Raspberry pi - projects and ideas

[Nick]

Basic but interesting web-based control of GPIO pins:

http://roverpi.blogspot.com/2013/06/taking-leds-to-next-level-web.html

Brad - If you end up putting WIFI on the ship you could have a more advanced interface for controlling sounds from people laptops/phones.

[zourtney]

I want to switch lights on and off. Simple enough, right? A little research shows I should be able to directly connect a solid state relay to a Pi's GPIO pins. I s'pose it might be prudent to stay in DC land as a first project, but flipping electrical sockets on and off via software just sounds so cool

[zourtney]

My followup project would be to set up a Bluetooth service on a Pi that scans for known phones, then does an action when they're found in range. Combining the two, you'd have an excessively complicated proximity light sensor!

[Nick]

I think I am going to use gphoto and the PI to turn my S1 IS camera (Or any new-ish powershot and some Nikon DSLR) into a remote controlled video/picture taker. Mount it atop vehicles! Make a water proof box and photograph squirrels! Spy on chickens! Leave a battery with it and do a time-lapse from the top of a mountain while you sleep! (Although the CHDK firmware allows that last one already.)

[zourtney]

Nice. Camera automation would be fun.

Where did you all buy your Pis? (or is Brad the only one who has bought one so far?) I see them on Amazon for slightly more than they should cost...

[Nick]

I got mine at Newark around Christmas (when they had free shipping and were not in stock) and received it several weeks later. Now it seems you can get one within a week

http://www.newark.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-modb-512m/model-b-assembled-board-only/dp/43W5302

[zourtney]

I got my Pi (thank you mailman). It's even smaller than I expected. Let the fun begin...


piedit!

[Nick]

Cool. I take it that by "PiEdit" you have it up and running?

Any plans for it yet?

[zourtney]

Nothing in particular. More of a catalyst to get me playing with some electricity. Driving motors would be awesome, but I won't tackle anything like that any time soon. I picked up a cheap 5v relay that should be able to switch AC power. So that's what I'll start with, once I get past my "Hello world" phase.

I'm also impatiently waiting on a couple of hardware pieces in the mail. Mainly any way to connect to the RPi's header pins...without resorting to gingerly wrapping wires around the pins (which I mostly didn't try, by the way). That, and a batch of LEDs that are probably shipping from the other side of the world.

[zourtney]

Thread highjack! ...So, it's no submersible vehicle, but I did manage to build out a breadboard with a few LEDs and a RESTful API to control them ^{1, 2}. It's nothing special, but it's a platform independent starting point for makin' me some internet-controlled hardware. The video below shows it in action via my no-effort web GUI.

How were you guys* thinking of building out remote-control capabilities for your* Pi's?
colloquially y'all, y'alls'

[Nick]

I was thinking web based for nice low bandwidth control. that and vnc or ssh for when its needed. Probably just ssh for system stuff.

[zourtney]

SSH and samba are good for dev (so you can edit source on a real computer). I'm going to play with websockets tonight. That's pretty much the ultimate low-bandwidth solution, as of now.

[Nick]

Yeah, something listening for signals on a specific port would be nice. No need for a webserver serving up pages, the server can be local to the controlling machine and send signals to the pi. Or just run a light-weight server on the pi.

[zourtney]

I made my desk lamp blink via Raspberry Pi. Yay. And I got to learn some basic AC wiring along the way. Doubleyay.

[Nick]

That is pretty cool. You could remote control a whole room that way. Never have to get up to turn the light off again