Wednesday, December 28, 2016

How to Make Your Own NES Mini, Using a Raspberry Pi

Building your very own NES Mini using a Raspberry Pi is incredibly simple, and anyone can do it. This post from element14 show how to Make a NESberry Pi Mini by yourself.


Wednesday, December 21, 2016

PIXEL FOR PC AND MAC released

An experimental version of Debian+PIXEL for x86 platforms released. Simply download the image, burn it onto a DVD or flash it onto a USB stick, and boot straight into the familiar PIXEL desktop environment on your PC or Mac.



source and details: PIXEL FOR PC AND MAC

Related:
Try RASPBIAN JESSIE WITH PIXEL on x86 PC using VirtualBox/Windows 10

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Saturn@Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera V2/Nikkor AF 300mm f4



Saturn photo and video by Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera V2 x Nikkor AF 300mm f4, connected with Canon EF Lens adapter for Raspberry Pi and Nikon-EOS adapter.


Remark about aperture:
Most modern lens have aperture controlled by camera body, no aperture ring on lens body. The aperture is set minimum without camera. So, make sure your lens have manual aperture control on lens body.

More:
The Moon and Saturn@RPi NoIR Camera V2/Nikkor AF 300mm f4 - 2017-06-08

Related:
Saturn, Jupiter & Mars@WaveShare Pi Camera/Nikkor AF 300mm f4
The Moon@WaveShare Pi Camera/Nikkor AF 300mm f4
Mount Raspberry Pi Camera Module to telescope (with sample video of the Moon)


Friday, July 22, 2016

No brand made in China Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module

It's a No brand made in China Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module:






Basically it have the same specification of official Raspberry Pi NoIR v1.3, with different lens and lens housing. Come with lens marked "3.6mm IR 1080P". User can adjust focus and have to adjust focus. The lens and lens housing is in m12-mount, user can change to other lens easily, and even replace other housing of c/cs-mount, to use other lens using on cctv.

About replacing lens housing:
The center-to-center distance of the mounting holes is ~18mm, It's easy to find replacement of m-12 mount (or c/cs-mount). The official Raspberry Pi Camera Module is ~21mm, I can't find any replacement, or adapter. But if you are going to replace the lens and housing, you have to concern the height of the housing. There are many lens, may have different lens-to-focus plane distance.


Here is another Made in China Raspberry Pi Camera Module, but with WaveShare brand name: Waveshare Raspberry pi Camera Module with Fisheye Lens (video and photo samples)

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Saturn, Jupiter & Mars@WaveShare Pi Camera/Nikkor AF 300mm f4

Photos and video of Saturn, Jupiter & Mars, by WaveShare Pi Camera/Nikkor AF 300mm f4. Not too good, just a trial.

Saturn

Jupiter

Mars


Gears:
- WaveShare Raspberry Pi Camera Module: It's a made in China Raspberry Pi Camera Module using the same 5-megapixel sensor of Official Raspberry Pi Camera Module 1.3, OV5647. But with a easy replace lens housing.
- CS Lens housing, to replace the original lens housing of the Camera Module, to change it to CS-mount. (The original house is M12 mount)
- AI-CS adapter, to connect Nikon (or Nikkor) lens to CS mount.
- Nikkor AF 300mm f4 ED tele lens.






Related:
Pi telecamera - WaveShare Raspberry Pi Camera module connect to 300mm tele lens
The Moon, by Pi telecamera
Saturn@Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera V2/Nikkor AF 300mm f4

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Check the Vendor ID and Product ID of attached USB devices in Raspberry Pi/Raspbian

To check the Vendor ID and Product ID of attached USB devices in Raspberry Pi/Raspbian Jessie (and also other Linux), we can use the commands dmesg and lsusb.


This video show how to do it in case Arduino Uno is connected to Raspberry Pi 2/Raspbian jessie. Also show the device name, ttyACM0.



Thursday, July 14, 2016

Pi telecamera - WaveShare Raspberry Pi Camera module connect to 300mm tele lens



This post show how to build a Raspberry Pi Telescope using:
- Nikkor AF 300mm f4 ED
- AI-C mount adapter (Nikkor Lens to C-mount)
- C-M12
- WaveShare Raspberry Pi Camera Module

Why use WaveShare Camera Module, not official?
Because WaveShare Camera Module build with M12 mount, come with removable fisheye lens. It's easy to connect to any DSLR lens with adapter.




