It’s That Time Of Year Again – Egg Printing

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This is just a cut and paste from my old blog which I hope to make go poof one of these days.  Just moving the content here for posterity.  The content might need to be refreshed a bit but, you know, I’m a busy guy.

 

Printing on Eggs and Shit.

So I’ve got a couple 3D printers and a vinyl sign machine and I’m always looking at related forums and reading the industry magazines. One day on Thingverse.com I stumble across the Sphere-O-Bot which shows a 3D printed frame with a couple of NEMA 17 motors and an arduino. And I think “I have to make that”. Forget that I have absolutely no reason to print on eggs or ping-pong balls but just as a man climbs Everest because it is there so it is with me.

There is a kit from a place called J-Robots or you can source the parts yourself. The software is open source. The thing is that an Arduino Leanardo, a Brainboard, and two stepper motors and drivers will set you back over $60 maybe more with shipping. Then you need the hardware and the other related stuff. Might as well get the kit.

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Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 NAS With SATA Card

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I got the inspiration to build up this Raspberry Pi NAS with a Compute Module and SATA adapter from Jeff Geerling.  His blog page is here (linked with permission).  If you like Raspberry Pi even a little bit this guy pushes the Pi to the extreme.  His computer, networking, and Linux skills are exceptional and his delivery is easy to understand.  If you visit his blog click the YouTube icon on the right side of the page and visit his channel.  

Decided to turn my Pi Compute Module 4 into Network Attached Storage (NAS).  A real NAS.  While a Raspberry Pi NAS won’t light the networking world on fire it is more than adequate to serve up files.  I want to put this NAS out in my Shed for two reasons.

  • Redundant backup in case the house burns down
  • Use Squeezelite client to stream audio to my shed stereo, a circa 1980’s Technics Receiver.

I have a mini-ITX case and guts to put a “real” server out there but my shed is a woodworking shop and push come to shove I’d rather gum up the fan and overheat  $100 worth of Pi and Compute Module IO board than to blast a $450 server motherboard.  Besides lots of sawdust it gets wicked hot and wicked cold in the shed too. This computer is going to get dirty and this is a choice of economics as much as anything.

Making a Pi NAS is easy but it also ends up being a spaghetti mess and unless you design and 3D print a custom case the Compute Module just isn’t organically designed to fit any standard case out there.  We gotta get creative.

My cheap case is a Mini ITX case.  How I dealt with the installation was to keep the 500 watt power supply intact and to 3D print a case for the Compute Module IO board.  Then I just double side taped that to the inside of the enclosure.  Here’s a quick video of the build with details to follow.

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Pi Compute Module Build

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I built my first Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 project.  A 1TB NAS Drive using an NVME drive.

CM4 with NVME on PCIe Connector

These are the required parts:

ITEMDescriptionCost
CM4 2GB RAM 32GB eMMCRaspberry Pi Compute Module 4 CM4102032$55
Carrier BoardRaspberry Pi Compute Module CM4 IO Board$35
Power Supply (various sources)12 volt minimum 1.5 amps, 5.5 mm barrel plugHad one laying around. Maybe $10-$15
PCIe to M.2 AdapterXiwai Low Profile PCI-E 3.0 x1 Lane to M.2 NGFF M-Key SSD Nvme AHCI PCI Express Adapter Card$8
NVME SSDSAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB, M.2 NVMe $109

Let’s talk about the parts somewhat.

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Raspberry Pi Compute Module IO Board and PCIe devices

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I’m writing this blog because of something I learned the hard way and that I just did not understand.  I, of course, hopes this helps someone else.

I just start playing with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module and Carrier boards and I recently received the Official Pi IO Board for the Compute Module 4.  I decided the first thing I wanted to do was make use of the PCIe slot on the board.

And that’s where the trouble began.

There are LOTS of great web pages on Pi Carrier Boards and PCIe configuration but this issue slipped me up for over a day.

I ordered an NVME adapter and a Samsung EVO 970 Plus NVME drive and the adapter arrived first.  So I decided to go ahead and get it set up and ready for the NVME drive.

And this is really where the trouble began.

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Raspberry Pi At 10 Years Old

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The Raspberry Pi debuted on February 29th, 2012.  Wow, has it been 10 years already?  Makes me feel old.

The original concept of the Pi was to teach British schoolchildren how to program and code.  What really made it stand out was the COST which was $35.  It also used Linux which meant it was relatively fast and ran on limited resources.  The original Pi had some bottlenecks, especially around USB and Ethernet but it did all work and at a $35 price tag it was ripe for hacking and that’s just what the geeks did.

