Tag Archives: raspberry pi

Jul 25

Friday Post: Even more 3D printing…

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Hey All,

This has felt like one of the longest weeks of my life.  Had a couple meetings about Maker Faire Orlando, pushed out some software that 60,000 students will be using in a month. It’s super stressful.  Luckily it’s Friday and I can end up sleeping until Sunday 😀

I was hoping to have some cool stuff to show this week about the 3D printing software, but of course at the last minute stuff wasn’t working.

My 3D printer is a Micro3D 3D printer.  It’s a small $300 3D printer that is only now just getting people to hack on it.  With 3D Printing, you usually have two steps from model to plastic.

The first step is to run your model (an .STL file) through a slicer.  There are many slicers out there, Cura, Simple3D, Slic3r, etc.  These literally slice your model into layers which are written out as Gcode.

Gcode is an industry standard for 3D Printing and CNC milling that can control extruders, X Y and Z axis motors, temperature controls, etc.  Everything your print will do is going to be from a line of gcode commands.

The printing portion is actually a program that reads the gcode and sends it to the printer to act out.

OctoPi

There is a really cool open source suite of tools called OctoPrint, that combines a gcode processor and a beautiful web frontend to manage your 3D Printer.  A Raspberry Pi distribution was made call OctoPi which allows you to control most 3D printers from your Pi!

octoprintscreen

Because the Micro3D is so new, support is just starting to come out for it and the gcode processors are a little iffy at the moment.  I was able to get OctoPi to talk to my printer and manually move the axis, but it could not process the gcode properly.  Bummer 🙁

I am sure this will be fixed in the coming weeks though.  I am really happy with this printer.

Be on the lookout for a new PiPlay image.  It’s been too long!

-Shea

IMG_5401This hasn’t been cleaned up yet 😀

IMG_5403 IMG_5405 IMG_5406 IMG_5407 IMG_5408 IMG_5409 IMG_5410 IMG_5411 IMG_5412

Jul 03

Friday Post: 3D Printing and Raspberry Pi live streaming

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Hey All,

Happy Friday and happy 4th of July weekend!

On Monday I recieved a 3D Printer from the company M3D.  It is the blue Micro 3D printer.  If you use the coupon code “refurb” you can get one for $300 dollars (plus about $12 shipping).

microBlueSo far I’ve printed out a bunch of things, ranging from Bulbasaurs, and Ford Fiesta ST scale models, to characters from Dota and keychains.  So far it has been an awesome little printer.  Now, it’s slow, a little loud, and only has a print size of 6x6x6, but that hasn’t been an issue yet.

I’m using a Raspberry Pi with the camera module to livestream my printer.


Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

bulba

2015-07-01 (1)

IMG_5327 IMG_5336 IMG_5326 IMG_5325

Livestreaming from USTREAM on the Raspberry Pi

Here is a quick guide to livestreaming on the Raspberry Pi with USTREAM and an RPI Camera Module

References from: https://ustream.zendesk.com/entries/63723444-Raspberry-Pi-Streaming-video-to-Ustream and http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/dvb/490-turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-a-live-hdtv-transmitter

  • Install Raspbian to your Raspberry Pi SD Card
  • Install the Raspberry Pi Camera Module
  • Using Raspi-Config activate the camera module
    • sudo raspi-config
    • Enable Camera
  • You are going to need a version of ffmpeg installed.  The version from apt-get will not work.
    • You can download a working binary here: http://files.oz9aec.net/datv/490-rpi-hdtv/ffmpeg
      • wget http://files.oz9aec.net/datv/490-rpi-hdtv/ffmpeg
      • chmod +x ffmpeg
    • Or you can download and compile the ffmpeg sources via git
      • git clone git://source.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg
      • cd ffmpeg
      • ./configure
      • make
      • sudo make install
  • Set up a ustream script:
    • nano ustream
    •  #!/bin/bash
RTMP_URL=<rtmpurl>
STREAM_KEY=<streamkey>
while :
do
    raspivid -n -vf -hf -t 0 -w 960 -h 540 -fps 25 -b 500000 -o - | ./ffmpeg -i - -vcodec copy -an -metadata title="Streaming from raspberry pi camera" -f flv $RTMP_URL/$STREAM_KEY
    sleep 2
done
    • Change RTMP_URL and STREAM_KEY to match the keys you get from your USTREAM Channel settings page.
    • If you compiled and installed your own version of ffmpeg, remove the ./ffmpeg and replace it with just ffmpeg in the code above.
    • chmod +x ustream
    • ./ustream
  • With any luck, you will now be streaming to your USTREAM channel.

