FTDI driver problem

Recently FTDI released a driver that screws with counterfeit FTDI chips, making them unfunctional with the new FTDI driver. You can read all about it here: http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ftdi-drivers-are-killing-fake-chips/ and here: http://hackaday.com/2014/10/24/ftdi-screws-up-backs-down/

Lexus RC F Gauges

This simply looks amazing. Nuff said!

Raspberry Pi files shared with Windows machines.

Aren’t you tired of having to upload your files on the Pi every single time you fix a bug or a typo and you want to test your project? Well I am. And frankly the nano command it’s not a solution for editing big files or copying code from one place to another… seriously… i mean it’s nano. Well now I got a solution for you: edit your raspberry files as if they were on your Windows machine, through network.

And let’s get statrted. First you need to ssh your way into the Pi. Now you have to install Samba:

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

It will take a few minutes to install, then you have to edit Samba’s config file so it covers your needs.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Yeah, I used nano, so what? I do that from time to time. Sue me! … Just kidding, don’t sue me … please. Ok now scroll down (this is funny cus you CAN’T scroll inside nano) under Global Settings find the following:

workgroup = WORKGROUP

Edit this to mach the workgroup you want, or leave it as is … i did. And now look for:

#     wins support = no

And edit this to:

wins support = yes

We are not done. Keep reading.

Now at the end of the config file add the following:

[pihome]

comment= Pi Home

path=/home/pi

browseable=Yes

writeable=Yes

only guest=no

create mask=0777

directory mask=0777

public=no

Now save and close the file, still not done, one more thing to do. After you saved and closed the file issue the following command and enter the pi’s password two times.

sudo smbpasswd -a pi

And no we are done. Now open Windows Explorer and under Network you should see your RASPBERRYPI. When it promps you for the username and password enter pi as username and the password you just set at the last step, it should be raspberry.

 

Raspberry Pi usb port power boost

Ok so as far as I know the USB ports of the Pi are limited to 100mA each. So if you need more power, let’s say to power up a 3G modem straight from the Pi’s USB… you will get in a bit of a pickle. I think i said that right, oh well. Well you don’t have to worry about this anymore because there is a solution for this.

If you got the revision 1 of the board you should do the polyfuse mod. How you ask? Just follow this tut on how to do the mod and it also tells you how to fix the voltage drop issue if you want.

If you got the revision 2 of the board them things are easier. All you have to do is solder a jumper wire from the 5V pin on the raspberry (GPIO2) to the + pin of the USB ports, as in the picture bellow.

And you’re done. Now you will need a power supply that can handle the drain of the Pi and the USB ports. So if the Pi takes from 400mAh to 700mAh and you want at least 500mA on each port then you should have something that can give you let’s say between 1.5 and 2.0 Amps. It’s kinda risky with only 1.5A, but if you only need one USB port then it’s ok.

Watch out because now the USB devices can drain as much power as the power adapter can give, there is no limit at 500mA or any other value, so if they suck too much power your Pi might reboot or not even boot at all.

Raspberry Pi regulated power supply

Ok folks, I will try to be short this time. I started working on a new project today and it includes a raspberry pi as the “brains” of the robot, so I needed to power up the pi from a battery pack. Well that can be a bummer because the pi needs exacly 5V and atleast 800mAh, so I got a 5V regulator and i built my own, home made rPi power suply with a battery pack.

The circuit looks like this:

To build it I simply followed this diagram. It tells you everything you need to know to get things done.

And yes, this is the project I am working on (in the pic), but it will be a more to it than just a Pi controlled tank. Will get back with updates, soon…ish….hopefully….i guess. Bye.

Raspberry Pi + Gertboard + Arduino IDE

Hey guys, lately I’ve been playing with a Gertboard connected to a Raspberry Pi and I’ve noticed it isn’t that easy to setup the necessities to use the full potential of the Raspberry and the atmega chip on the Gertboard. So while surfing the net i stumbled upon some useful info and i wanted to share it with you guys. Only if you want… no need to read it… I am not forcing you… you can stop now… really… it is not a must… just stop now.

Ok let’s get to the good stuff. You should know that the atmega chip can be programmed, through ISP, with the Arduino IDE, after you install the IDE on the raspberry, obviously DAAAH! What is ISP you say? At this point it doesn’t matter, the important thing is that you have it and you can use it aaaaaand, unlike the Arduino UNO chip, you don’t need a bootloader on the atmega to program it via ISP. Well if you program the Arduino via ISP too you still don’t need a bootloader, but… you must be so confused right now. Let me get to the point.

You will need the Raspberry Pi with a SD card with raspbian installed on it and optional, but useful, TightVNC Server. If you need help getting those things on… 😐 … well then google them and come back later, this text will still be here.  After you got all this just go over to Gordon’s website: https://projects.drogon.net/raspberry-pi/gertboard/ and follow the tutorials over there for installing the Arduino IDE and setting up the atmega. Also the Gertboard Manual it’s a very useful resource.

After you setup everything you might want to develop a piece of software on the Pi to communicate with the atmega through serial so i recommend installing wiringPi on the Pi (DAAH!). And if you want to use the SoftwareSerial library on the Gertboard atmega you should modify a header file from the library to get it to work with the chip frequency, that is, surprise, 12MHz. Yeah, 12MHz. So we have 8MHz without an external oscilator, we have 16MHz with an external oscilator and we have 20MHz the max power of the atmega, with a 20MHz external oscilator again. But 12MHz??? Yeah, that’s because it runs at 3.3V and that’s the max frequency it can run at on 3.3V and then the interfacing with the Pi is easier cus the Pi GPIO’s run at 3.3V.

