Month: August 2019

Create a High-Speed Raspberry Pi Camera for Just $6 Using Nothing But Software

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Taking high frame rate video or filming in slow motion is becoming a standard feature found on some of the higher-end smartphones as of late. Watching the most mundane objects, such as water balloons or fireworks, spin or fall, can have a remarkable visual impact over using 60 FPS video. Besides using the latest flagship smartphones, most high-speed video is shot using expensive camera setups that can cost thousands of dollars, which most of us can’t afford, but software consultant and developer Robert Elder was able to design a high-speed camera using just $6.

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Raspberry Pi Alarm Clock Radio

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More than 10 years ago I bought a Sony Radio Alarm Clock. For the time, it was an excellent device.

After years of abuse, tuning to an FM station became problematic. In 2017, the buttons stopped working. I could have fixed these, but I thought it would be more fun to replace the guts with a raspberry pi. However, the final build is larger than the original case. So, I tossed the case.

Of course, all of the functions of a Radio Alarm Clock can be accomplished with a SmartPhone.

There is no point in building a Radio Alarm Clock. A home built alarm clock radio costs way more than buying one and it took a crazy amount of time to build. But this project made me feel like a kid again and I learned a lot.

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How to Make the Verbal Morality Ticketing Machine from Demolition Man

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In the iconic 1993 film Demolition Man, Sylvester Stallone’s character, a cop from the ’90s, and Wesley Snipes’ character, a crime lord, are transported into the bleak and distant future of 2032. There they find a dystopian nightmare where Taco Bell has won the franchise wars (though Pizza Hut did in international releases), bathrooms are incomprehensible, and you can be ticketed for using curse words. Those tickets are handed out automatically by a machine, and now you can use a Raspberry Pi to build your very own “verbal morality ticketing machine!”

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Use an Arduino to Find Out How Much Money You’re Spending on Water in the Shower

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If you’re like most people, you probably don’t really know where the money you spend on utilities is actually going. You just get a bill in the mail every month and hope it isn’t too high. Sure, you know that your air conditioner uses a lot of energy because your electricity bill skyrockets in the summer. But how much electricity does your refrigerator use? How much water does your dishwasher consume every time you run it? Those questions are hard to answer, but you can at least build this Arduino-based monitor to find out how much money you’re spending on water in the shower.

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Switch SNES Controller Confirmed, Nintendo Switch Online SNES Games Next?

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A SNES-style controller for the Nintendo Switch has been spotted thanks to a new FCC filing, which hints that we could see SNES games added to Nintendo Switch Online service sooner rather than later.

The filing – spotted by Restera user Link83 – shows the rear of the controller, complete with the all-important “HAC” model number, which is used by Nintendo to denote Switch hardware and accessories.

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wiringPi – deprecated…

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This has turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry.

The past 10 years or so has seen a lot of changes in my life dominated by physical and mental health issues, businesses coming and going, but also a little fun with retro-computing, arduino, and the Raspberry Pi, and the wiringPi GPIO library I’ve written for it.

However in recent years the Raspberry Pi has changed from a little hacker toy into something bigger and more and more people are turning to Python and other languages which wiringPi was never designed to support – wiringPi was designed to be used by experienced C and RTB BASIC programmers. It is not a newbie learning tool.

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How to Make a Smartphone Connected Door Lock

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See how we built it, including our materials, code, and supplemental instructions, on Hackster.io: https://www.hackster.io/hackershack/s…
In this video, we show you how to make a smartphone-controlled, internet-connected deadbolt actuator powered by a Raspberry Pi that can be added onto your existing door lock without any modifications to the door.
The door lock can be controlled by multiple smartphones, and even notify you whenever someone locks/unlocks the door. All of this is done using a simple, drag-and-drop app builder (http://www.blynk.cc/) which makes building your own Internet of Things (IoT) app easier than ever. For an extra impressive door lock, we’ll also show you how to add a simple LED light to indicate if the door is locked, and a push-button to operate the lock manually.