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 19

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Case and No Starch Press Humble Bundle!

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Happy Friday!

This was a long week.  I had three things to do at work.  2 of them took 20 minutes, the last one took 4 days to finish.  I’ve also apparently become addicted to Splatoon on the Wii U.

Official Raspberry Pi Case

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has come out with their official Raspberry Pi Case.  I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet but it looks really nice.

Humble Bundle

I’m a huge fan of No Starch Press, and I love Humble Bundle’s bundles.  I picked up the last No Starch Humble Bundle and it was great.  This time it’s no different.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

This bundle’s list of books:

  • Super Scratch Programming Adventure! by The LEAD Project ( A favorite )
  • The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 2 
  • The Manga Guide to Databases ( I had no idea No Starch published this, a great resource)
  • Wonderful Life with the Elements
  • The Art of LEGO Design
  • No Starch Summer Sampler 2015
  •  JavaScript for Kids (Was sent a review copy, very good, Python for Kids is another in the series)
  • The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide
  •  Learn to Program with Scratch
  • Arduino Workshop
  • The Linux Command Line
  • The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book
  • Teach Your Kids to Code
  • Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

PiPlay

Mark and I have been working on our remote controller concept that I posted a while ago on the blog.  I’m really impressed with how it’s turning out.  I couldn’t ask for a better team member.  I’m excited to share that in the upcoming weeks.

Apr 17

Friday Post: PyCon 2015!

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Hey All,

PyCon 2015 is over.  It was an amazing time in Montreal.  My coworker and I presented ProctorHub, the homegrown proctoring solution that we created for our university.

We met a lot of fellow educators, tons of fellow pythonistas, and learned a ton!

A PiPlay kit was also auctioned off during the PyLadies auction, where it brought in $200!

All of the talks are up on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxzjK6GuOHVKR_08TT4hJQ

I’ve also picked up two of these nrf24l01+ Transceivers.

11038420_10104069360076632_3430831120835634129_o

I have a neat project I’m working on involving a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino.  Hopefully I’ll have the prototype to show next week 😀

Have a good weekend!

Mar 27

Friday Post: PiPlay 0.8 Beta 9 Released!

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Happy Friday Everyone!

 

I am proud to present the very latest version of PiPlay!  PiPlay 0.8 Beta 9!  I feel like this is the best release yet!

While this was mostly a bug fix and compatibility update, we do have one awesome new features implemented.  When you upload, drag and drop, ftp, or somehow copy a game file to the roms folder, our file watcher will pick that up, and automatically update the PiPlay Menu.  No more running the Rom Scraper, or getting popups about unscraped files.

Update now via the PiPlay Menu, or download the latest image!

 Changelog
  • Numerous bug fixes!
  • Updated to latest Raspbian
  • SQLite Backend
  • Webserver now a background process via supervisor
  • File Watcher automatically scans for game files and updates the PiPLAY menu
  • Raspberry Pi 2 comparability
  • Controller config updated
  • Moved more repos to GitHub
  • Master games list updated
  • Toggle menu item visibility (in beta mode still)

Have a good weekend everyone!

Feb 20

Friday Post: PiPlay 8 Beta 8!

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It’s now available on SourceForge!

Hey All,

PiPlay 8 Beta 8 is here!  Mark has put a huge amount of time into the new frontend code.   We have moved form YAML files to a SQLite database.  Many items have been sped up.  The web frontend now has a database administration section.

This is a huge update.  Probably the best I think we put out… but because of the Pi2, we have had to do a lot of extra testing, and may have missed some stuff.  Please please please let us know if something isn’t working, or if something slipped through the cracks.  I want this to be the best release ever!

This new image will work on the Pi2 and B, B+, A, and A+.  I have spent the past week pulling out hair trying to get everything to work.  I have had to remove Stella, the Atari 2600 emulator for the moment.  When I can get it working properly on the new kernel, I will add it back in.

