Raspberry Pi

ToeMissile

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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The last couple days I've been heavily leaning toward getting one to use for a little home server / fun yet useful project to mess around with. Anyone have any experience with them?
 
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Noodleface

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My entire senior design project was using two of these to wirelessly transmit video/sound/commands from a cellphone attached to one and various other components. They're a great little toy. My recommendation would be to install Raspbian as your OS and then you're good to go.

If you have any questions, I'd consider myself an expert of sorts on the RPi so feel free.

Really nice piece of hardware for the price.
 
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I have one.

I initially bought it to turn into a cheap datalogger for a project at work, but got busy with other things and never got around to it. I ended up turning it into an XBMC media server with a version of Raspbmc. This was a while ago, but it sort of felt like on the cusp of being great, but not quite having enough horsepower to make things snappy. I'm sure the software has been optimized a bit more since then, maybe I'll try loading some things and seeing if it improved at all. A couple of other items:

1. It can't handle the inrush from spinning up a 2.5" external hard drive. Stick to something self powered, a powered USB hub, or flash media. I was lucky to not blow the small fuse they have on the USB port.

2. Don't bother with any of the kit junk. I bought one from Newark and it definitely wasn't worth it - the case was junk, the power supply uses a standard micro usb connector running at USB voltage that you probably have 100 of lying around if you have an android phone, and the remaining items aren't really necessary. The only things you pretty much absolutely need are a power supply, an hdmi cable, an SD card, and the Pi.
 

Hekotat

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Picked up a Raspberry Pi/Atrix Lapdock for 100 bucks yesterday, really excited to mess with it. You really can't beat that price for a laptop.

Raspberry Pi: Raspberry Pi laptop - element14


I'm sure I'll be hitting you guys up with all kinds of questions soon since I've never messed with Linux at all.
 

Noodleface

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I thought up a project at the grocery store last night. I was sitting in line with a couple frozen pizzas and no one was home to call to pre-heat the oven. So I figure, if I can get a RPi/Arduino on my home network and I make a phone app, I should be able to control it remotely. All I would need to do is have it control the stove. The maybe easiest way would be to use some kind of actuator to press the buttons. That's kind of hackish though. I'm not entirely sure what the innards behind the buttons on my stove look like, but I wonder if they can be altered in a way that I can control them with output logic voltage.

I'm going to look into it.

So basically, I want to become fatter, faster.

One concern is heat obviously. Another is making sure they don't accidentally start firing off signals due to noise or whatever.

Any thoughts?
 

BrutulTM

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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I have learned the hard way that trying to hack into electronics that you don't have a schematic for is most likely to result in you destroying your electronics. If you're not willing to possibly wind up buying a new oven I would go with the button pushing setup although you are correct that will be a really fucking ugly hack. If it was just the start button you could probably bypass the switch with a logic-controlled relay but setting the temp is going to be dicey because you will have no feedback on whether it worked or not. I suppose you could put a thermocouple in the oven and connect it to the raspberry pi.
 

ToeMissile

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Haven't messed with my rPi in a couple weeks, but still couldn't get php to install. Can't seem to get the repository path right. Will post some details later.
 

Bandwagon

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Sorry (kinda) for bumping an old thread, but just wondering if anyone is still playing around with the rPi?

I just set up VNC on mine and am waiting on a larger SD card before I start doing a bunch of work on it. I'd like to get a 4g LTE dongle and use gStreamer to set up a live feed from one of the drones, but keep it independent from the flight controller.

I know LTE is unreliable (so I won't be using it for telemetry), but I've been working with Active911 to set up a live video feed through their app, just as a proof of concept. Planning on testing it from the ground-based rover before trying to multi-task with a drone in the air.

Noodle, were you using bluetooth/wi-fi to transmit data for your project, or were you using 3g/4g?
 

Noodleface

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We were transmitting data over RF, can't remember what frequencies though - maybe in the 800 MHz range.
 

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Guessing it was 915mhz, or 433. Ok, that's what I'm using now, and will still be using for data, but hopefully 4g for low res video.

I may have to harass you for a bit of help when I get there.

Also, do you know if the pi supports video in via usb or the analog port? I've got about 10 cameras laying around, so I really don't want to order a pi camera.
 

Noodleface

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The pi actually supports USB webcams at least, so I'd be willing to be most USB cameras work (obviously don't quote me, just guessing). Back when we did the project we had to wire one to the GPIOs and build a circuit - but support was really limited back then, a webcam would've worked way better for what we needed.

I want to say we operated at 915 MHz, but looking at the XBees now they're all 2.4GHz, so really it could've been anything.

I still have the source code if you run into issues, but it's pretty awful source code.
 

BrutulTM

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Why is 4G unreliable? I mean anything you do that's wireless is going to be somewhat unreliable but is 4G less reliable than hanging some cheap little radio on your drone for some reason?
 

Noodleface

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4G could be unreliable if he's in an area with no cell/4G coverage I'd imagine

RF has a line of sight issue itself
 

LachiusTZ

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I was thinking about getting one of these to toy around with, maybe try to run a home security system through it + other junk. And they have the zero now.
 

Noodleface

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I was thinking about getting one of these to toy around with, maybe try to run a home security system through it + other junk. And they have the zero now.
Im a big proponent of pis, been a fan since the first revisions. The zeros are awesome, they sold out fast though. I think they're back in now?

I only use mine as an emulation station for parties at my house and people absolutely love it. Handed a couple out as Christmas gifts as well.
 

Bandwagon

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Why is 4G unreliable? I mean anything you do that's wireless is going to be somewhat unreliable but is 4G less reliable than hanging some cheap little radio on your drone for some reason?
In addition to what was already stated, re establishing a lost data link with the typical 915 modules is typically as simple as moving to re establish LOS. With 4g, you never know. I'd like to set up a data link over 4g and keep my telemtry modules as backup, but that's a little ambitious for my programming skills right now.
 

Bandwagon

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Noodle, if I wanted to set up the pi to allow you to log into it, what do I need? I saw vnc + port forwarding as an option, but isn't there a program that allows login via a website?