necessary to drive this particular e-paper module.

I am once again asking if anyone knows where to buy this computer case. No, not a complete system – I just want the case, folding keyboard, and monitor integrated into an mATX enclosure.

Back in 1985, a young [Matthias Wandel] built a remote control forklift out of a few windshield wiper motors, wood, and not much else. He’s rebuilt this toy recently, just to prove you can build anything with a stack of plywood and a wood gear template generator.

More Adafruit muppets they probably can’t call muppets. Yaaay. This time it’s J is for Joule. Watts that? A second.

The Raspberry Pi Project, one of our favorite projects in the Hackaday Prize that uses a Raspberry Pi, one of the most liked, viewed, and followed projects on Hackaday.io, and a technological tour de force the likes of which have not been seen since the invention of the steam engine got an update this week. [Arsenijs] and the rest of the Raspberry Pi Project team have released a version of their Raspberry Pi pinout helper. Previously, this tool was only used internally to the project, but since this pinout helper has such far-reaching utility they’ve decided to release a public version. Truly, they are kings among men.

This is possibly the coolest use of stacked plywood I’ve ever seen. It’s a spiral staircase, with each step made of 12 layers of plywood. The ‘spine’ of this staircase is a 3″ sch 40 steel pipe, with a proper foundation. The layer of ply are adhered to the pipe with construction adhesive, and each layer of ply is glued together with wood glue. No, it’s not up to code yet, but it was cheaper to build than just buying a spiral staircase.

[Brek] wrote a graphics library for the ubiquitous 128×64 monochromatic LCDs. It’s written for PICs, but damned if we can’t find a link to the library itself. Hopefully [Brek] will jump in the comments below.

Those really, really cheap ESP8266 modules only have 512kB of Flash in them. Here’s how you upgrade those modules to 4MB. You can do it without a hot air gun, and all you need is a few cheap Flash chips.

Here’s a sound card for a Raspberry Pi. No, that’s not a completely dumb idea. This sound card uses quality op-amps, 24-bit ADCs and DACs, and has MIDI. If you’re experimenting with Pure Data or any other Linux audio toy, this could be a useful addition to your Pi stack.

Filed under: Hackaday Columns, Hackaday links

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Weather-aware Shoe Rack Helps You Get Ready for the Day

If you’re anything like us, your complete shoe collection consists of a pair of work boots and a pair of ratty sneakers that need to wait until the next household haz-mat day to be retired. But some people have a thing for shoes, and knowing which pair is suitable for the weather on any given day is such a bother. And that’s the rationale behind this Raspberry Pi-driven weather-enabled shoe rack.

The rack itself is [zealen]’s first woodworking project, and for a serious shoeaholic it’s probably too small by an order of magnitude. But for proof of principle it does just fine. The rack holds six pairs, each with an LED to light it up. A PIR sensor on the top triggers the Raspberry Pi to light up a particular pair based on the weather, which we assume is scraped off the web somehow. [zealen] admits that the fit and finish leave a bit to be desired, but for a first Rasp Pi project, it’s pretty accomplished. There’s plenty of room for improvement, of course – RFID tags in the shoes to allow them to be placed anywhere in the rack springs to mind.

[via r/raspberry_pi]

Filed under: home hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Roomba Now Able to Hunt Arnold Schwarzenegger

Ever since the Roomba was invented, humanity has been one step closer to a Jetsons-style future with robots performing all of our tedious tasks for us. The platform is so ubiquitous and popular with the hardware hacking community that almost anything that could be put on a Roomba has been done already, with one major exception: a Roomba with heat vision. Thanks to [marcelvarallo], though, there’s now a Roomba with almost all of the capabilities of the Predator.

The Roomba isn’t just sporting an infrared camera, though. This Roomba comes fully equipped with a Raspberry Pi for wireless connectivity, audio in and out, video streaming from a webcam (and the FLiR infrared camera), and control over the motors. Everything is wired to the internal battery which allows for automatic recharging, but the impressive part of this build is that it’s all done in a non-destructive way so that the Roomba can be reverted back to a normal vacuum cleaner if the need arises.

If sweeping a just the right time the heat camera might be the key to the messy problem we discussed on Wednesday.

