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Quick Update

Just wanted to drop a quick update as I have not been able to post for the past few weeks. I am working on a couple of projects that I plan to write about shortly. Speech Timer Clock I have been working on a speech timer clock for my Toastmasters Club. I took an alpha version to a club meeting to get some feedback and took the feedback and have been making improvements to it. Below is a quick video showing a little of the clock’s operation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) I looked into CodeProject.AI Server and found it very easy…

Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) – Part IV

In this part of the Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) series, we will be writing some code to test the connection, then adding to our code to send sample data. When sending data, we will format the message to allow us to reject data if it is not formatted correctly and do some simple error detection. A good resource, which will be used to write this code may be found on the “Raspberry Pi UART Communication using Python and C” page on the ElectronicWings site. Preparation You need to start off by editing the cmdline.txt file to remove the console=serial0,115400…

Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) – Part III

In this part of the Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) series, we will be installing Meshtastic to the LilyGo T-Beam devices. We will then create a Meshtastic Channel on one LilyGo T-Beam and replicate the channel to the other LilyGo T-Beam. We will then wire the Raspberry Pi and LilyGo T-Beam devices. Install Meshtastic Firmware on the LilyGo T-Beam devices Visit the Meshtastic Web Installer at https://flasher.meshtastic.org/. Select the following options: Click the “CONNECT” button Select the serial port that the T-Beam is connected to. If you are uncertain, you may open the Windows Device Manager and look at Ports…

Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) – Part II

In Part I, we installed the Raspberry Pi OS and connected to the Raspberry Pi using PuTTY and VNC from another PC. In Part II, we will install Visual Code on the Raspberry Pi to allow us to code directly on the Raspberry Pi using a modern IDE. It is not required to install Visual Studio Code. There are several options for writing programs and running them on the Raspberry Pi. It is possible to simply use the Text Editor on the desktop, Nano or VI from the terminal, or use an editor on the PC and transfer files using…

Meshtastic with Raspberry Pi (Serial) – Part I

In this post, I will step through getting Linux installed on a Raspberry Pi with an overview of different installations, and detailed setup on a headless installation. I will then move into connecting the Raspberry Pi to a LilyGo T-Beam device with Meshtastic Firmware, with the connection to the Raspberry Pi using a Serial Connection. Connecting one or more sensors to the Raspberry Pi, and finally sending that data to another Raspberry Pi connected to a LilyGo T-Beam. Before Installing Linux on Raspberry Pi There are several options for installing Linux on the Raspberry Pi. The first question to answer…

Raspberry Pi Pico with Arduino IDE

The Raspberry Pi Pico may be programmed in the Arduino IDE. There are three board libraries available but I found that the one written by Earle F. Philhower, III works best. Below are the steps that I took to get the example blink sketch loaded on the Raspberry Pi Pico. Hopefully, this gets you up and running. It is always a good idea to run the example blink program first when configuring a new board. It lets you know right away if things are working as expected. Once that works, then move onto your code.

PyPortal Event Countdown Clock Mods III

Some big updates to the software for the modified PyPortal Event Countdown Clock. The UI was changed and several features added. It also seems to be more stable as it does not lock-up randomly. Let’s get into the changes. Noticed that the temperature was several degrees too high. This was due to the ADT7410 being too close to devices generating heat. I removed the ADT7410 and placed it on a small board and added a PH2 JST connector so it may be plugged into the I2C socket. This resulted in much more usable temperature reading. Adafruit PyPortal Titano I just…

PyPortal Event Countdown Clock Mods II

I have implemented some of the items on my to do list from last week’s post and tested out a few more ideas. I have also published version 0.1 to GitHub. I want to provide a few details on version 0.1 of the code and what is being worked for version 1.0. The two releases are very different with 1.0 being the one that I recommend you use once it is available. Version 0.1 does automatically change the backlight brightness but it is not too dramatic therefore not very useful in my opinion. I’m disappointed by the way that turned…

PyPortal Event Countdown Clock Mods

I recently purchased an Adafruit PyPortal and looked at using John Park’s project PyPortal Event Countdown Clock project. It was fairly easy to get it up an running but switching from CircuitPython 4 to 8, proved to cause a bit of a challenge, not with the code, but with the libraries. Some were moved from one file to multiple files in one folder but eventually, I got it all sorted out. I plan to use the PyPortal on an upcoming cruise, which lead me to some ideas of how to change the code to make it a bit more useful…

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