My first Pi was a breeze to set up and my first project was something called Logitechmediaserver (LMS) and Squeezelite which was a streaming media server and client for Pandora, Spotify, and a now defunct music platform called MOG.  A comparable platform these days is something called Sonos.  I challenge you build a Sonos System for as cheap as you can build an LMS server.

If you plugged in a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) to the USB of the pi you could stream to any stereo aux input.   To this day I have several Pi LMS clients in my house.   Our current house has built in speakers all over the house and we can stream anything we want to them.  Right now I just use Spotify and TuneIn.  They have since added Tidal to their lineup as well.

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Geekpi CM4 Router Board – Challenges

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I got my first Raspberry Compute Module 4 and installed it in a Geekpi CM4 Router Board.  And then cue the fun.  It is cool but it isn’t quite ready for plug and play prime time.   It was quite a challenge to get everything running.

First of all there are several images to download on the GitHub page and I just wasn’t sure which one to use.   The image that supposedly allowed the OLED display to work somehow or another didn’t have a working ETH1 wan port after installation.  A router without a wan port isn’t worth a shit and it sure isn’t a router.  Pardon my French.

So then the image with the ETH1 wan port working didn’t have a working OLED display.  FML.   In the great scheme of things the OLED being functional isn’t that important and that’s the direction I decided to go.  Then I figured out how to get the OLED on which is a hack.

Here’s how it happened:

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Raspberry Pi Compute Module Discussion

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I bought my 1st Raspberry Pi when the 1st version came out.  I think my intention was to make a streaming music server out of it, which I did using logitechmediaserver. Logitechmediaserver is a MUCH CHEAPER implementation of Sonos.  You’ve heard of Sonos, right?  Ever since them I have used the Raspberry Pi for all sorts of things.  Off the top of my head I can list:

  • Music Server
  • File Server with Samba
  • Temperature and Humidity Platform (with added sensors)
  • Hot Tub Hot Water Sensor and Alarm
  • 433 MHz Weather Station
  • Motion Cameras
  • NAS Server with OpenMediaVault
  • Dakboard (showing news feed, weather, calendar, etc)
  • Police Scanner with OP25
  • Streaming police scanner with IceCast
  • Home Assistant for Home Automation
  • Software Defined Radio Spyserver
  • PiAware for tracking aircraft
  • Satellite Tracking
  • 3D printer server with Octoprint
  • CNC G Code Sender
  • Kodi Media Server

I bet you that I’m missing a whole lot of stuff too.  That’s all I could think of quickly.  But that’s a lot. Raspberry Pi variants have served me well over the years, helped teach me Linux, and is still a workhorse around my house.

So why would you get a Raspberry Pi in a Compute Module footprint?  I’ll try to answer that.

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Flashing Pi Compute Module 4 with eMMC memory from a Mac

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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.

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Wood Working – I Surprise Myself

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I may have written this in another blog or two but it bears repeating.  I have never really worked with wood in my life.  I have however used my laser on pre-made wood blanks from hobby stores and people close to me know I was doing this.

On Thanksgiving of 2021 my wife’s sister and her husband came over to the house and brought me a full sized Milwaukee router from a garage clean out from someone who had passed away.

The next day I took a rectangle of wood and put a routed edge on it and I think I probably giggled for 30 minutes.  I was tickled at how good it looked and how easy it was to do.

Since then I have bought several woodworking tools and a CNC machine.  I generally prefer to make things that are useful and not just trinkets and this blog will showcase a few of those projects.

Here’s thing number 1.  We renovated our bathroom upstairs.  My wife said she wanted some towel hooks on the back wall but said she wished it were on a board and not just the wall.  I decided to take a stab at it………………..
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Super Old Tech – Fluorescent Lights

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You’d think a modern Tech Blog would discuss modern equipment but the reality is sometimes tech that is still laying around gets forgotten about and in some sense this blog is about an attempt to upgrade some old tech.

Back when I was a pup fluorescent lighting was everywhere.  It was probably the most common way to light up larger spaces.  If you got your hands on a 4′ long lighting fixture you were living large.  My dad found a couple somewhere and painted them red, white, and blue and hung them in his office basement.  I’ll never forget that horrific buzz.

Recently my wife and I bought a mid 1980’s country home and the back yard shed had two 4′ long fluorescent light fixtures in it.  There were a couple of bad tubes in it and sometimes the lights would come on and sometimes they wouldn’t.  Being the tech savvy dude that I am I decided to upgrade the old light tubes to LED’s with drop in replacements.  Sounds easy, right?

It was not.
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