embedded systems to learn and create – 10 years of making, learning and sharing
9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation
The ESP32 can do Video! Learn more about how to use the ESP32 Camera.
Presentation Notes here: http://drsol.com/~deid/pi/esp32cam/index.html
And Jim’s Challenge #3.
This will be a virtual meeting on Jitsi.
Due to the current situation @ March 14, 2020, in-person meetings have been suspended until further notice. Please do join us on Slack or at our online learning sessions using Jitsi. Write to hello at vicpimakers.ca for invitations and information.
Q-CollegeSuite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC – 10am
It is fun to repurpose battery powered consumer products. For instance, here is a Leak Detector made from a window alarm. The article includes the window alarm schematic.
And George made a bike theft deterrent alarm with remote radio alerting from the same window alarm.
In normal operation, the window alarm senses separation from its external magnet via its internal reed switch and feeds its piezo disk with an oscillation. The window alarm runs on 3 button cells and draws no current when the reed switch is open. There is also a slide switch to enable/disable the alarm.
Here is a photo of the circuit board: The OUT signal from the 8 pin oscillator chip is a 10V DC wave, pumped up by the inductor from 5 volts. A voltage divider can be added to lower this chip output signal to less than 5v to feed another device.
Or the piezo can be used as a microphone, providing about 100mv into a very high impedance input
In May we can show what we achieved.
Deid successfully connected a 50 light string of addressable LEDs to an ESP8266 to cause the lights to light and change colour and move and …
Deid created the following patterns:
The ESP8266 C code to do this can be found here. Deid makes no representation that the existing code is good. In fact he knows some of it is not. Feel free to fix.
The challenge is to add more patterns and the code to implement the patterns. If you send Deid the code he will load and try the code. Unless someone comes up with a better way for folks to test remotely.
Using Nexus DR-S hat on your Pi to control your Amateur Radio. Nexus DR-X (aka: DigiLink) is a digital radio cross patch that allows you to link the Raspberry Pi sound card of your choice to nearly any amateur radio transceiver to enable perfect digital data communications.
The Buster RPI image includes a host of Ham apps and a simple dialog box that makes updating and installing your favorite programs easy. Deid’s presentation notes are here.
10:00 AM – 12:00PM
Q College Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC
A Raspberry Pi Shake and Boom is just one way to watch the earth move under your feet. See how Cody and Eileen found the Rpi Shake and Boom and more.
10:00am
Q-College,
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Learn how to measure the electrical world using your embedded device. In this talk, we’ll answer the following, and show you lots of cool stuff:
Camosun College Interurban Campus
4461 Interurban Road · Victoria, BC
Tech Bldg, Tech 177
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC
Intro to Pi & Others is a 4 part series of short monthly sessions to help get you up and running with your Pi or Other (embedded device). It is a structured hour-long session where you can ask questions.
Please bring in your Pi, HDMI cable, and power supply. All other equipment will be provided.
This is a four-part series with each session building on the previous sessions, where Pi basics of software and hardware will be explored. Read More
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave · Victoria, BC
Intro to Pi & Others is a 4 part series of short monthly sessions to help get you up and running with your Pi or Other (embedded device). It is a structured hour-long session where you can ask questions.
Please bring in your Pi, HDMI cable, and power supply. All other equipment will be provided.
This is a four-part series with each session building on the previous sessions, where Pi basics of software and hardware will be explored. Read More
VicPiMakers will be supporting Projects in 2019. Nzola will present part 2 of his Email Project, and
See Nzola’s presentation slides here.
VicPiMakers will be supporting Projects in 2019. What are Projects?
George Bowden – Timed Lock
Heidi Bada – Intro – https://badadigitalmarketing.com/piprojects/
Ideas
Phillips Hue – timed dim/
Weather Sensors
Wearable Sensors in sport
Home Safety –
Flow sensor in
Launchpad pro using python – Open Firmware project
Environmental Sensors – birdfeeder motion (
Pi version of “the clapper”
Eileen & Cody – Space Station Light & Sound – https://github.com/cozyhost/
Plan on lighting Neo Pixels
Peter Sprague – Packet Radio Satellite tracker
Portable, run in
Moved from
Dan Willis – LED running as a Canadian flag flying
Weatherproof boxes outside
10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Contact projects at vicpimakers dot ca to share your project on our next Project Day.
Explore the Pi Cam and motion detection in Python
Get Deid’s presentation material here.
Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 177 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users)
Setup an IP Camera at the front door, and a Pi with a nice 7″ screen to see “who’s knocking”.