The only thing stopping this from hunting humans is the addition of some sort of weapons. Perhaps this sentry gun or maybe some exploding rope. And, if you don’t want your vacuum cleaner to turn into a weapon of mass destruction, maybe you could just turn yours into a DJ.

Filed under: robots hacks

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Kinect and Raspberry Pi Add Focus Pulling to DSLR

Prosumer DSLRs have been a boon to the democratization of digital media. Gear that once commanded professional prices is now available to those on more modest budgets. Not only has this unleashed a torrent of online content, it has also started a wave of camera hacks and accessories, like this automatic focus puller based on a Kinect and a Raspberry Pi.

For [Tom Piessens], the Canon EOS 5D has been a solid platform but suffers from a problem. The narrow depth of field possible with DSLRs makes it difficult to maintain focus on subjects that are moving relative to the camera, making follow-focus scenes like this classic hard to reproduce. Aiming for a better system than the stock autofocus, [Tom] grafted a Kinect sensor and a stepper motor actuator to a Raspberry Pi, and used the Kinect’s depth map to drive the focus ring. Parts are laser-cut, including a nice enclosure for the Pi and display that makes the whole thing reasonably portable. The video below shows the focus remaining locked on a selected region of interest. It seems like movement along only one axis is allowed; we’d love to see this system expanded to follow a designated object no matter where it moves in the frame.

If you’re in need of a follow-focus rig but don’t have a geared lens, check out these 3D-printed lens gears. They’d be a great complement to this backwoods focus-puller.

Filed under: digital cameras hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Share what makes Linux amazing; win an actual penguin*

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Linux, Future Cert, the UK and Ireland’s representative for the LPI (Linux Professional Institute) is asking everyone to share what they think are the ‘most amazing uses for Linux’ to compile a public list.

Every entry will go into a prize draw with the winner receiving a year’s adoption of Poppy the Penguin at Bristol Zoo (your own Linux mascot, just like Tux!).

Bill Quinn, founder of Future Cert, said: “We wanted to do something fun to coincide with the 25th celebrations happening over the next few months and this is a really great way of celebrating the many uses for Linux. But we’ll be really interested to hear users views on great Linux uses around the world – there are so many.

“And of course some will remember the urban legend from 18 years ago about Tux the penguin breaking free from Bristol Zoo and waddling off to a computer store.”

It is true that when Linus Torvalds visited the Bristol Linux Users Group they adopted a Penguin for him at Bristol Zoo. Of course, the subsequent ‘news’ articles that went around after were not quite so true – but they were a lot of fun! You can read about the escape – and the Penguin stamping violently on a Windows 98 box here.

The ‘amazing uses’ could be anything from a particular supercomputer, to a small home gadget. See Future Cert’s list of ’25 amazing uses for Linux’ here.

You can enter via the Future Cert Twitter page @futurecert or Facebook page ‘futurecert’. Alternatively visit http://ift.tt/2bkkUGW

The closing date is September 30th 2016. The list will be compiled and revealed in October along with the winner.

*Poppy is an African Penguin at Bristol Zoo. The prize is adoption for one year, which includes an adoption pack in the post that will contain two tickets to the Zoo, a cuddly toy, an adoption certificate, your name displayed at the exhibit and a fact-file about Poppy the Penguin.

Image above, Poppy the Penguin with her two chicks, courtesy of Bristol Zoo.

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Multi Sensor Security Camera Has You Covered

Security in the home — especially a new home — is a primary concern for many. There are many options for security systems on the market, but for those will the skills, taking matters into your own hands can add peace of mind when protected by a system of one’s own design. [Armagan C.] has created  their near-ideal multi-sensor security module to keep a watchful eye out for would-be burglars.

Upgrading from their previous Arduino + Ethernet camera — which loved to trigger false alarms — [Armagan] opted for a used Raspberry Pi model B+ camera module and WiFi connection this time around. They also upgraded the unit with a thermal sensor, LPG & CO2 gas sensor, and a motion tracking alarm. [Armagan] has also set up a live streaming  feature that records video in 1hr segments — deleting them daily — and circumvented an issue with file descriptor leak by using a crashed drone’s flight controller to route the sensor data via serial port. It is also proving superior to conventional alarms because the custom software negates the need to disarm security zones during midnight trips to the washroom.

