Education, Making, Tutorials

Connecting Electronics – a presentation and associated code files

by  •  • 0 Comments

Trystan Jones at www.crennsmind.com did a presentation on connecting electronics to the GPIO and has released both the presentation and associated code files to the public domain over at GitHub.

crenn/RPi-Connecting_Electronics · GitHub.

The presentation is a very good, succinct, round-up of the GPIO functions and he covers a basic Hello World example as well as examples using a port expander and a microcontroller. Much of the content is links to other sites, but as these other sites are very good (Adafruit, for example), it is no worse for that.

Perhaps some school-based RPi user can adapt it for an intermediate class?

Uncategorized

Model A #RaspberryPi now for sale in Europe

by  •  • 12 Comments

This news comes to us from the official Raspberry Pi Foundation website:

“RS Components and Premier Farnell/element14 have Model A Raspberry Pis in stock as of this morning.”

The Model A is a stripped-down version of the Model B Raspberry Pi, with no Ethernet, one USB port and 256MB RAM.”

As of right now, Farnell are not listing it on their website whereas the typically unreliable RS Components does let you buy it.

Here’s the official release from the Foundation: Model A now for sale in Europe – buy one today! | Raspberry Pi.

Try as I might I can’t get very excited about the Model A, especially when the Model B is available for all of £6 more. But, horses for courses, I’m sure the lower power usage will appeal to someone for some reason!

Books, Reviews

Book Review: Quick and Easy Guide to #RaspberryPi – Do Not Buy

by  •  • 1 Comment

The Quick and Easy Guide to RaspberryPi

Rating: 2/10

I previously featured this book when it was free over the course of one weekend. I’ve now read it. I’m sorry for anyone who has downloaded and spent time reading this poor excuse for a guide.

  • This book takes a full 15% of it’s content to explain what it’s going to do rather than actually explaining anything useful. This is before the individual chapters which, themselves, introduce the content. I estimate that these introductions take up another 5% of the book. Oh, and there’s an additional 10% of summation at the end of the book. So, in total, 30% of the book tells us what it’s going to do, and what it’s done, rather than actually doing it.
  • It’s really badly written. The book contains such gems as “The kicker is that it only costs $25-35”. “Kicker” isn’t a word that should appear in any serious guide, in my opinion, and points to the probable lack of experience of the author. There are more examples of this kind of loose language, but I can’t be bothered to list them all.
    One of my personal favourite bad sentences: “(The graphics processor) adds a new kind of speed to multimedia processing, ensuring that you don’t have a slow time dealing with multimedia on your Raspberry Pi.” That’s right – the Raspberry Pi has fast graphics because it is fast.
  • The guide compares the model A and model B but the author is clearly not impartial as he pushes the model B for the entire length of the (very short) chapter. He doesn’t mention that the model A isn’t even available yet and he doesn’t seem to recognise that the two models are for two different types of user.
  • It’s written more like a blog than a book. Appparently, “…if you’re not a luddite, you shouldn’t have a problem coming up to speed on how navigate the system, so don’t let it (Linux) scare you away.” First of all, luddite is a derogatory term and, secondly, it’s well-known that Linux is not all that easy-to-use anyway. This sentence is more likely to put people off getting a Pi!
  • When the USB Hub is mentioned as being an accessory to get, it is not mentioned that you need a powered hub.
  • The author blithely recommends that you buy a Belkin wireless adapter without any consideration of models or compatibility with the Pi.
  • There is no step-by-step guide to preparing the SD card for the Pi. Hardly comprehensive.
  • A username and password to use when first logging into the Pi may not apply to all distros that you can download.
  • There is no mention of RiscOS which is now an officially distributed OS for the Pi.
  • No guidance is given on updating the OS or installing the Pi Store if necessary.
  • The author states that you won’t be able to use languages like C++ and Java. This is simply untrue. Other languages might need installing but you can still use them!
  • The very first programming example is titled “Popping My Python Cherry”. This is bordering on disgusting, especially considering that the Pi is aimed at education of youngsters.

To buy (if you should be so inclined, but I don’t recommend it):

UK people click here to get it from the Kindle store on Amazon.co.uk. (£2.27 at last check)

International people click here to get it from the Kindle store on Amazon.com.

 

GPIO boards

HydroGadget – Irrigation system using a #RaspberryPi / @Raspberry_Pi

by  •  • 0 Comments

SmokingCircuits.me | My Personal Collection of Open Source Hardware Projects

Over at SmokingCircuits, they are developing a board called the HydroGadget. Here’s what the man running the hardware side of the project says about it:

“The concept of HydroGadget is an internet connected home irrigation timer and controller. What separates HydroGadget from other products on the market is the ability of the unit to connect to outside servers and change its operation accordingly.

For example, the HydoGadget could connect to a local weather database and see that last night it rained a quarter inch and that it doesn’t need to water this afternoon. Local watering restrictions sometime dictate what days and times you are allowed to irrigate based on the time of year and your local address.”

Read more about the project on their blog.

Their prototype build debuted on 2nd February at the first Las Vegas Maker Faire and you can read more about that here.

Sounds like an intriguing project and one I’ll be keeping an eye on!

Education, Reviews, Tutorials

OCR releases PDF resources for the #RaspberryPi, ICT and Computing / @Raspberry_Pi

by  •  • 0 Comments

OCR have released their PDF teaching resources for the Raspberry Pi.

These are well-produced, high-quality documents that they should be proud of producing. Whether you’re in a classroom environment or not, I recommend taking a look at them. Beware, the links to the PDFs can be deathly slow, so I would say right-click and save the linked document rather than viewing it in your browser.

The resources are as follows:

  • Raspberry Pi Resources Link – a general guide to the major resources and software packages available for the Pi
  • Classroom Challenge – Architecture – there’s a learner and a teacher sheet for this. This is a worksheet about the components that make up the Pi and peripherals that could be attached to it.
  • Connecting to a network – another learner/teacher sheet combo. Another worksheet that deals with connecting to a network via cable and then via a wifi dongle and confirming that the connection exists using Linux commands.
  • Simple animation – learner/teacher combo worksheets to do animation using both Scratch and Python.

Take a look at the resources here and download them to use!