Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)
  • Raspberry Pi – what can it do and what needs done?
  • DickBarton
    Full Member

    I’m aware of the Raspberry Pi but know very little about it…I’m thinking it might be an idea for my 9 year old and build it and it can then be used as the ‘computer’…so what can run on it? What office-type kit and anything else?
    How easy is it to build? It is snap/slide together or soldering needed?
    What would be a good pack to look at as the first to allow build and use?
    Thanks.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    No soldering required – it comes as a complete circuit board that is basically a mini-computer.

    Things you’d want to add:
    – a USB keyboard and mouse
    – a power supply
    – an HDMI cable to a monitor/TV
    – an microSD card containing a suitable operating system

    You may also want a little case to put it in. Ideally one that still allows easy access to the GPIO pin headers if you want to start connecting stuff to it.

    Couple of suggestions of kits containing all this here:
    http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/raspberry-pie-for-xmas-present-10yr-old

    Another option is to go for a Pi Top which is much more expensive but basically converts a RasPi into a laptop but still lets you easily access the GPIO pins.

    https://pi-top.com/

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    Maybe a bit much for a 9 year old, but a 3000 core (planned to scale to 40,000) Pi cluster? 😀

    Raspberry Pi clusters come of age

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

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    Latest Singletrack Videos
    greasydan
    Free Member

    Excuse the slight hijack.

    Was talking to my 12yo about this. With the Pi can you create and hack a Minecraft world and then run multiplayer? He basically wants to hack/craft uber-powerful items and destroy his mates! 🙄

    BigEaredBiker
    Free Member

    Minecraft on Pi is not the normal version, it’s a light weight one just for the Pi so it might not do what he actually wants – especially if his mates are on OC or console versions.

    Once we put our Pi together as a computer my kids quickly got bored of it – we have PC’s in the house that are unsurprisingly better PC’s.

    If you don’t have a PC/laptop then the Pi can get by as that, but IMO it is much better to use it projects where it controls or does something.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    it is much better to use it projects where it controls or does something.

    Agreed – its biggest strength is being able to run some jumpers from those GPIO pins to a breadboard and code something up easily in Python or Scratch that can control physical electronics, dasblinkenlighten and dassproingundspringen.

    It does make an okay little computer too, especially for its size, but it doesn’t aim to replace a £1000+ PC.

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    I’m thinking about using one for my daughters school project to build a skyscraper with working lifts. Seems like a nice project for both her and me. Not sure what to do with it after that.

    Milkie
    Free Member

    How about RetroPie… A Classic gaming console emulator

    I think you can install minecraft on it. I have SNES, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, Amstrad, Atari, Quake I/II/III Arena, Doom, Final Doom, Dune, Wolfenstein 3D, Steam Link, etc

    EDIT: Oh you want to use it as a computer, its much better for projects and learning coding.
    Take a look at AdaFruit. They have some great Pi projects with great tutorials and it really eases you into the world of Pi/Python/Github/Coding.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Not sure what to do with it after that.

    A good source of inspiration might be MagPi magazine.

    You can subscribe to physical or digital copies, or just do what I do and access them as PDFs for free here:

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/

    pealy
    Free Member

    As said above – the thing about the Pi is that it’s really easy to make it do stuff in the real world, driving LED’s, using sensors etc. Eg. the adafruit capacitive touch hat makes a great fun way of using fruit to play tunes..

    I find it great fun for doing geeky stuff with my son. Last weekend we learned how to connect up a temperature & humidity sensor to a Pi Zero and use it to log data up on Plot.ly so we could see a graph of values from the bathroom..

    Loads of projects on the internet starting with really simple stuff.

    If the Pi’s not for you then there are USB extras you can get for a PC which can work with scratch to open it up into the real world.

    fifeandy
    Free Member

    There’s maybe actually a gap in the market for what the OP is after.
    There’s plenty of examples/blogs out there where people have put in the effort and combined XYZ to make something, but no off the shelf kits.

    For example, I imagine a kit with everything you need to ‘build’ a beaglebone into a childproof android tablet would be quite nice.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    the adafruit capacitive touch hat makes a great fun way of using fruit to play tunes..

    Pimoroni also do lots of fun Pi Hats (if you feel like supporting a small British company) 😉

    Raspberry Pi, Kits, HATs, and Accessories

    RAGGATIP
    Free Member

    I use mine to control some old powered speakers wirelessly. So I have some Yamaha desktop speakers attached to a subwoofer that is powered directly from the mains. Rather than plugging my android phone in via the phono plug I can now wonder aimlessly round the house with my phone in hand streaming music. It all streams via the router, not directly to the speakers, i.e. “ad-hoc”, although this is a configuration you can make within the PiCorePlayer software if you wish.