Admitting the thermal sensor doesn’t work very well at present, it might be replaced if a Doppler radar can be acquired on the cheap. More details on the project can be found here. This is primarily an indoor security camera option, so you’ll still need an outdoor camera to really tighten up your home’s defenses.

[Thanks for the tip Armagan!]

Filed under: Raspberry Pi, security hacks

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Hackaday Links: August 21, 2016

Are you in New York? What are you doing this week? Hackaday is having a party on Wednesday evening. come on out!

How about a pub in Cambridge? Hackaday and Tindie will be there too, on Wednesday evening. It’s a bring-a-hack, so bring a hack and enjoy the company of your fellow nerds. If this goes late enough we can have a trans-Atlantic Hackaday meetup.

Portable emulation machines are all the rage, and [Pierre] built one based on the Raspberry Pi Zero. It’s small, looks surprisingly comfortable to hold, and is apparently it’s fairly inexpensive to build your own.

For the last year or so, the Raspberry Pi Zero has existed. This came as a surprise to many who couldn’t buy a Raspberry Pi Zero. In other news, Ferraris don’t exist, and neither do Faberge egg omelets. Now, the Raspberry Pi shortage is officially over. They’re in stock everywhere, and we can finally stop listening to people who call the Pi Zero a marketing ploy.

No Starch Press is having another Humble Bundle. Pay what you want, and you get some coding books. They have Python, Haskell, and R, because no one should ever have to use SPSS.

[Reg] wrote in to tell us about something interesting he found while cruising eBay. The used and surplus market is awash in Siemens MC45/MC46 cellular modem modules. They’re a complete GSM ‘cellular modem engine’, with an AT command set, and cost about $10 each. Interfacing them with a board requires only two (strange) connectors, SIM and SD card sockets, and a few traces to through-hole pads. Anyone up for a challenge? A breakout board for this cellular modem could be very useful, should someone find a box full of these modules in a surplus shop.

On this page, about halfway down the page, is an LCD driver board. It turns a video signal into something a small, VGA resolution LCD will understand. This driver board is unique because it is completely hand-made. This is one of those small miracles of a soldering iron and copper clad board. If anyone out there is able to recognize these parts, I’d love for you to attempt an explanation in the comments.

A few weeks ago, the RTL8710 WiFi module showed up on the usual online marketplaces. Initially, we thought it was a competitor to the ever-popular ESP8266, offering a small microcontroller, WiFi, and a bunch of useful output pins. A module based on the RTL8710, the RTL-00, is much more than a competitor. It’s pinout compatible with the ESP8266. This module can be swapped into a project in place of the ESP-12, probably the most popular version of the ESP8266. This is genius, and opens the door to a lot of experimentation with the RTL8710.

Filed under: Hackaday Columns, Hackaday links

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One Man, A Raspberry Pi, and a Formerly Hand Powered Loom

[Fred Hoefler] was challenged to finally do something with that Raspberry Pi he wouldn’t keep quiet about. So he built a machine assist loom for the hand weaver. Many older weavers simply can’t enjoy their art anymore due to the physical strain caused by the repetitive task. Since he had a Pi looking for a purpose, he also had his project.

His biggest requirement was cost. There are lots of assistive looms on the market, but the starting price for those is around ten thousand dollars. So he set the rule that nothing on the device would cost more than the mentioned single board computer. This resulted in a BOM cost for the conversion that came in well under two hundred dollars. Not bad!

The motive parts are simple cheap 12V geared motors off Amazon. He powered them using his own motor driver circuits. They get their commands from the Pi, running Python. To control the loom one can either type in commands into the shell or use the keyboard. There are also some manual switches on the loom itself.

In the end [Fred] met his design goal, and has further convinced his friends that the words Raspberry Pi are somehow involved with trouble.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi, robots hacks

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Raspberry Pi Password Manager

Add Robotic Farming to Your Backyard with Farmbot Genesis

Growing your own food is a fun hobby and generally as rewarding as people say it is. However, it does have its quirks and it definitely equires quite the time input. That’s why it was so satisfying to watch Farmbot push a weed underground. Take that!

