Optimize The Power Of Your Raspberry Pi With Raspbian
As befits a man with too much tech on his hands, I’ve been playing with my Raspberry Pi recently, configuring the device so that it works to its fullest potential. It continues to run as a media center, although I have no doubt that this use will be added to it in the very near future. However, installing an OS and adding XBMC is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using the RPi.
Some Crazy Ideas for Homemade Cases For The Raspberry Pi
As the owner of a Raspberry Pi, I’ve spent a bit of time looking for a suitable case for my versatile miniature computer. For a time I settled on the popular “punnet” design that other RaspPi users can download, print out and construct from card, but this wasn’t the most ideal solution. While useful, the punnet case wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Instead, I hit the web.
The Car Of Tomorrow - Today: Top Tools To Put a Computer In Your Car
It is becoming an increasingly popular pastime to add a new element to cars, a new hub for entertainment, GPS and communications. The carputer seems to have been inspired partly by TV shows such as Knight Rider and movies from the James Bond series as well as the progress of technology in the modern age. But now, anyone can build a car computer!
How To Make Your Raspberry Pi Into a Home Theater System
Four weeks on and I’ve been playing with my Raspberry Pi in various ways, from using it to browse the web and standard day-to-day computing tasks to playing around with the various configurations that are possible for networking (Ethernet vs USB wireless). But is there an ultimate point to this device, or will it remain a curiosity on my shelf, to be switched on whenever a useful purpose rears its head?
5 Tech Projects For The Mini Farmer
With food prices at a record high, chaotic weather systems destroying crops the world over, and no signs of population growth slowing down anytime soon - never has growing your own produce been more important than it is right now. So as city dwellers turn to mini-farming, technology is playing an increasingly important role in maximising crop yields from a small place. Today I’d like to highlight some of those great projects.
What You Need to Know About Getting Started with Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi computer is the latest in a line of compact, multi-function devices, shipped as a barebones package so that end users can use the hardware for virtually any computing project that comes to mind. For instance, the device – designed originally to aid school children learn programming skills – is ideal for media streaming, or using as the key element in a MAME gaming unit.
The Top 5 Amazing Uses For Your Raspberry Pi Computer
I’ve recently received my Raspberry Pi after a long wait – and I’ve got quite a few plans for it. The problem is, I’m not totally sure which project I want to attempt first. While the idea of a carputer is a compelling one, my mobile phone and GPS unit seem to fulfill this purpose already. Meanwhile, I’ve long had ambitions to build a MAME arcade machine unit, but never quite got around to it.
Programming Your Arduino 4x4x4 LED Cube To Do Some More Awesome Stuff
Last week, I built an LED cube - 64 LEDs that you can program to make fantastic futuristic light shows - and I hope you did too, because it's a great project to motivate you and expand your Arduino skillset. I left you with a few basic apps to get you thinking, but today I'll be presenting a few more bits of software that I made for the cube, along with code explanations.
How To Make a Pulsating Arduino LED Cube That Looks Like It Came From The Future
If you’ve dabbled with some beginner Arduino projects, but are looking for something a little permanent and on a whole other level of awesome, then the humble 4 x 4 x 4 LED cube is a natural choice. Construction is far easier than you might think, and using a multiplexing we can control all the LEDs directly from just a single Arduino Uno board. It’s great soldering practice, and the total cost of components shouldn’t come to more than about $40.
Entertainment On The Cheap: The Most Affordable Ways To Set Up A Home Theater
While plenty of pricey pre-built solutions exist, there are a few ways to bring a streaming box of entertainment to your living room on the cheap. With the right some open source media software, a few budget products and some spare time you can sort out the perfect media companion in a couple of hours.
Raspberry Pi - A Credit-Card Sized ARM Computer - Yours For Only $25
Something big has been brewing in the university town of Cambridge, UK. For the past year a team of academics, businessmen, lecturers and programmers have been making final amendments to a very exciting project indeed. Raspberry Pi is an ultra-affordable credit-card sized computer that will be finally making its way into the sweaty palms of excitable programmers, hobbyists and students come the end of February 2012.
Arduino Programming - Playing With Shift Registers (a.k.a Even More LEDs)
Today I’ll attempt to teach you a little bit about Shift Registers. These are a fairly important part of Arduino programming, basically because they expand the number of outputs you can use, in exchange for only 3 control pins. You can also daisy-chain shift registers together in order to get even more outputs. This is a significant jump in difficulty from previous tutorials.
An Arduino Project: How To Make Flashy Christmas Lights Ornaments
This is the next part in our learning Arduino series, and this time we’ll be learning about and using Arrays to make a little Christmas tree ornament with various flashing sequences. This would be an ideal project to keep the kids occupied if you'd like to teach them basic soldering - just mount the LEDs on a piece of card, and you can get power from a standard 9v battery.
First Steps With The Arduino: A Closer Look At The Circuit Board & The Structure Of A Program
Last time I left you having set up your Arduino to work with Mac or Windows, and having uploaded a simple test app that blinked the on-board LED. Today I’m going to explain the code you uploaded, the structure of Arduino software, and a little more about the electronic bits on the board itself.
Getting Started With Your Arduino Starter Kit - Installing Drivers & Setting Up The Board & Port
So, you’ve bought yourself an Arduino starter kit, and possibly some other random cool components - now what? How do you actually get started with programming this Arduino thing? How do you set it up and upload some code? Read on and I'll explain all. I’m going to assume you have an Arduino Uno board.
8 More Cool Components For Your Arduino Projects
So, you're thinking about getting an Arduino starter kit, but wondering if some basic LEDs and resistors is going to be enough to keep you busy for the weekend? Probably not. Here are another 8 cool electronic components you might want to just add to your basket, along with some great ideas for what you could do with them.
What’s Included In An Arduino Starter Kit? [MakeUseOf Explains]
I have previously introduced the Arduino open-source hardware here on MakeUseOf, but you’re going need more than just the actual Arduino to build something out of it and actually get started. Arduino "starter kits" are bundles of common but useful electronic components you can use to make a good number of beginner projects, but what exactly does a starter kit usually consist of?
Fritzing - The Ultimate Tool For Sketching Out Electronics Projects [Cross Platform]
Despite sounding like an alcopop, Fritzing is actually an incredible bit of free software you can use to create circuit and component diagrams for use with rapid-prototyping electronics boards such as the fantastic open-source Arduino. As such, it’s open source, entirely cross platform and well supported - you can almost guarantee that it can be used on any Arduino project to show you how to wire things together using it.