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WigWag Simplifies Home Automation, Provides Raspberry Pi and Arduino Shields

WigWag is an home automation kit aiming at simplifying home automation, yet allowing developers to roll their own system via Arduino and Raspberry Pi Shields. Wigwag is currently composed of three devices: WigWag Sensor Block – Universal sensor device with 8 environmental sensors (light, detect motion, sound, temperature, humidity, movement…), 4 control features (relay, IR blaster…), and 2 expansion ports. It can be powered by 4x AA batteries (possibly for up to 1 year), or a USB power adapter. This device runs Contiki OS on Freescale MC1322 MCU (with built-in 6LoWPAN radio). WigWag Relay – Connects WigWag and third party devices to their cloud service, allowing interaction with Internet services, such as email, Dropbox and Twitter. It acts a bit like a central server managing all your WigWag Sensor Blocks or other connected devices such as Phillips Hue light bulbs or Belkin WeMo outlets in your house. IP networks (Wi-Fi & Ethernet) […]

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DIY Stripboard/Veroboard Enclosure for Raspberry Pi (Part 2)

Following up my previous post entitled “DIY Modular Stripboard / Perfboard Casing for Raspberry Pi (Part 1)” where I explained how I created an modular enclosure made of perfboard, or the overall concept, I’ve now designed two “smart” sides for the enclosure: a 16-LED stripboard side, and a 5V relay stripboard side. Today, I’ll detail how I’ve done this, with details about electronics, soldering, assembly, the Linux distribution (built with Yocto), as well C programs, HTML page, and (CGI) shell scripts used to light up the 16 LEDs, and control a standard 220V lamp with a relay via my phone’s web browser. 16-LED Stripboard Top Schematics, Soldering, and Testing I had decided to design the top board of the enclosure with several LEDs, 3 LEDs on both side, and a Raspberry fruit (6 red LED) and 2 leaves (4 green LED) in the middle. Before getting started, I did some […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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12MB Minimal Image for Raspberry Pi using the Yocto Project

Last year, I wrote instructions and provided a download link about a minimal image for Raspberry Pi based on Raspbian. The compressed image is 84MB, and the good thing about it is that you can just use apt-get to install packages. The problem is that it’s not actually that small as once it is uncompressed the rootfs is still a massive 414 MB. So today, I’ll explain how to create a smaller (and custom) image using the Yocto Project, a platform that let you build an embedded Linux distribution matching exactly your project’s requirements. Other advantages are that the build is configurable with config files, so it’s easily reproducible with a few command lines, and it might turn out to be useful to learn more about the Yocto Project as many boards and SoC are now making use of the framework, including Freescale i.MX6 (Wandboard, Olinuxino-imx233, Sabrelite, etc…), the Beagleboard, […]

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DIY Modular Stripboard / Perfboard Casing for Raspberry Pi (Part 1)

I plan to play around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE in Linux using the Raspberry Pi as an hardware platform together with a small LCD display and possibly a relay board. Instead of having boards spread around, I thought it might be a good idea if I could design a case for my setup. I wanted to be able to connect small external boards and things like LEDs, it had to be easily assembled and disassembled, modular so that I could add or remove circuits easily, and about as cheap as existing “dumb” cases. So I though why not use stripboards (perfboards) for that? I searched the web to find out if other people had the same idea, and could only find one other person, but he does not appear to have completed assembly, nor actually used the stripboards to add hardware features. I decided to give it a try anyway, […]

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Stealth Nighthawk F-117A is a Raspberry Pi-in-a-Stick Preloaded with XBMC

Stealth Nighthawk F-117A was a “single-seat, twin-engine stealth ground-attack aircraft formerly operated by the United States Air Force (USAF)”, but it’s now an HDMI dongle based on the same processor as the Raspberry Pi, namely Broadcom BCM2825, software compatible with the Raspberry Pi, and preloaded with an XBMC OS, which turns out to the Raspbmc. The main hardware differences with Raspberry Pi are that you lose Ethernet, composite output, and all headers used for hardware hacking, but you gain Wi-Fi, a casing, and an even smaller form factor. Here are the specifications of the device: SOC – Broadcom BCM2835 @ 700mhz with Video Core IV GPU/VPU System Memory – 512MB Storage – micro SD card slot (up to 32GB) USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port + micro USB port for power Video Output – HDMI (up to 1080p) Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11n Power – 5V/1A via microUSB port Dimensions – […]

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UDOO QUAD vs BeagleBone Black vs Wandboard Dual vs ODROID-X2 vs Raspberry Pi

UDOO QUAD is a development board featuring both Freescale i.MX 6Quad and an Atmel SAM3 Cortex M3 MCU, that’s currently having a very successful campaign on Kickstarter, as the total amount pledged is now close to $500,000 US. UDOO decided to put a comparison table against four other ARM Linux boards they consider their main competitors: the BeagleBone Black for its numerous I/O options, Wandboard Dual, also a Freescale i.MX6 powered board, the ODROID X2 for its powerful Exynos 4412 processor, and Raspberry Pi model B which is ubiquitous. The Cubieboard board would also have been an interesting addition, but they did not include it. As you would have guessed the green parts in the tablet shows the winner for each features according to UDOO team. These 5 boards vary greatly in terms of price, and since this is not included in the table above, I’ll mention  the price of […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 18) Released

John Chiappetta, working for Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology, has recently announced the release of Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 18, which will be now known as Pidora 18. If you were there at the time of Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix 14 release, the first ever Linux distribution released for the Raspberry Pi, you may remember it had many issues, and the Raspberry Pi foundation decided to remove it from their Download page. This fourth release will hopefully fix many issues, and they’ll end up back on Raspberry Pi site. Based on the Changelog vs R-Pi Fedora Remix 17, Pidora 18 features look promising: Almost all of the Fedora 18 package set available via yum (thousands of packages were built from the official Fedora repository and made available online) Compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi Graphical firstboot configuration (with additional modules […]

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Raspberry Pi Camera Module Is Now Available, How-to Use It

About one year after showing the first image from the camera module prototype, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Camera board is now available for purchase on RS Component or Element14. Navigating either of these sites is a nightmare, but, if you’re lucky, you should eventually find the camera board for around $25 before taxes and shipping. “Raspicam” features the following hardware specifications: Omnivision 5647 sensor in a fixed-focus module 5MPixel sensor Still picture resolution: 2592 x 1944 Max video resolution: 1080p Max frame rate: 30fps Size: 20 x 25 x 10mm Connection by flat ribbon cable to 15-pin MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) connector S5 on Raspberry Pi computer board The first thing you’ll have to do with the camera is to connect it to the CSI connector on your Raspberry Pi, just behind the Ethernet connector on model B. James explains it very clearly in the video below. […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products