Month: December 2020

PiWatcher TB Is a Raspberry Pi Watchdog

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A well-worth-the-buy Raspberry Pi peripheral device is now available on Tindie, Omzlo’s PiWatcher TB, a small board made to automatically shut down or reboot your Pi when needed. Useful in case of incident or just for power saving purposes, the board can even be programmed to shut an Pi down and automatically reboot it a set amount of time later, whether that means a few minutes or a few hours.

Simply put, the PiWatcher TB is a watchdog circuit for the Raspberry Pi. It is a variation on Omzlo’s classic PiWatcher also available on Tindie. It is designed to solve two problems with regard to power management on Pis: wasteful power usage due to incomplete shutdown following a shutdown or halt command and recovery from situations in which the Pi has become stuck in an unrecoverable state. For the first, the watchdog circuit can be configured to fully cut power following a shutdown command. For the second, it can be programmed to power cycle should it not read a heartbeat from the device after a set period of time.

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Andy Geppert’s Core 64 Interactive Core Memory Boards Get a Final Design and 3D-Printed Weaving Jig

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Designed to bring back a classic from the early days of computing in interactive form, the new Core 64 boards will form a stack eight deep.

Andy Geppert has unveiled the latest entry in the Core 64 family, a range of badge boards designed to bring back a classic of early computing: hand-woven magnetic core memory.

While modern computers and microcontrollers run from dynamic RAM, static RAM, flash RAM, or most commonly a combination thereof, that technology wasn’t always available. Early computers had to rely on other forms of random access memory, with one of the most widespread being magnetic core — toroidal magnets suspending in a hand-woven grid of copper wire.

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Playing the “Dinosaur Run Game” on an ATtiny10 Without Batteries

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Jump and dodge obstacles on this keychain-sized PCB game console!

It has happened to almost all of us: suddenly going offline while using Chrome and having that dinosaur run game pop up. This is what inspired this project’s creator, ridoluc, to develop a much smaller implementation of the game. What he was able to come up with can fit in a 34 x 25mm area and run indefinitely without the need for a battery.

These DIY Smart Glasses Provide Turn-By-Turn GPS Navigation Instructions

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If you’ve ever walked into a telephone pole while staring at your phone’s map app, then Sam March’s DIY smart glasses are for you.

I think it’s fair to say that none of us know where we’re going anymore. Thanks to the proliferation of GPS technology, we no longer have to memorize the streets and layout of our city. That’s not necessarily a bad thing when you’re just driving around, but it is less than ideal when you’re walking. Aside from the potential danger of strolling into a light post, oncoming traffic, or an open manhole, staring at your phone while you walk prevents you from enjoying the sights your city has to offer. That’s why Sam March designed DIY smart glasses that unobtrusively provide turn-by-turn GPS navigation instructions.

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