Category Archives: Friday

Jun 21

Friday Post: Telepresence Robots!

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Hey All,

First off, no PiMAME this week.  Still working out bugs.  It’ll be soon I promise 🙂

I’m 99% done with my book.  Content is all done!! Woo!  Now I’m just working on the preface.  I’m really excited to get back the edited version and do the final touches 😀 😀

Mike Dicillo created a really Arcade cabinet for PiMAME made entirely out of Lego.  It is freaking awesome!  http://www.mikedicillo.com/legocade/#

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Onto the topic, my department got a cool new member this week.  A telepresence robot!  Specifically a Double Robotics unit.

It’s an iPad on a Segway, thats connected to the internet, and allows you to connect to it from anywhere in the world.  It was awesome to test it out and attend a conference in another building.  We had a coworker who is currently in another state connect to it and pilot it around the office.

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We live in the future!

More PiMAME news soon 🙂

 

-Shea

Jun 14

Friday Post: Coming soon, PiMAME 0.8

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Hey All,

What a hectic week.  I’ve been working on the second half of my book, doing a ton of stuff at work, AND working on PiMAME 0.8 🙂

New features to come in PiMAME 0.8:

  • gpiokey drivers
  • dispmanx 
  • cavestory
  • dgen (Genesis)
  • advancemess (NES woo!)

I’m hoping to get it done this weekend, and I’ll let you all know when its up 🙂

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

May 31

Friday Post: Writing is Exhausting!

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Hey All,

Writing is exhausting, and tough, and mentally taxing.  I love it, but wow, this is a new experience   I don’t really have any updates for this week.  I know Nick_Tones is anxiously awaiting more PiMAME stuff.  I’m sorry I don’t have anything this week.

There was an askreddit thread earlier this week about what do people do with thier Raspberry Pi?  There are some amazing projects in there.  I really want to try doing a Raspberry Pi weather balloon launch with the University. I also posted PiMAME to the thread and I got an additional 1700 visits.  That blew my mind.

I’m going to leave you with this, Patrick Stewart being awesome:

Have a good weekend!

-Shea

May 24

Friday Post: More Neat Things!

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Hey all,

Another long week over here.  I’m glad we have a 3 day weekend, because I could use it.  Going to sleep until Monday I think 🙂  Anyways, onto the fun stuff!

Book

So, I’ve been waiting ages to announce this.  I have been tapped by a publishing company to write a book about a computer that means a lot to me (hint hint).  That’s really all the details I can announce at this time, but I’m very excited and eager to work on this project.

BarCamp Orlando

Last week I talked about BarCamp Orlando.  It was a lot of fun.  There were a lot of great talks given by members of the Orlando tech community.  I met a lot of cool people, and networked with some fellow educators.  It was also nice to see a big turnout of my coworkers and friends from FamiLAB show their support of this conference.

I did a talk about gaming on the Raspberry Pi, and I have to say it went fairly well.  I have grown to really like public speaking, and I am very interested in doing more.  I did about 15 minutes of explanations and demos of the Raspberry Pi’s capabilities, and another 10 minutes of QA from the audience members.

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Thermal Imaged Pi

I received an email from Bux (from the forums) the other day.  He acquired a thermal scanner, so he used it to take a picture of the Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi - Thermal Image

Weston  Accelerated X

A very exciting development in the continuing optimization of the Raspberry Pi has been released.  A release of the Weston software that allows accelerated X windows to be displayed on the Raspberry Pi.  This should help with the sluggish feeling that is encountered when using the GUI.  I will be testing this out over the weekend.  The instructions to install it are available here: http://fooishbar.org/tell-me-about/wayland-on-raspberry-pi/ and below:

echo deb http://raspberrypi.collabora.com wheezy rpi >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get install weston

Stickers

I think I have sent out all the stickers.  If anyone hasn’t received theirs, please contact me again!


Have a great weekend everyone!

-Shea

May 17

Friday Post: Neat Things

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Hey All,

It has been a long week.  Star Trek Into Darkness was AMAZING!  Go see it now.  Stop reading.  Go to your theater, watch it, then come back here and finish reading.   It was that good.

SanderSiezen has made a really slick cocktail arcade cabinet, powered by PiMAME.  His entire build log has been published at his site.  I’m really impressed by the hinge used to hide the controls.  Great Job!

mame_arcade_table1 mame_arcade_table4

 

BarCamp Orlando

BarCamp Orlando is this weekend.  It’s basically a tech gathering un-conference.  People meet up in a central area, sign up to do talks, speak about awesome things, and network, all while enjoying the bar scene around downtown.

I am hoping to do some talking about PiMAME and the Raspberry Pi.