Here show the resulting photos:




Compare with the photo by the same lens (Nikkor AF 300mm f4 ED) on Nikon DSLR D700


More samples:
- The Moon
Saturn, Jupiter & Mars

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Waveshare Raspberry pi Camera Module with Fisheye Lens (video and photo samples)


  • It's not official Raspberry pi Camera Module.
  • It's Waveshare Raspberry pi Camera Module with Fisheye Lens/5 MP OV5647 Sensor/adjustable focus length, compatible wih Raspberry Pi Camera Module.









The center-to-center distance of the mounting holes is ~20mm, It's easy to find replacement of m-12 mount or c/cs-mount. The official Raspberry Pi Camera Module is ~21mm,

Related:
Pi telecamera - WaveShare Raspberry Pi Camera module connect to 300mm tele lens


Related:
No brand made in China Raspberry Pi NoIR Camera Module

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

raspistill error while loading shared libraries: libbrcmGLESv2.so

Today, I re-install Raspberry Pi 2 with Raspbian Jessie, and update software/firmware:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo rpi-update

And try to take still photo using raspistill, error reported while loading libbrcmGLESv2.so:
raspistill: error while loading shared libraries: libbrcmGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


But I still can take photos using Python.

I still can record video using raspivid, but cannot play with omxplayer, with error of:
/usr/bin/omxplayer.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libbrcmGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


I guest it is related to updated firmware. Anybody know how?


Updated@2016-07-07: This problem self-fixed by updating firmware with:
$ sudo rpi-update

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Waveshare 3.5" 320*480 Raspberry Pi LCD Display Module


It's a Waveshare Raspberry Pi LCD Display Module 3.5inch 320*480 TFT Resistive Touch Screen Panel using SPI Interface. The seller provide pre-built image can boot Raspberry Pi directly, and also driver for for Raspbian Jessie.

This video show how to install driver on Raspberry Pi 2 running current Raspbian Jessie, 2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie.


As usually, setup your Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Jessie image.
Update software and firmware:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo rpi-update
(Reboot if need)

The web page http://www.waveshare.net/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(A) provide download link of the driver, currently 树莓派LCD驱动:160520.

树莓派驱动----支持2016-05-10-raspbian-jessie镜像,支持Raspberry pi 3 model B 该驱动不支持2016-05-10之前的raspbian镜像
(Raspberry Pi driver - support 2016-05-10 Raspbian Jessie image, support Raspberry Pi 3B.
This driver NOT support image before 2016-05-10)

Un-pack the downloaded file, and run the installer. For 3.5 inch display, enter:
$ ./LDC35-show

The Raspberry Pi will reboot, and display on the 3.5" LCD Display. ~ Finished, so easy.




Monday, June 27, 2016

picamera updated 1.11


Picamera updated 1.11, now support Camera V2. If you not yet updated, run the command to update:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Suggested to update firmware also:
$ sudo rpi-update


Release 1.11 (2016-06-19) Change log (https://picamera.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.11/changelog.html):

1.11 on the surface consists mostly of enhancements, but underneath includes a major re-write of picamera’s core:

  • Direct capture to buffer-protocol objects, such as numpy arrays (#241)
  • Add request_key_frame() method to permit manual request of an I-frame during H264 recording; this is now used implicitly by split_recording() (#257)
  • Added timestamp attribute to query camera’s clock (#212)
  • Added framerate_delta to permit small adjustments to the camera’s framerate to be performed “live” (#279)
  • Added clear() and copy_to() methods to PiCameraCircularIO (#216)
  • Prevent setting attributes on the main PiCamera class to ease debugging in educational settings (#240)
  • Due to the core re-writes in this version, you may require cutting edge firmware (sudo rpi-update) if you are performing unencoded captures, unencoded video recording, motion estimation vector sampling, or manual sensor mode setting.
  • Added property to control preview’s resolution separately from the camera’s resolution (required for maximum resolution previews on the V2 module - #296).

There are also several bug fixes:

  • Fixed basic stereoscopic operation on compute module (#218)
  • Fixed accessing framerate as a tuple (#228)
  • Fixed hang when invalid file format is specified (#236)
  • Fixed multiple bayer captures with capture_sequence() and capture_continuous() (#264)
  • Fixed usage of “falsy” custom outputs with motion_output (#281)
Many thanks to the community, and especially thanks to 6by9 (one of the firmware developers) who’s fielded seemingly endless questions and requests from me in the last couple of months!


