My Raspberry Pi

This blog is about my adventures with my Raspberry Pi. I'll talk about coding, electronics and the like. I started out with a Raspberry Pi and that introduced me to electronics again I've now branched out into Arduino.

[mypilife]

New Antenna

I got a couple of antenna from CPC and my basic ping program now works over several metres even through walls. My standalone radio module arrived as well, need to get an antenna for this then figure out how to hook it up to the pi, and program it in python.

[mypilife]

Well I got around to soldering up those feather radios

I finally got around to soldering then up, nice and easy job but still managed to burn myself. I guess that is what comes of watching TV at the same time.

I soldered on the whip antenna at the length required and hooked the up to my PC. First thing to mention is how crappy the Arduino IDE is at dealing with multiple boards connected at the same time. The connected port was flopping around all over the place and you couldn’t use two instances of the serial monitor.

The next issue is that the antenna appears to be really rather poor. While they worked about a foot away from each other as soon as I moved one it stopped need to improve it.

[mypilife]

After working hard on my brief foray into the world of contracting. And before starting a new permanent role in a couple of weeks I decided that I deserved a little treat, so have got myself a couple of Adafruit Feather 32u4 Radio boards from the good people at Pimoroni. When they get stock, I'll get myself one of the standalone radio modules to hook it up to my pi allowing me to publish all of that wirelessly collected data online.

[mypilife]

Project Ideas and todo list

So it has been ages since my last post on here, things have a bit hectic in my life as a husband and father so my time as a hacker/hobbyist has taken a serious beating. It has not stopped me thinking though.

One of my new years resolutions is to take time for myself, and for me this means the tinkering I describe on here. Over the coming months I want to work on the following projects:

Finish my car - So I have described on numerous occasions about my car I need to finish it. Well at least the initial phase. I have as I indicated I missed a few wires when soldering it up. I need to get these fixed and write a basic program to prove it works as expected.

Build a mobile workstation/workbench - Katie was starting to moan about the how my electronics kit was taking in the dining room so it has now been stowed under the stairs. One of the reasons I haven't done anything for ages. I want to build a mobile workstation to work at that I can quickly get out and put away. I have a couple of options a case like solution that has a fold down work area that I can set up on the dining room table. The other option is a wheeled workbench allowing storage of my tools and components allowing the whole workbench to be wheeled back under the stairs when not in use.

Build a bench power supply - I saw one on instructables, I don't really know why I want one but I'm sure I can find a use.

[mypilife]

My Raspberry Pi turned 2 today!

[mypilife]

Electronics debugging

So last night I soldered up the motor board for my car and it only effing didn't work again. I was gutted, i'd wasted a shed load of time (it took me a lot longer to do as I was checking with my multimeter after every connection so I didn't mess it up again.

Anyway I disconnected the motors and started prodding around running sketch with my multimeter, I quickly found out that I had a number of pins wrong on my sketch. Once corrected, I fired it up again - it still didn't work. I rechecked the connectivity between the pins, all seemed fine until I came to check the last three pins only to realised I'd missed three connections. What a relief, but do I feel completely stupid... Well yes I do.

[mypilife]

I was getting fed up with knocking over my helping hands while soldering so I made a magnifier support using a cheap (£3.99) desk lamp, and a magnifying glass I had lying around.

When not in use the magnifying glass is covered with a pouch from some earbuds as I don't want to set fire to my desk.

Mods one day may include making use of the switch and adding in a lightning ring with some white LEDs to provide some focused light on my subject as well.

[mypilife]

Loads of work on my car today, the carduino board is working without any problems, but I can't get the motor board to work properly. I guess I've buggered up something, I'll have to rebuild it on a breadboard and do it from scratch I think.

[mypilife]

DIY crimping

So I wanted to make a few cables for my car, I got a shed load of crimp housings in various sizes, female crimps, and some ribbon cable. But no crimping tool, I thought I’d try to do it myself. Big mistake, my god it is hard to insert a diy crimp into the housing, the number of housings I broken this evening is unbelievable.

[mypilife]

So it turns out that crimping is a lot easier if you do it in day light.... Still buggered up another attempt, I got as far as testing it this time though.

[mypilife]

DIY crimping

So I wanted to make a few cables for my car, I got a shed load of crimp housings in various sizes, female crimps, and some ribbon cable. But no crimping tool, I thought I'd try to do it myself. Big mistake, my god it is hard to insert a diy crimp into the housing, the number of housings I broken this evening is unbelievable.

[mypilife]

I made a start on my list...

[mypilife]

So on a break at work today I came up with a list of the soldering left to do on my carduino - not sure that'll catch on. So I'm breaking out the programming pins and the pins I'm using for the control of the motor drivers then also providing straight female headers on the all the other IO to allow easy connection of sensors etc.

[mypilife]

Well I've taken the plunge and soldered up the first of my boards for my car this morning. This one is basically an Arduino sans the programming ability. I'll add some headers to the board - if I can fit them on - some may be a bit tight but I should have enough to make the car.

Anyway next job is to solder up the driver board. then figure out how to mount them to my car, may be time to invest in some hex spacers.

[mypilife]

Been looking for a cheap hobby vice for ages; Lidl have one this week. I picked mine up on the way home this evening I just need to get cleared up after our holiday before I can get it out.

[mypilife]

So this (demonstrated in a rather poorly executed gif) is what I'm thinking for the action to take when the front left bumper hits on my car. basically reverse, spin right, move forwards again, spin left to attempt to maintain a straight direction of travel, then finally move forward hopefully avoiding the obstacle.

Having tried out the code this evening though i'm not convinced it's going to work. It might be worth looking at the other interrupt options available to me.

[mypilife]

Interrupts

So I wrote some basic control methods for the car I've added to this over the last few days to add some interrupts. I need to add some switches to my breadboard set up so I can test the code out as I've never done anything with interrupts on the Arduino. I'm trying out PciManager as this looks like the simplest approach. Hopefully I'll get some time to play over the next couple of days.

[mypilife]

Loving the message from Arduino IDE.