Category Archives: Raspberry Pi

Flashing Pi Compute Module 4 with eMMC memory from a Mac

2 Replies

I have been using the Raspberry Pi since it was 1st generation.  But I bought my very first Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 along with a cheap Carrier Board  .  There are all manner of cool carrier boards.  Just there is one problem.  You can’t actually buy any of them.  Supply Chain issues and stuff.  LGB.

And that extends to the Pi Compute Module as well.  There are a bunch of them……..but you can’t get ’em.

About the only one you CAN get right now is the CM4102032 with 2GB of Memory.  Here is the data sheet for the CM4’s.

While it has an SD card slot (TF card slot, actually)………you can’t boot from it.  Well, that’s new.

The eMMC memory has to be written to directly.  Let me show you how.

Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi NAS……kind of

Leave a reply

UPDATE Jan 31 2021:  I updated from Pi OS Buster to Bullseye which broke the Geekworm fan control.  The only way to get it going again was to do a fresh installation.

This was a fun albeit unnecessary project that costs a few bucks. I wanted to build a small portable NAS around a Raspberry Pi 4.

I ended up buying parts to create a polished, professional looking solution that utilizes a SATA 2.5″ SSD.  Here are the parts I bought:

Geekworm Stuff

This is a good looking case and I obviously have the front panel off of it for this picture.

There are a few things you need to know about this set up though.  It may or may not be the solution for you.

First the case fit and finish is beyond exceptional. The SATA board is excellent for mounting the SSD on the bottom side and pogo pins make the appropriate connections to the Pi.

Make no mistake though.  The SSD is connected via the USB 3.0 bus. And herein lies the rub.

Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi SATA add on board with OpenMediaVault

Leave a reply

So once I needed to add some storage to a Pi and I opted for an SSD.  I added the SSD by installing a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter.  It was a good solution for the price but configuration was somewhat involved.

But now Raspberry Pi OS supports SATA devices natively.  That allows you to connect via a proper SATA add on board from Geekworm instead of a USB SATA device.  At $30 (not counting a case, power supply, and Power Management with Safe Shutdown add on board which costs all total around $100).

What you gain here is the ability to boot the Pi from the SSD drive and not the SD card.  This speeds things up.  A LOT.   You could take this device and install Plex and have your very own portable media server that you can travel with.

I’m not doing that here as I want to use 100% of my SSD drive for a SAMBA share.  This gives me a terabyte (or more if I get a larger capacity SSD) of network attached storage.  And while this isn’t a proper NAS with an array of drives, it is still pretty cool.  You can never have enough network attached storage and you can use this device for specific tasks.  In fact I was going to put Handbrake on it however there is no docker image for armhf7 for handbrake.   Still, you get the idea.  You can run any docker image and have it do a task or just be network attached storage.  Or as I suggested above use it as a traveling media (music, movies, shows) server.

Continue reading →

Pirate Audio Line Out For Raspberry Pi

2 Replies

Pirate Audio Line Out Device

Here’s a fun little project. This is the Pimoroni Pirate Audio Line Out Device .  Pimoroni sells several devices including a 3watt amp, a speaker, and a headphone amp but I chose the Line Out Device for home stereo use.

You could make a headphone amp and power it from a small charging brick and with a wireless Raspberry Pi (Pi Zero W) you could use your phone as a hotspot and have the most original “Walkman” on the block.

So what you need essentially is:

  1. Raspberry Pi – Get the Pi Zero W (W = WiFi) – links just below
  2. Pirate Audio Line Out Board
  3. SD Card – I use SanDisk cards 16 or 32 GB
  4. Micro USB power cable – you have one laying around already
  5. Y adapter cable to hook Line Out to your stereo.