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Shea

 

May 04

Friday Post: The Pi Hut

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Hey all,

Sorry for the lateness, I went and saw Iron Man 3 last night and got home late.

Go see Iron Man 3.  If you liked the first two movies, you will like the third.  I thought it was great.

A fun announcement: The Pi Hut is now selling SD Cards with PiMAME preloaded on it.

If you are using the installer script, make sure you run the update script, as I have pushed a few changes.  The PiHut SD card already has the installer script included.

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

 

Apr 26

Friday Post: Mausberry Circuits Raspberry Pi Power Switch

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Hey All,

First of all I am happy to say that I aced my course this semester.  Woo!  It’s weird having free time again.  Going to be really focusing on PiMAME.  Onto the cool stuff…

So, I got my Mausberry Circuits Raspberry Pi Power Switch in the mail this week.  I linked to the Kickstarter for this previously and I’m really happy it was funded.  The device is tiny, but feels well soldered and sturdy.  My only complaint is that the headers cables for the GPIO pins are on the top of the board, as opposed to the bottom, making it harder to put in a project box or in a DeskCade.

The device itself works flawlessly.  You install the script, connect the GPIO pins, and then hit the switch.  The script tells the Pi to power down, and after it’s completely halted, the power is cut.  It also includes a hard reset button in case the Pi is completely frozen / crashed.

maus1

It’s $22 with shipping, and you can order one at mausberrycircuits.com

Have an awesome weekend everyone.

-Shea

Apr 19

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Model A and New PCSX_ReARMed Binaries

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Hey all,

I got my Raspberry Pi Model A in this week.

Photo Apr 19, 1 53 49 PM Photo Apr 19, 1 54 13 PM Photo Apr 19, 1 54 26 PM Photo Apr 19, 1 54 55 PM

 

I haven’t had the chance to put the board through it’s paces yet.  I was a little surprised to see they are only shipping with 256MB of RAM, as I figured it would cost more to keep two supplies of RAM chips in stock, but I’m not complaining.

It did overclock to turbo mode, and it ran the same PiMAME SD card from a Model B without any problems which makes me happy.  If you don’t need ethernet on board, and don’t mind using a USB hub for everything, this is the board for you.

PCSX_ReARMed

I’ve updated the binaries.  The error shouldn’t be appearing anymore.

For those who have used PiMAME, you’ve seen that Playstation emulation is included.  If you don’t use PiMAME, and just want the binaries to run on your own Pi, here they are.

To download & run:

  • Type in console: wget http://sheasilverman.com/rpi/raspbian/pcsx_rearmed_22042013.tgz
  • tar zxfv pcsx_rearmed_22042013.tgz
  • cd pcsx_rearmed
  • ./pcsx
  • Select your game and have fun!

 

 

Apr 12

Friday Post: PiMAME 0.6 Beta 4

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Hey All,

I’m happy to announce PiMAME 0.6 Beta 4!  You will need a 4GB SD Card for this release.  The updates and new items required a bump in space.

pimame_small

This release includes:

  • Neo Geo support with the GNGeo emulator!!! (Full Speed and Audio)
  • Neo Geo roms and bios are stored in the same Roms folder.
  • Raspbian upgraded and updated.

Known issues:

  • GNGeo does not work with the XArcade Tankstick at the moment.  You must use a keyboard.
  • GNGeo small screen size.  Will not do scaling through composite.  Will scale up through HDMI.
  • I have been informed of the slowness with AdvMENU.  I have confirmed the issue and will be working on that.

Go Get It!!!!

Apr 05

Friday Post: 2600 The Hacker Quarterly

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Hey All,

I have been keeping this tightly guarded for about 6 months now and I am VERY EXCITED to announce that an article I wrote entitled “Hacking, Learning, and the Raspberry Pi” has been published by the 2600: The Hacker Quarterly.  The spring was released today and it is very exciting seeing my name in print.

To me, this achievement is akin to an academic researcher being published in a journal.

2600 is an amazing periodical with a long history, large following, and amazing reach.  From Wikipedia: “2600: The Hacker Quarterly is an American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer “underground” and left wing, and sometimes (but not recently), anarchist issues.”

I’ve been reading 2600 ever since I found it in a bookstore back in high school.  I never thought of the word hacker, or hacking, as anything bad.  It was to me just a kid being curious while using a computer.  2600 solidified that feeling for me and many people in the computer industry have felt the same way.  Most of the companies I have worked for even had a subscription because the information is just that valuable.

You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore, from the 2600 Online Store, Amazon Kindle, or Barnes & Noble Nook.

Thanks for helping make this possible!

-Shea