Interesting post on connecting a MiniMU sensor to the Pi to sense the 3D orientation of the sensor. Another little tidbit for those who, like me, are sensor-mad.
David Grayson’s blog: Orientation sensing with the Raspberry Pi and MinIMU-9 v2.
Gasser – mobile gas sensor box
An interesting project which mashes a Pi, a battery, an ADC and a sensor together to create a standalone gas sensing gadget.
Getting started with Databases on the Pi with SQLite (reblog)
An excellent step-by-step blog post about installing and using SQLite. Further blog posts will cover how to use the database in PHP. I’ll be keeping an eye on this in my quest to learn my way around PHP!
An Unofficial Raspberry Pi Blog: Getting started with Databases on the Pi with SQLite.
I just won a Dreamer Nano!
I just won a Dreamer Nano v4.0 over at Will Garrido’s blog MobileWill! (And I never win _anything_! The last thing I won was a Space LEGO set back in the 1980s!)
The Dreamer Nano V4.0 is a surface mount breadboard embedded version of the ATMEGA 32U4 with integrated Micro USB. It has everything that Arduino Leonardo has (electrically).Physically, it is just missing power jack to save space.
Using the ATmega32U4 as its sole microcontroller allows it to be cheaper and simpler. Also, because the 32U4 is handling the USB directly, code libraries are available which allow the board to emulate a computer keyboard, mouse, and more using the USB-HID protocol!
The Dreamer Nano v4.0 is compatible with most Nano shield in the market. It’s suitable for projects that require a compact size controller system.
Specifications
- Microcontroller:ATmega32u4
- Operating Voltage:5V
- Input Voltage (recommended):6.5-12v (VIN) / 5v (Micro USB)
- Input Voltage (limits):6.5-12V
- Digital I/O Pins:20
- PWM Channels:7
- Analog Input Channels:12
- DC Current per I/O Pin:40 mA
- DC Current for 3.3V Pin:50 mA
- Flash Memory:32 KB (ATmega32u4) of which 4 KB used by bootloader
- SRAM:2.5 KB (ATmega32u4)
- EEPROM:1 KB (ATmega32u4)
- Clock Speed:16 MHz
- Compatible with most of Nano shield
- Size: 45x20x20mm
This was the original competition post and this: MobileWill: 100th Post: Giveaway Winner! is the follow-up winning announcement.
Need to work out how to get it working with the Pi now… think through an Arduino would be the best bet. It is, of course, breadboard mountable, so I’ll investigate the pin-out when it arrives and see what I can do direct from the Pi.
Summer Coding Contest results
I don’t normally publicise a blog post by the RP Foundation (they do well enough without me!) but I felt that this was one of those times!
The results for the Summer Coding Contest have been announced and have made the news on the BBC News website!
Some fantastic project ideas on here, so well worth reading!
Minecraft: Raspberry Pi edition announced
Minecraft will soon be coming to the Pi! For more info (though not much yet!) see the official Minecraft announcement.