Farmbot is a project that has been going on for a few years now, it was a semifinalist in the Hackaday Prize 2014, and that development time shows in the project documented on their website. The robot can plant, water, analyze, and weed a garden filled with arbitrarily chosen plant life. It’s low power and low maintenance. On top of that, every single bit is documented on their website. It’s really well done and thorough. They are gearing up to sell kits, but if you want it now; just do it yourself.

The bot itself is exactly what you’d expect if you were to pick out the cheapest most accessible way to build a robot: aluminum extrusions, plate metal, and 3D printer parts make up the frame. The brain is a Raspberry Pi hooked to its regular companion, an Arduino. On top of all this is a fairly comprehensive software stack.

The user can lay out the garden graphically. They can get as macro or micro as they’d like about the routines the robot uses. The robot will happily come to life in intervals and manage a garden. They hope that by selling kits they’ll interest a whole slew of hackers who can contribute back to the problem of small scale robotic farming.

Filed under: cnc hacks, green hacks

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Retrofitting a Vintage Intercom to Run Amazon Alexa

The Amazon Echo is a pretty cool piece of tech: it lets you ask questions, queue up music, find out the weather, and more, without having to do anything but talk. But, the device itself is a bit pricey, and looks a little boring. What if you could have all the features of the Echo, but in a cool retro case and at a cheaper price?

Well, you can, and that’s exactly what [nick.r.brewer] did, using a ’50s intercom and a Raspberry Pi. He picked the vintage intercom up at an antique store for $20, and the Raspberry Pi Zero is less than $10. So, for about $30 (and some parts most of us have lying around) he was able to build a cool looking device with all of the capabilities of the Amazon Echo.

The hardware portion of the build was pretty straightforward, with the Raspberry Pi, a sound card, WiFi dongle, USB hub, and microphone all fitting nicely inside the case of the intercom. The software side of things is a little more tricky, but with a device like this it runs well with Amazon’s Alexa SDK. Of course, if you want to add more hardware features, that’s possible too.

Filed under: Holiday Hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Capacitive Imaging With A Raspberry Pi Touch Screen

We use touch screens all the time these days, and though we all know they support multiple touch events it is easy for us to take them for granted and forget that they are a rather accomplished sensor array in their own right.

[Optismon] has long held an interest in capacitive touch screen sensors, and has recently turned his attention to the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen display. He set out to read its raw capacitance values, and ended up with a fully functional 2D capacitive imaging device able to sense hidden nails and woodwork in his drywall.

Reading the capacitance values is not a job for the faint-hearted though. There is an I2C bus which is handled by the Pi GPU rather than the processor, and to read it in software would require a change to the Pi’s infamous Broadcom binary blob. His solution which he agrees is non-optimal was to take another of the Pi’s I2C lines that he could talk to and connect it in parallel with the display line. As a result he can catch the readings from the screen’s sensors and with a bit of scripting make a 2D display on the screen. The outlines of hands and objects on his desk can clearly be seen when he places them on the screen, and when he runs the device over his wall it shows the position of the studding and nails behind the drywall.

He’s posted his code in a GitHub repository, and put up the YouTube video of his capacitive imaging in action which you can watch below the break.

We’ve covered a huge number of capacitive touch projects before but this is the first camera we’ve seen. Now we know it can be done, we look forward to the refinements we’re sure will come from the wider community. This could have the makings of an interesting imaging technique for hacker projects.

Filed under: digital cameras hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Solar-powered Weather Station Has the Complete Suite of Sensors

There was a time when getting weather conditions was only as timely or as local as the six o’clock news from the nearest big-city TV station. Monitoring the weather now is much more granular thanks to the proliferation of personal weather stations. For the ultimate in personalized weather, though, you might want to build your own solar powered weather station.

It looks like [Brian Masney] went all out in designing his weather station. It supports a full stack of sensors – wind speed and direction, rain, temperature, pressure, and dew point. About the only other parameters not supported (yet) are solar radiation, UV, and soil moisture and temperature. The design looks friendly enough that adding those sensors should be a snap – if fact, the 3D models in his GitHub repo suggest that he’s already working on soil sensors. The wind and rain sensor boom is an off-the-shelf unit from Sparkfun, and the temperature and pressure sensors are housed in a very professional 3D printed screen enclosure. All the sensors talk to a Raspberry Pi living in a (hopefully) waterproof enclosure topped with a solar panel for charging the stations batteries. All in all it’s a comprehensive build; you can check out the conditions at [Brian]’s place on Weather Underground.