Continue reading →

Rotary Encoder on Raspberry Pi

3 Replies

IQ Audio DAC+ Rotary Encoder On Raspberry Pi B+

Stacks Image 1986

This is a quick tutorial on how to add a rotary encoder to a Raspberry Pi with an IQAudio DAC+. There were bits and pieces of this on the web but nobody has a Barney style tutorial and that’s what this is.

The assumption is that you have a Raspberry Pi and IQAudioDac that plays music. And now you want to control the volume manually.

And I’m making the assumption that when you got your IQAudio DAC that you soldered on the header pins they sent with it. You’ll need to do that. Follow the directions on page 30 of their user guide.

First get the rotary encoder and some female to female jumpers from Adafruit.

Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi’s and Solar and Stuff

4 Replies

Venus Firmware

Problem:  My Victron Solar Charge Controller and Victron Battery Monitor are bluetooth only.  This makes it very difficult to observe the status of my solar power system while I am away from home.

 

How I deal with this is to take a laptop and run VictronConnect software on it and then I can VPN into my network and then VNC into the laptop and observe VictronConnect.  It works well 90% of the time with the 10% downtime as being the most important times I actually need to observe it.  And it ties up an entire laptop which must be kept powered on and within bluetooth range of the Solar board.

Solution:  Victron has software or more accurately firmware that emulates their Color Control GX / Venus GX monitoring devices and it runs on a Raspberry Pi.  A Venus GX costs nearly $300 and a Raspberry Pi costs about $30.  It even runs on older Raspberry Pi’s which are even cheaper. I’ll be using a Raspberry Pi 3 for this.

Continue reading →

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – I Feel Fine

Leave a reply

This last week or two has been one of the most bizarre in my 57 years however the chaos all seems confined to Social Media and Media in general.  People are still nice, commerce is still chugging along.  If we didn’t own TV’s and computers we’d never know much was up.

In an attempt to get the REAL story I’ve been creeping on the Police Scanner and the State medical communications.  It’s not been very interesting.  Boring in fact.  If there is a coverup, the people with the radios are covering up their coverup.

Anyway, like REM says, “I Feel Fine”.  Not just figuratively but literally as well.  I’m ready for the whole of humanity to let the crazy out.  I have ample food, a gun with bullets, clean water, communication devices, and alternative power. And most importantly it would seem……..toilet paper.

Bring it on!
Continue reading →

Best Tech of 2019?

Leave a reply

So here it is, New Years Eve…….I’m up at 1 AM and reading “Best Tech of The Year” articles.  Either one of two things has happened.  Either nothing tremendously wonderful happened in Tech this year or the imagination and writing skills of journalists are now nearly non-existent.

Every list shows the latest cell phones or drones, or gaming device or newest TV offering.  I’m sorry, but that just isn’t that inspiring to me.   I may be a dinosaur but newer is not always better.  Case in point.  Look up the home entertainment category and most lists have some SONOS player.  That’s a networked streaming audio system.

I’ve been using Logitechmediaserver so many years it isn’t funny.  It streams Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn, Pandora (I dropped my Pandora subscription) and many, many more services.

Continue reading →

Why Is Radio So Important To Me?

6 Replies

Thought I’d do some philosophical stuff today instead of technical stuff today.  Beware.

One of the things that first fascinated me as a little kid (besides baseball and before women) was radio.  Specifically short wave radio.  We had a world band radio in the house and it had the TV audio band.  I used to think that was so cool.  Then along came Citizens Band (CB) radio.  Oh God how I loved that.   I really find that odd because now at my advanced age of 57, and the fact I’m a licensed Ham, I really don’t care to talk.

But oh how I love to listen.  I almost don’t care what I’m listening to as long as I’m LISTENING.

Continue reading →

GOES satellites

3 Replies

Above you working silently are Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES).  They are operated by NOAA and are essentially weather satellites.

Now here’s the current configuration above.  Seeing as how I live on the East Coast of the US I aim at GOES-16 or GOES East.   Getting the signal is a bit of a challenge and requires some special hardware.

Continue reading →