Spencer (Mr UK Tech Reviews) got sent a new ‘flash ring’ by Cyntech. It’s a mounting plate for the Raspberry Pi camera module that surrounds the lens with LEDs. He’s done a short review here.
Raspberry Pi controlled wi-fi pottery kiln
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just posted this on their blog, so I thought I’d share it with you.
James Gao and his girlfriend, who is an enthusiastic potter, combined their know-how and skills and created a remote control propane regulator. The Pi has wi-fi so that they can adjust the temperature. Read more here.
More Raspberry Pi Model A+ coverage
Comparison photo from Alex Eames of RasPi.TV
I like days like this where there’s a big news story. Here are some more articles about the A+ launch, some of which have some… interesting… comments on. There’s no more new information about the board on some of these, but it’s interesting to get different perspectives. My A+s are on order with The Pi Hut and, through some lucky timing, I’ll be getting them tonight! Exciting!
- RasPi.TV’s blog post (repeated from before)
- The Raspberry Pi Guy’s video
- RasPi.Today
- Make
- Hexus.net
- Gigaom Research
- Engadget
- VentureBeat
Raspberry Pi Model A+ launched!
Photo credit: Alex Eames from RasPi.TV
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced the launch of the Raspberry Pi Model A+. See their blog post here.
First of all, it’s even cheaper – they’ve gone for a $20 price mark, so expect it to retail for around £15. £15 for a Pi? Bargain!
It’s a lot smaller than the current B and B+ at 65 x 56 x 14mm and resembles a B+ with a bit chopped off.
It has the same 40 pin GPIO header as the B+ and also has the 4 mounting holes from the B+, making it compatible with HAT boards.
The power consumption of the A+ is lower than both the B+ and the A, using just 600mA.
Due to the removal of the ethernet/USB chip, just like the model A it has only one USB port.
Alex Eames from RasPi.TV has had a chance to take a look at the board and you can find his coverage here.
The A+ is an exciting development, thanks to the smaller footprint and even lower power requirements, and it should find a nice place in more embedded projects. I’m looking forward to getting one myself and stuffing it into a Gameboy case!
You can buy an A+ from The Pi Hut for £22 (including VAT and delivery) or from Farnell for £23.35 (including VAT and delivery) or for £24 from RS components (including VAT and delivery)
Etekcity USB 3.0 10-port hub review
I was sent one of these hubs by the manufacturer, Etekcity.
What do you get?
It is a 10-port USB 3.0 hub with an extra USB port that runs at 2.1A.
The main part of the hub, on top, features 9 of the USB 3.0 ports. Each group of 3 ports has an on/off button and each port has an LED that lights up when that port is in use. One end of the hub houses the 2.1A port and a further USB 3.0 port. The other end of the hub houses the output USB type B port and also the power socket.
The hub comes with a 12V power supply that delivers a healthy 4A to the unit.
Using the hub
I connected the hub to the Pi and plugged into the hub an HDMIPi (with Pi inside), a keyboard, mouse and wifi dongle. Everything powered up nicely but the devices I plugged in to be recognised by the Pi failed to work. I believe this has something to do with it being a USB 3.0 hub, or else it has a chipset that is incompatible. So, that was a bit disappointing. However, having said that I did use a normal port for the HDMIPi/Pi rather than the 2.1A port and it worked perfectly. So, I would say that it would be very good for powering multiple Pis at once, but not as a strict ‘hub’ for devices for the Pi. With the 4A power supply, you’ll probably be fine powering up to 5 Pis (depending on what was plugged into their USB ports) at once.
I then used the hub with my laptop in the same way – with a keyboard, mouse and wifi dongle plugged in. I’m happy to report that it worked plugged into both a USB 2.0 port and also a USB 3.0 port. All the devices were recognised and worked flawlessly.
Conclusion
For use with the Pi, the hub is really only useful for powering multiple Pis, rather than as a ‘proper’ hub. However, it does work as a hub with a normal PC or laptop.
You can buy the hub from Amazon for £32.88, currently. There is also a 10-port USB 2.0 hub for £23.49 which is more likely to work ‘properly’ with the Pi.
Create your Raspberry Pi SD card images ahead of time with Pi Kitchen
Meltwater has just published information on Pi Kitchen, which is a way to pre-create your SD card images. You create ‘recipes’ which inject various settings and scripts into your SD card image when it boots up… at least I think that’s how it works!
Here’s a list of things it can do:
- Injection of network and WiFi settings so we can have full networking and remote access enabled immediately.
- Automatically enable the settings for a direct network cable link to use the Raspberry Pi with a laptop/PC
- An automated install script which we can trigger on the first power up of the Raspberry Pi following the NOOBS installation (so we can install SAMBA, VNC etc as needed)
- Enable a bluetooth keyboard to work on the first boot
- Automatically run background scripts to check for and respond to attached hardware (such as hardware buttons)
- Build stand-alone projects which can be quickly deployed by selecting a specific OS flavour
- Possibility to setup scripts which automatically run on start up
- Option to setup mapping of data and recovery partitions automatically
- We can create a range of different flavours which then can install a unique combination of ingredients (=a particular feature/setup). For example, you could create one flavour for a workshop and another flavour which runs an automated demonstration of the workshop as soon as it is switched on
- Create installations which can be run without a network but can be easily updated when required.
- Pre-load the installation with relevant data-sheets, resource materials or web-links.
- Ability to share and develop common ingredients with others.