Weather stations are popular around these parts, as witnessed by this reverse-engineered sensor suite or even this squirrel-logic based station.

Filed under: misc hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Google’s New OS Will Run on Your Raspberry Pi

According to reports from Android Police and ZDNet, you may soon have a new operating system from Google to run on your Raspberry Pi. Details are still extremely sparse, the only description on the GitHub page is “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)”. But, here’s what we do know:

The new OS, called Fuchsia, will be based on Magenta, which is in turn built on LittleKernel. That means that, surprisingly, Google will not be using a Linux kernel for the new OS but something more like an embedded RTOS. Although Google is targeting embedded systems, the possibility of being able to run it on a desktop has been mentioned, so it may not be too minimalistic.

Google’s Travis Geiselbrecht has named the Raspberry Pi 3 specifically as one system it will run on, and said that it’ll be available soon. But, it seems Google is aiming to make it run on a variety of ARM devices (both 32 bit and 64 bit), as well as 64 bit PCs. This is a direct effort to compete against other commercial embedded operating systems that are currently available, and especially on IoT devices.

If you’re eager to see what this is all about, you can follow Google’s quick start recipes and see what you can come up with, although details are still sketchy enough that we’re just going to wait a bit.

Filed under: news, Raspberry Pi

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Polling The Polling Places

Secret Riddle Retro Radio

When [the-rene] was building an escape room, he decided to have a clue delivered by radio. Well, not exactly radio, but rather an old-fashioned radio that lets you tune to a faux radio station that asks a riddle. When you solve the riddle, a secret compartment opens up. [the-rene] says you could have the compartment contain a key or a clue or even a cookie.

The outer case is actually an old radio gutted for this purpose. In addition, a laser cut box and a servo motor form the secret compartment.

The inside of the radio is decidedly modern. A Raspberry Pi B+ and a ATmega328 handle the various functions. Custom PCBs contain the computers and a few other items such as an analog to digital converter (for reading a potentiometer) and an audio amplifier.

The software plays noise until the tuning knob moves near one of six different frequencies. Each frequency can have its own riddle. Of course, the audio is all digital playback, so the frequency is just for effect. There’s no real radio reception going on here at all.

Secret boxes are nothing new around here. At least this puzzle box doesn’t explode.

 

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Raspberry Pi

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Nuka-Cola PC Case Really Glows

It’s hard to imagine a video game series with more potential for cool prop projects than Fallout. The Fallout series has a beautiful and unique art style that is chock full of potential for real-world builds. Pip-Boys, Fat Mans, and power armor projects abound. But, most of these projects are purely aesthetic: something to stick on a shelf and show off to your fellow geeks.

[themitch22] wanted something he could actually use, and what does a geek use more than their computer? Thus, he set out to create a Fallout-themed PC case, and a Nuka-Cola vending machine was the perfect choice for inspiration.

The attention to detail on the build is astounding, with a functional display (powered by a Raspberry Pi), glowing Nuka-Cola Quantum bottles, and weathering to make it feel like it has survived a nuclear apocalypse. He was also kind enough to post pictures of the entire process, which shows how all of the parts were 3D-printed and assembled.

Need some more Fallout goodness to inspire you next build? Check out this amazing Pip-Boy replica we featured last year.

[thanks to Nils Hitze for the tip]

Filed under: computer hacks

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3.3V Is Not Enough for This Raspberry Pi Zero

A Raspberry Pi Zero is down to a price and size where it’s just begging to be integrated into your projects. Unless, that is, if your project involves a lot of 5 V equipment. Then it’s just begging to be fried.

[David Brown] solved this problem by breaking out pins with level converters. He used flat-flex cable and some pin-headers. While he was at it, he added a full-sized USB port and power headers. (Extra hack points are awarded for connecting the USB to the board through pogo pins.)

The board is now in its third revision, having sacrificed a Pi Zero and learned why many boards include over-voltage protection in version 2.0. It’s a neat and tidy solution to the problem of interfacing the Pi with a non-3.3 V world.