The image is currently being uploaded to SourceForge, so in a few hours it should be available.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks to all the testers.  If you find any bugs (I’m sure there are some) let us know in the PiPlay forums.

Feb 13

Friday Post: Termboy

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!

So I have had my Pi2 for a week, and I gotta say, it’s a great piece of kit.  PiPlay is coming along nicely.  Having some hiccups on the Pi2 that I need to fix before I do a full release.

TermBoy

With that being said, I saw on Hacker News today a port of a gameboy emulator to the Go language, that also only utilizes the console.  It’s called Termboy, and while it doesn’t run that fast on the Raspberry Pi, it’s still a neat little tech demo.

We first download the proper console font and install it:

wget http://kbd-project.org/download/kbd-2.0.2.tar.xz
tar xf kbd-2.0.2.tar.xz
sudo cp kbd-2.0.2/data/consolefonts/default8x16.psfu /usr/share/consolefonts/

Now we download the latest GoLang version (The apt-get version of Go is 2 years old)
[code]
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.4.1.src.tar.gz
tar xf go1.4.1.src.tar.gz

Set the path for where we want our Go packages to be downloaded

mkdir godownload
export GOPATH=/home/pi/go/godownload/

Build Go

cd go/src/
./make.bash

One that has completed, it’s time to download Termboy and build it.

cd ../bin/
./go get github.com/dobyrch/termboy-go

Now goto the bin folder where our newly built termboy executable resides, and run it like so:

cd ../godownload/bin/
./termboy-go /path/to/game.rom

More PiPlay news soon.  Promise!

-Shea

Feb 02

Raspberry Pi 2

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Hey All,

A big announcement came from the Raspberry Pi Foundation today!  They introduced the Raspberry Pi 2!

The biggest change is the CPU has been upgraded from a single core ARMv6 @ 700Mhz to a QUAD CORE ARMv7 @ 900Mhz.  The RAM has also been upgraded from 512MB to 1GB.  The price is going to remain the same as well!  Only $35!

The upgrade from ARMv6 to v7 is pretty big.  v7 can run things like Ubuntu and Android OS.  Most main line software repos are precompiled for v7 first as well.  Microsoft has even mentioned that Windows 10 will be free for the Raspberry Pi (though in an Internet-Of-Things way which may be more like the Intel Galileo than a full desktop environment).

All software should be backwards compatible so PiPlay should work right out of the box, along with a much appreciated speed boost.  I can’t wait to start recompiling the source code to eek out as much power as possible from this new core!

Most of the retail sites are swamped, but here is a list of places to order:

Pi2ModB1GB_-small

Sep 19

Friday Post: Maker Faire and Kano Unboxing!

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Hey All,

What a week.  Maker Faire was amazing but exhausting!  So many kids playing Street Fighter 2, and so many adults loving the nostalgia.  It was a great time.  Tons of 3D printers, awesome products, and great people all around.  I hope you enjoy the gallery!

I also received my Kano computing kit today.  I haven’t had the chance to boot it up, but I have made a short unboxing video.  The packaging is spectacular, and the custom keyboard is great to hold and use (tested it on my desktop).

 

The next release of PiPlay is coming together, I hope to release it this weekend.

Small list of changes:

  • modified romlist layout to include area for game descriptions
  • added 2 player controller config support
  • added “button combo” support for PiPlay Menu actions
  • optimization, screen updates only happen on controlled events
  • removed horizontal romlist option in theme support
  • Loading time speed up
  • Wifi Configuration Tool

Have a great weekend all!

-Shea

Jul 25

Friday Post: Small and Large Updates

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Hey All,

A few good updates this week 🙂

The PiPlay 0.8 Beta4 got a very small update (0.8b4.1)  You can get it by selecting the update option.

It fixes a few small config items, like the finalburn alpha emulator not looking for the proper config file, and Dgen missing the proper binary files.

A bigger update is coming later this week with 0.8 beta 5.  Mark figured out how to speed up the menu by at least 50%.  A lot of optimizations were made, and it will be incorporated into the code ASAP.

Have a great weekend all!

-Shea