10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
presentation pdf
Saturday, November 10, 2018
10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Hosted by George Bowden and Craig Miller
LIGHTS OUT, a possible life saver. An acquaintance fell in the washroom and was unable to raise attention for thirty hours, and never fully recovered. The monthly cost ($50) of wearable alert bracelets and the habit of not wearing them is a large risk to seniors living alone. This alarm system, based on an ESP8266 and a php web app, alerts friends that a bathroom light has been left on for way too long. The link to the presentation docs is here.
Saturday, October 6, 2018
10:00am
Q-College, Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
A shallow Dive into Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express
The Circuit Playground Express is a small, cheap($32) dev board from Adafruit Industries designed to introduce electronics and programming to the novice. It’s built around an ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex MO processor and is programmable with either circuitpython or Microsoft’s ‘Makecode’ block programming interface. The board also houses a variety of sensors (motion, temperature, light, touch), buttons, a slide switch and IR transmit/receive capability. In this presentation I’ll demo some of the easier projects that I’ve mastered and maybe include something using the Adafruit Crickit, and add-on board for the CPX designed for simple robotics. See the reading list here.
Hosted by Paul and Craig Miller
10:00am
Camosun College
Bldg: Technology Bldg, Room: Tech 259 – 4461 Interurban Rd, Victoria, BC (parking at lot 8 for park users) presentation pdf
In this session, we’ll cover programming Neopixel LEDs driven by the ESP8266 using a Web Interface. We’ll cover the hardware interface to the LEDs as well as the web interface (running on the ESP8266 utilizing the PL9823).
In Part2, we’ll harden the installation by adding TLS/SSL and IPv6 support via NodeRed running on a Pi
10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Jim’s presentation focuses on interfacing sensors and devices ( modules) to microcontrollers followed by actual examples. Two or more examples will be discussed using I/O from pulse inputs, IR transmitters/receivers, accelerometers, load cells, Bluetooth SPP and motion controllers.
See the presentation document here.
10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Along with everything the Google Assistant already does, you can add your own question and answer pairs. All in a handy little cardboard cube, powered by a Raspberry Pi.
10:00am
Q-College
Suite 303 – 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
One of the many cool things you can do with your Raspberry Pi is to add a $30 DVT-T (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T) USB dongle and install some software to turn your Pi into a live flight data feeder for Flightradar24 (https://flightradar24.com/), FlightAware (https://flightaware.com/), and Plane Finder (https://planefinder.net/).
9:30am
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Discover the advantages of Power of Ethernet (PoE)! PoE is a technology that allows one to only run one cable to a distant device, just an ethernet cable. The distant device not only receives network connectivity, but also power from the single cable. This is good for small low power devices such as ESP8266 (embedded controller) boards. Hosted by Mark G. RSVP on Meetup here.
Here is a link to the presentation pdf.
What are two things that an Internet of Things (IoT) device
must have?
1. An avenue for communication.
2. Power.
There are a number of ways to satisfy both of these requirements
simultaneously. Item one can be fulfilled with:
– Wireless ethernet;
– Wired ethernet;
– Another radio based data exchange (nRF24L01 transceivers, Bluetooth)
to a network attached controller;
– 2G/3G (and friends) cellular connections;
I’m sure there are others.
Power can be handled variously by:
– A device specific transformer using a wall plug;
– A battery or set of batteries;
– A solar power panel w/battery;
– A power over ethernet cable;
I’ll discuss the ins, outs, pros and cons of these needs
and their combinations.
9:30am
Andrew will share with us his trials and testing with IP -based Cameras, and integration with the Raspberry Pi.
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
View the presentation .pdf here.
MotionEye can support IPv6, see this Bug.
10:30am
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
A presentation on creating a house monitoring device, with sensors, reporting via cell phone text interface. Pretty cool stuff.
See the presentation pdf here or the page here or at Google here.
9:30 AM
ESP8266 OTA (Over the Air) Updates with Arduino IDE. OTA update is the process of loading a new firmware to ESP8266 module using WiFi connection rather than a serial communication. This type of functionality is extremely useful in case of no physical access to the ESP module.
This presentation, by Greg Lawrance, will include a hands on session for those who want to learn more. Please bring your PI, and preload the software referred to in the meetup announcement.
Presentation Notes
http://vicpimakers.ca/projects/esp8266-over-the-air-programming/
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Intro to Pi & Others is a short monthly session to help get you up and running with your Pi or Other (embedded device). It is an unstructured hour-long session where you can ask questions, bring in your Pi or Other (and power supply), and get help with your project.
We plan on holding these sessions once a month on a Tuesday night. If you are looking for a bit of help, this session is for you.