We saw a ton of Pi Zero add-ons when it was new. No doubt some of this was due to our Pi Zero Contest, but we bet a lot of it was also driven by need: the need for VGA out, or quadcopter control, or just lighting up power-hungry LEDs. You Pi Zero is only as versatile as you make it.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Solar WiFi Rover Roves At Night

Commodore PET mods at VCF West 2016

Raspberry Pi 3 Gets USB, Ethernet Boot

The Raspberry Pi is a great computer, even if it doesn’t have SATA. For those of us who have lost a few SD cards to the inevitable corruption that comes from not shutting a Pi down properly, here’s something for you: USB Mass Storage Booting for the Raspberry Pi 3.

For the Raspberry Pi 1, 2, Compute Module, and Zero, there are two boot modes – SD boot, and USB Device boot, with USB Device boot only found on the Compute Module. [Gordon] over at the Raspberry Pi foundation spent a lot of time working on the Broadcom 2837 used in the Raspberry Pi 3, and found enough space in 32 kB to include SD boot, eMMC boot, SPI boot, NAND flash, FAT filesystem, GUID and MBR partitions, USB device, USB host, Ethernet device, and mass storage device support. You can now boot the Raspberry Pi 3 from just about anything.

The documentation for these new boot modes goes over the process of how to put an image on a USB thumb drive. It’s not too terribly different from the process of putting an image on an SD card, and the process will be streamlined somewhat in the next release of rpi-update. Some USB thumb drives do not work, but as long as you stick with a Sandisk or Samsung, you should be okay.

More interesting than USB booting is the ability for the Pi 3 to boot over the network. Booting over a network is nothing new – the Apple II could do it uphill both ways in the snow, but the most common use for the Pi is a dumb media player that connects to all your movies on network storage. With network booting, you can easily throw a Pi on a second TV and play all that media in a second room. Check out the network booting tutorial here.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi

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Single Board Revolution: Preventing Flash Memory Corruption

Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart USB Hub And IoT Power Meter

Sniffing Bluetooth Devices With A Raspberry Pi

Hackaday was at HOPE last weekend, and that means we got the goods from what is possibly the best security conference on the east coast. Some of us, however, were trapped in the vendor area being accosted by people wearing an improbable amount of Mr. Robot merch asking, ‘so what is Hackaday?’. We’ve all seen The Merchants Of Cool, but that doesn’t mean everyone was a vapid expression of modern marketing. Some people even brought some of their projects to show off. [Jeff] of reelyActive stopped by the booth and showed off what his team has been working on. It’s a software platform that turns all your wireless mice, Fitbits, and phones into a smart sensor platform using off the shelf hardware and a connection to the Internet.

[Jeff]’s demo unit (shown above) is simply a Raspberry Pi 3 with WiFi and Bluetooth, and an SD card loaded up with reelyActive’s software. Connect the Pi to the Internet, and you have a smart space that listens for local Bluetooth devices and relays the identity and MAC address of all Bluetooth devices in range up to the Internet.

The ability to set up a hub and detect Bluetooth devices solves the problem Bluetooth beacons solves — identifying when people enter a space, leave a space, and with a little bit of logic where people are located in a space — simply by using what they’re already wearing. Judging from what [Jeff] showed with his portable reelyActive hub (a Pi and a battery pack) a lot of people at HOPE are wearing Fitbits, wireless headphones, and leaving the Bluetooth on the phone on all the time. That’s a great way to tell where people are, providing a bridge between the physical world and the digital.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi, wireless hacks

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Haynes Raspberry Pi Manual competition winners announced

Back in issue 166 we offered you the chance to win one of five copies of Haynes’ Raspberry Pi 2 Owner’s Workshop Manual by Dr Gray Girling. The competition closed on 28th July and we’re delighted to announce the winners!

The five lucky winners are:

Andrew Wright

Benjamin Suk

Jay Bowles

Travis Naser

Andrew Walker

Congratulations to them and thank you all for entering!

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Packt security bundle winner announced!

Congratulations to the winner of our security bundle ebook competition in association with Packt Publishing!

The competition closed at midnight UK time on 28th July and we’ve now chosen a winner. Thank you to all those who entered.

Warren Stearman is the lucky winner! Congratulations Warren; you’ll be receiving your prize soon!

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