So in order to use the SoftwareSerial library go to /usr/share/arduino/libraries/SoftwareSerial/ and open up SoftwareSerial.cpp. Now after line 121 add the following code:

#elif F_CPU == 12000000

static const DELAY_TABLE PROGMEM table[] =
{
// baud rxcenter rxintra rxstop tx
{ 115200, 1, 11, 11, 8, },
{ 57600, 6, 26, 26, 23, },
{ 38400, 14, 41, 42, 39, },
{ 31250, 19, 51, 52, 49, },
{ 28800, 23, 56, 56, 53, },
{ 19200, 37, 86, 86, 83, },
{ 14400, 52, 116, 116, 113, },
{ 9600, 82, 175, 175, 173, },
{ 4800, 172, 354, 354, 351, },
{ 2400, 350, 711, 711, 708, },
{ 1200, 707, 1425, 1425, 1422, },
{ 300, 2850, 5711, 5711, 5708, },
};

const int XMIT_START_ADJUSTMENT = 5;

Now just save the file and you can use the library without getting the wrong frequency error. Well this is it for now, you can now use serial sensors on the atmega and communicate with the Pi over serial for data gathering and stuff like that. Awesome, right?

Long time no….post

Hey guys, i know I’ve been away for quite a long time and i didn’t post anything but I haven’t been just laying around… like my cats do… all day long… lucky bastards. Anyway, those days I’ve been familiarizing myself with the Bitcoin system and what it means. I still have to get some things cleared but i got the main idea. Mainly Bitcoin is a virtual currency that is supported by the network of people who use it. It doesn’t have a central mainframe or anything like that, mostly like torrents. So how that the network is alive and working if there is no central unit? Well there are the so called “miners” that sustain the network. What is a miner you say? Well a miner is a computer or a specialized piece of hardware who’s main purpose is to mine for new bitcoins or intermediate transactions through out the network.

So i got myself an ASIC Miner, more exactly a Block Erupter that mines at around 336MHash/s which is a fairly poor speed for mining but if you stack those miners up you can get higher speeds and more bitcoins. Yes i said you can GET bitcoins from mining. How you say? Oh well that’s a story for an other post cus right now I’m getting too tired.

How to handle rechargable batteries

While i was reading something today a realized that charging, storing and handling rechargeable batteries is a really big issue for the nowadays users, not only in the RC community but also when it comes to daily uses of a device that works on a rechargeable battery. But let’s be clear, in this post I will manly be referring to Lithium-Ion Polymer (Li-Po) and Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries. The difference? Well Li-Po batteries evolved from Li-Ion batteries with the advantage of lower cost manufacture, but with the disadvantage of holding less charge. Even though they are different types of batteries the main rules of handling them apply to both. Aaaaaand as I was writing this post I remembered that I saw once a video that has really good info on the subject so why not share it with you peeps.

So things to remember:

• never ever overcharge batteries and this goes straight to the guys that put the batteries to charge overnight (and yes it applies to phones too…bummer)
• always use a dedicated charger…. and of course read the manual cus misuse leads to fat batteries => not good
• don’t try a fast charge with a uber charger (to many mAh) unless you know the battery can take it
• and if you want to store the battery charge it only half way… not like full way and then take it out of the laptop while you stay pluged-in, that’s how most of the users do when they get a new laptop

zHe TanK

And this was my very first project with Arduino. Just like the video shows it was a remote controlled tank. The connection was established through bluetooth from my laptop and the “remote” software was made using Processing. And about that, if you haven’t heard about Processing go check it out here www.processing.org, essentially it’s a programming language, but it has so many uses since it’s community sustained. That being said let’s get the source code out there, it’s not something legendary, but it might help some people out.

The Tank firmware source can be found here: http://pastebin.com/Rt8yD7qy

And the remote software source: — and it seems that i can’t find the processing source for the remote but i found a later implementation of the remote in C++ using openFramework — and here we got the remote source: http://www.mediafire.com/?l3kwq4j4mr9yqyk  – it’s an archive, it also contains the compiled binaries for those you just wanna plug-and-play.

I should definitely decide on a pattern regarding how to share files and sources with you guys.

I guess this is it for today, hope you enjoyed it and I will try to make it more interesting the way i present those projects to you.

Hello World!

Just like the title says this is my Hello World in the blogging world. My very first post on a blog as a blogger… and it’s harder than i thought. Let’s start with a description. My name is David, i’m 21 and i study Mechanical Engineering, Automotive. Besides mechanical stuff I started learning programming as a hobby when I was 13 or so. As a young child my dream was to make a PC game until i realized that things aren’t as easy as i thought they would be, but happily I didn’t quit. When i was in high school I started showing my interest towards electronics and embedded programming and that’s how i found Arduino, the awesome opensource platform for hobbyists. If you are here I presume you already know what Arduino is, but if you don’t take a look at their website http://arduino.cc/ it might interest you. My first Arduino came with a tank chassis, dual motor driver and a bluetooth adapter and that’s how my fist electronics/robotics/embedded programming project started, I made the tank roam the room controlled by my laptop through bluetooth. I will post the sources and some project guidelines one day, I still have to figure out how to manage my blog.

And talking about the blog i should tell you guys that i made this blog so i can document the projects I make and the dumb stuff that I play with and maybe some day some info on this blog will help someone and that is enough for me. I will try to document all my stuff as well and as organized as I can and since I’m just a beginner to blogging and stuff i might change some stuff around until i get a hang of it.

Oh well, this is kinda it for now… now i just have to figure how to put this out there in the wild!