Hardware Limits (http://picamera.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.11/fov.html#hardware-limits):

The are additional limits imposed by the GPU hardware that performs all image and video processing:

  • The maximum resolution for MJPEG recording depends partially on GPU memory. If you get “Out of resource” errors with MJPEG recording at high resolutions, try increasing gpu_mem in /boot/config.txt.
  • The maximum horizontal resolution for default H264 recording is 1920. Any attempt to recording H264 video at higher horizontal resolutions will fail.
  • However, H264 high profile level 4.2 has slightly higher limits and may succeed with higher resolutions.
  • The maximum resolution of the V2 camera can cause issues with previews. Currently, picamera runs previews at the same resolution as captures (equivalent to -fp in raspistill). You may need to increase gpu_mem in /boot/config.txt to achieve full resolution operation with the V2 camera module.
  • The maximum framerate of the camera depends on several factors. With overclocking, 120fps has been achieved on a V2 module but 90fps is the maximum supported framerate.
  • The maximum exposure time is currently 6 seconds on the V1 camera module, and 10 seconds on the V2 camera module. Remember that exposure time is limited by framerate, so you need to set an extremely slow framerate before setting shutter_speed.



Wednesday, June 22, 2016

RPi NoIR V2 Camera vs UV-IR CUT vs 720nm Infrared (Hoya R72) filter

After the post "Compare Pi Camera NoIR v1 vs V2", many people ask me about the filters I used. This post show the effect of the filter UV-IR CUT and Hoya R72 used on NoIR V2/Raspberry Pi 3.













Monday, June 20, 2016

Raspberry Pi display on 128x64 I2C OLED with SSD1306, using Python


This post show how to install rm-hull/ssd1306 on Raspberry Pi, and run the example to display on 0.96" 128x64 I2C OLED with SSD1306 driver, using Python.


rm-hull/ssd1306 interfacing OLED matrix displays with the SSD1306 (or SH1106) driver in Python using I2C on the Raspberry Pi.

Before install rm-hull/ssd1306, we have to enable I2C on the Raspberry Pi.

Connect a 0.96" 128x64 I2C OLED to Raspberry Pi 2 as shown:
3V3, GND, SDA and SCL respectively.
(my OLED support both 3.3V and 5V)

Download rm-hull/ssd1306 with:
$ wget https://github.com/rm-hull/ssd1306/archive/master.zip

Install the library, switch to the unpacked download folder:
$ sudo python setup.py install

Install some packages:

$ sudo apt-get install i2c-tools python-smbus python-pip
$ sudo pip install pillow

That's, now you can try the example, refer to the video.


Remark@2017-05-07:

Somebody commented with error of:
error in luma.oled setup command : 'extras_require' must be a dictionary whose values are strings or lists of strings containing valid project/version requirement specifiers.

I google to found that it may be because of the version of setuptools.

Install and upgrade setuptools:
$ sudo -H pip install --upgrade pip setuptools

(reference: https://github.com/rm-hull/luma.examples/issues/44)


Related:
NodeMCU/ESP8266 + OLED 0.96" 128x64 I2C SSD1306 using esp8266-oled-ssd1306 library


Updated@2017-05-14:
The driver renamed rm-hull/luma.oled, and updated to support SSD1306 / SSD1322 / SSD1325 / SSD1331 / SH1106 OLED.

Enable I2C on Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Jessie

This post show how to enable I2C (or IIC) interface on Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Jessie.


This test run on Raspberry Pi 2/Raspbian Jessie (2016-05-27)

To run Raspberry Pi Configuration:

> Menu > Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration


Select Interfaces tab, and click to enable I2C, OK.


Install i2c-tools, such that you can scan any connected I2C devices, and find its I2C address.
$ sudo apt install i2c-tools

Power off Raspberry Pi, connect I2C device and power on.


run the i2cdetect with option 1 for rev 2 board, or option 0 for rev 1 board.
$ sudo i2cdetect -y 1
$ sudo i2cdetect -y 0

(The connected device with I2C address 0x3C shown in the video is a I2C OLED display, refer to next post: Raspberry Pi display on 128x64 I2C OLED with SSD1306, using Python)