Tag: raspberry pi

Connect to New Provisioned Raspberry Pi Less than $3

The IP configuration of new provisoined Raspberry Pi struggled me a long time. I need to connect to a monitor so I login to system and configure IP address. The problem was I don’t have monitor. I only have a laptop.

Last year, my old laptop dead. I connected the laptop monitor to a HDMI board to my Raspberry Pi. It’s not a low cost solution, it costed me more than $10. And the monitor, cables and board looks uglily.

IMG_1844

Actually there is another solution to leveraging laptop keyboard and monitor. It’s serials port to console. Something similar like when you configure Cisco network switches. Following is how to do it. I achieve that on Raspberry Pi 2.

  1. You need to buy a USB to TTL device with chipset CP2102.
  2. Connect the pins to Raspberry Pi 2. Refer here for GPIO layout.
    TXD > Pi RXD Pin #10 (GPIO 16)
    RXD > Pi TXD Pin #08 (GPIO 15)
    GND > Pi GND Pin #6
  3. Connect the USB to laptop. You will see a device in ‘Device Manager’ needs drivers.
  4. Download driver and install.
  5. Download Putty and install.
  6. Open Putty and “Serial”.
  7. “Serial line” is COM3 or COM4.
  8. “Speed” is 115200.

The USB to TTL I bought on Taobao (Chinese version of Aliexpress). It’s around $1.2 including shipping.

My New Toy Raspberry Pi 3

I own Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 both. I used to do some small projects and learn Python on its. It’s great computer to learn scripting and Linux. But not something can be used in daily based.

I was excited when I hear Raspberry Pi foundation released Pi 3. Thanks foundation brought our world a powerful, cheap and flexible computer that can replace my laptop. In general, I think Pi 3 can be used for daily work in GUI interface. It comes with embedded WiFi, Bluetooth and quad-core 1.2GHz CPU! It frees up the 4 USB ports so I can use it for other purpose.

I have a laptop that motherboard was dead, screen still works. So I bought driver board for the LED screen. Connected Pi 3 to the driver board by HDMI cable. The official Pi 2 case is compatible with Pi 3 except power LED in the other side. I use the latest OS “RASPBIAN JESSIE WITH PIXEL“. I have to say the graphical interface is awesome! It’s more like a modern, real computer. I use default browser Chromium which is similar with Chrome PC version. I also installed “Google Input Tool” extension on Chromium so I can input Chinese. Since most of my work on websites so I don’t have to install input tool on OS. And I saw some interface problem when use Chinese input tool for Linux. I also tried bluetooth headset, not working well. So I turned to USB headset, it works perfectly.

I opened 10 more tabs in Chromium just like how do I use my PC. I also ran a online website to streaming music to USB headset. Wrote blog, brows photos, edit files…etc. I didn’t see any performance issue so far. I guess my high performance TF card may helped. I bought Samsung 64GB UHS-1 Class10 for my Pi 3.

 

Power Raspberry Pi by Portable Chargers

I want to try make a remote control car by Raspberry Pi. The first question is how to power a portable Raspberry Pi? There are lot of solutions in internet. I want to find a simple, cheap and long battery life solution. Some articles introduced power bank but it overs $100 and only provides 5v output. I need some thing can provide not only 5v power for Raspberry Pi, but also more than 7v for L298N.

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