Saturday, Jan 11, 2020 – Amateur Radio
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
Sat. Dec. 14th – Building a Seismometer
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
Sat, Nov 23, 2019 -Electrical measurements in the unsteady state
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:
- When does Ohm’s law apply?
- Measuring inductance and capacitance, and formulas for these
- Recording transient currents when a motor starts and stops.
- Protecting devices with inrush current limiters and transient suppressors.
Camosun College Interurban Campus
4461 Interurban Road · Victoria, BC
Tech Bldg, Tech 177
Intro to Pi and Others: Part 4
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
Intro to Pi & Others Part 3
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
March 9, 2019 – Nzola Part 2 and Oled Display
VicPiMakers will be supporting Projects in 2019. Nzola will present part 2 of his Email Project, and
See Nzola’s presentation slides here.
February 9, 2019 – Project Day
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.
January 26, 2019 – Pi Cam and Python
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)
December 8, 2018 – Who’s knocking?
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
November 10, 2018 – Lights Out!
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.
October 27, 2018 Web Controlled LEDs (Part 2)
ESP8266 Web Controlled LEDs (part 2), now with TLS & IPv6
October 6, 2018 Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express
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
September 22, 2018 – ESP8266 Web Controlled LEDs (part 1)
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
June 23, 2018 – Interfacing Sensors and Devices to Microcontrollers
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.
June 9, 2018 – Adventures with Google VoiceKit
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.
April 14, 2018 – FlightRadar24 for the 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/).
Feb 10, 2018 – Power Over Ethernet
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.
Jan 27, 2018 – IP Cameras
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.
Dec 16, 2017 – Anti-Squatter Security
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.
Dec 9, 2017 – Esp8266 Over The Air Programming
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
Q-College
Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC
Intro to Pi & Others #2 – Tues Nov 21
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.
Oct 28, 2017 – Open Source Routers with OpenWrt/LEDE
9:30 AM
Q-College, Suite 303 771 Vernon Ave, Victoria, BC (map)
You have seen Craig carrying around routers, but he has never shown you what is inside. In this session, Craig will show you the Open Source alternative to Router Software, which supports over 1000 router models. There is a good chance your router is supported by OpenWrt/LEDE.
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start
https://lede-project.org/toh/start
OpenWrt/LEDE also have excellent IPv6 support. What could be better to prepare you for the future of the internet.
View Presentation
Introduction to the Pi and Others
This month we’ll be starting the “Introduction to Pi and Others” sessions on Tuesday night, 24 Oct from 6pm to 7pm.
Well be covering the basics of how to get your Pi, or other embedded device up and running, and answering questions.