    Ingredients:

    Android phone
    AirAudio (A really good audio streaming app that costs about £4 I think and installs on phone. Supports loads of protocols.)
    Raspberry Pi 3
    Pi-DAC+ (this is required as the Pi’s on board audio is really poor and susceptible to interference. The DAC’s audio quality is really good)
    Pi-Case+
    Pi3 USB power supply (official) 5v 2.5amp
    16GB Micro SD Card
    EdiMax EW-7811UN usb wifi dongle
    PiCorePlayer software to install onto SD Card

    I’m using Apple’s Airplay protocol to stream as it’s uncompressed. The AirAudio app supports many others though, and rather than performing the task of cataloguing and playback, all it does is carries the audio output from phone to the raspberry pi which is great. This means I can use my favourite playback software which in my case is VLC. I have a DNLA media server that VLC streams from but it can also play back music directly off your phone.

    One reason I don’t like Sonos is that it ties you in to using their all-in-one proprietary software. I prefer to use my favourite apps for specific purposes.

    If you have a Windows PC you can also stream to your raspberry pi with the added benefit of it being free. In my case I use Foobar which is installed on the laptop (again streaming music from my media server) and stream to the raspberry pi using TuneBlade which just so happens to be free if…and this is the great bit…if you are streaming to open source servers which PiCorePlayer is. If you wanted to stream from Windows to Sonos speakers you’d need to pay.

    pealy
    Free Member

    I use mine to control some old powered speakers wirelessly

    Me too – using a PiZero W which makes it really cheap.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    Switched ours on the other day after a period of dormancy and it won’t boot. No green light I believe means it is not reading from the SD card – can I rewrite whatever it needs onto the card to sort this out?

    richmars
    Full Member

    I use mine to upload the air temperature outside to a web page, so I can check if it’ll be a cold ride to work before getting out of bed.

    To be honest, I find the Pi too complex for simple stuff, because of the Linux OS. You have to type a line of meaningless characters to do anything. And I normally like geeky stuff.
    I much prefer Arduinos.

    LittleNose
    Free Member

    Garry… if it is the OS, then try following this video to get you going again

    [video]https://vimeo.com/90518800[/video]

    edlong
    Free Member

    There’s maybe actually a gap in the market for what the OP is after.
    There’s plenty of examples/blogs out there where people have put in the effort and combined XYZ to make something, but no off the shelf kits.

    There would probably be some market for that, but imho that would completely undermine the whole purpose of the thing – then again, plenty of people buy the Lego kits and follow the instructions to the letter so what do I know…

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    For simple io stuff I think the Arduino is better too. I think the pi works well as a hub for distributed Arduino. Maybe running a control panel and HMI.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    There’s maybe actually a gap in the market for what the OP is after.

    See Ada fruit et al.

    Garry_Lager
    Full Member

    LittleNose – Member

    Garry… if it is the OS, then try following this video to get you going again

    [video]https://vimeo.com/90518800[/video] Thks LittleNose, will give that a try.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    I’ve probably got about 7 Pi’s doing various stuff across two houses – but generally:
    Taking air temps
    Working with Amazon Dot to control various sockets wirelessly
    Running the [all electric] heating in our other house
    Monitoring solar PV production
    Monitoring heating oil tank level (and requesting prices via email from my two preferred suppliers when the level gets low)

    Nearly all data is uploaded to Initial State which is really good and pretty simple.

    For less than a tenner each the Pi Zero W is a great piece of kit.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Working with Amazon Dot to control various sockets wirelessly

    I’d be interested to hear more about that sharkbait. I’m guessing it involves relays and https://ifttt.com/ ?

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Raspberry Pi – what can it do

    Apparently it can make a reasonably good cup of tea.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    Graham,
    I’ve set mine up as a FauxMo server (it pretends to be a WeMo device which are natively supported by Alexa) using this info but instead of using relays connected to the gpio pins I use energenie wireless sockets and a pimote connected to the gpio pins which you can switch on and off with a simple python script.

    Using these you can remotely switch anything that plugs into the wall. They also do light switches which I’m going to try at some point.

    I can supply my actual script if you like.

    Works much better than ifttt because alexa communicates directly with your pi over wifi rather than sending data to ifttt first which creates a delay.

    ski
    Free Member

    Use mine with Kodi media player to play my media files, phone app as a remote, simple

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Ooooh that’s much more interesting. Thanks sharkbait. You should consider submitting that to RasPi pages or to MagPi – sounds like it would be popular.

    RAGGATIP
    Free Member

    Anyone tried OpenHab? I thought that would perform a similar task to ifttt. You could self host and that would overcome the latency issues.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    One thing to bear in mind Graham is that the pimote can only switch 4 channels (1,2,3,4), but you can program multiple sockets with the same channel.
    For instance we have about 5 table lamps all programmed to channel 1 – so when we say “Alexa switch on the lights” the Pi just runs the script that switches on channel 1 and all the table lamps come on.

Viewing 29 posts - 1 through 29 (of 29 total)

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