Category: Technology

Posted on

Sat Nov 23 2024 – Pi pico collecting data on SD card

Pi pico collecting data. For the demo, it will likely be time and temperature. Eventually, it will be time, temperature, voltage, and current from solar panels to RV battery. The data will be saved on the SD card as it’s bigger than the Pico storage. Also, perhaps for offline manipulation.

I will also set up a web server on the pico to eventually display all the above.

Where: Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

When: 9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Sat Jun 8 2024: Little FS (for ESP) and Robot Wars

LittleFS is a lightweight filesystem created for microcontrollers that lets you access the flash memory like you would do in a standard file system on your computer, but it’s simpler and more limited. You can read, write, close, and delete files. Using a filesystem with the ESP32 boards is especially useful to:

from Random Nerd Tutorials: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-littlefs-arduino-ide/

And then Lynn will share her experience at the Robot Wars competition in the UK, earlier this spring.

Where: Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

When: 9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Sat Mar 9 2024 – Running AI at home on a Raspberry Pi

Craigs presentation notes are here. http://www.makikiweb.com/Pi/ai_on_the_pi.html

8:45-9:00a Coffee & Conversation
9:00a Presentation

PLEASE NOTE: earlier time for this meeting. There is another group who will be using the room at 10:45a.

AI is not just for the big guys any longer. It is possible to run an Artificial Intelligence program on your Pi 4 or Pi 5. In this presentation, we’ll learn about how to run an several AI models on the Pi, the advantages and disadvantages of each.

We’ll open the floor to ask the AI questions (via a web interface on the local network), so bring a laptop, all over IPv6!

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Feb 10, 2024 – Proof in A Box

How to make a bread dough proofer from an Amazon cardboard box, or more accurately, an example of Proportional Integral Derivative control of a process. Yes the box has actually proofed bread dough that was used to make cinnamon buns.

We are back at Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Sat Jan 27 2024 – heat sinks and pi irrigation controller.

An application of Blue Board in calculating heat sink cooling capability, measured in Watts

By measuring the interior chip temperature over a few seconds of a chip cooled by a heat sink, you can calculate the watts dissipated by the heat sink. The DS18B20 measures temperatures up to 125℃ at the interior of the chip.
This is a useful measurement If you are making your own heat sinks out of copper tubes or folded aluminum sheathing,  You can also compare the effectiveness of different heat sink compounds this way.

The presentation is at this bookmark in a longer presentation on how to set up a Raspberry Pi Pico as a Blue Board learning tool. Blue Boards are available for free from George at 250-893-7423

Posted on

Sat. Dec 9 2023 – Pi Essentials + DNSMasq at home

A 2 part presentation, Pi Essentials, always good to know. And using DNSMasq to DNS-up your house (never think in numbers again)

Pi Essentials will be a beginner level introduction to some of the things you can (or maybe should) do when the Pi starts up. Nothing requires more than a few lines of code, and these are the sort of add-ons that can go with your main project. Included are buttons to put the Pi in standby mode, and start it running again, and pilot lights to show whether or not the Pi is running. A sound notification at start-up using simple text to speech, and how to put an icon on the desktop that can be clicked on to start your program are also included.
The way these utilities are organized and documented will illustrate one method of keeping track of your SD card contents.

The presentation is here

Readme.odtDownload

We are back at Quality Foods, View Royal, 27 Helmcken Rd #110

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Nov 11 2023 – Intro to NextCloud on a Pi

Why just run your own video conferencing server, when you can simultaneously run that AND mail, calendaring, contacts, calls, IM, file sharing, remote backup, and a web-based office suite, all in one intimidating package. Get your own thrift-store Google G Suite going with the open source Nextcloud platform on a tiny Raspberry Pi! Great for the privacy-conscious, the independent, and masochists. We’ll do it the hard way and make configuring Jitsi look like recess at kindergarten (and then do it the easy way). Warning: the hard way will race through dependencies including Apache, PHP, MySQL/MariaDB and openSSL, so expect some mild suffering.

Richard’s Blog here:

Actual process including configuring a web server and database and installing from a source tarball:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi_22.html –

here are the pdfs

Kosmokaryote_-TechDownload

and here


Much briefer post using nextcloudpi via docker from my notes, as originally demoed:
https://tech.kosmokaryote.org/2023/11/technology-nextcloud-on-raspberry-pi.html

Kosmokaryote_-Tech2Download

9:30-10a Cocktails & Conversation
10a Presentation

This is a Hybrid meeting (in-person and on Jitsi).

Join Us Online here:

https://meet.vinnythegeek.ca/vicpimakers

Posted on

Learn Python on a Pico

Saturday, July 8th 9:30 am til noon and Saturday July 15th 9:30am till noon.

At Quality Foods Eagle Creek Shopping Center in the upstains boardroom

Register here: https://forms.gle/py3BzTUxfyfPj67o8

You need to bring a laptop:

  • A windows laptop or 
  • Linux laptop or 
  • chromebook with linux enabled. 

We loan you

  • A Raspberry Pi Pico with LED and temperature sensor
  • A micro USB cable

You build a digital thermometer that can

  • Report the highest and lowest temperatures of the last 24 hours
  • Signal when a room is dangerously overheated

Here is a description of the class