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Showing posts from July, 2016

Raspberry Pi resolution.

Thoughts on resolution setup. Originally 320x200 # uncomment this if your display has a black border of unused pixels visible # and your display can output without overscan #disable_overscan=1 disable_overscan=1  # uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus # overscan. #framebuffer_width=1280 #framebuffer_height=720 framebuffer_width=1024 framebuffer_height=768 -------- config.txt As it's an embedded platform, the Raspberry Pi doesn't have a BIOS like you'd find on a conventional PC. The various system configuration parameters, which would traditionally be edited and stored using a BIOS, are stored in an optional text file named config.txt . This is read by the GPU before the ARM CPU and Linux are initialised, therefore it must be located on the first (boot) partition of your SD card, alongside bootcode.bin and start.elf . This file is normally accessible as /boot/config.txt from Linux a

Slack pxeboot floppy install.

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Caveat: Use at your own risk. Though I use several versions of linux, I like to use Slackware on really old systems.  Generally those systems do not have cdrom and in some cases no usb. Slackare is so versatile that you can boot from just a floppy to install slackware via gpxe from the internet,  I did an install that way with 14.1 on a p1. Now to try this with slackware 14.2.  So far so good. You can do this on other versions of linux. To me one of the most amazing things is to install linux from the internet instead of using local media. Generally if you wanted to do an install of linux, from the net, you would need a dhcp server and an tftp server with special settings. Gpxe gets around all those limitations. Quite often I will start a internet based install from a local web server. Now that the internet is slightly more dependable we can do an install from the host linux distribution sites. Today I will show you how to do it with Slackware 14.2.  More Information at ether

Fm transmitters

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Amazing the simple circuits that you can find on the internet. (am+fm) Metal detector: Audio transmitter based on same i.c. Analog:   Lidar: More coming.

Raspberry pi zero

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Bought some of the Raspberry Pi Zeros for five dollars.  Was able to install the standard Raspian image on an mm card and boot up without problem. On the system I used I remotely logged into the Rpi via ssh so that I did not need a monitor. Changed the user password and shut down. For the image you will need to to use a micro sd card for the image. The raspberry website has all the details how to do that.  Used a regular sd card with a micro insert so that the usb to mmccard adapter would easily handle the image to the card. There are two micro usb ports on the board so that one is for power and the other is for a regular usb connection. They are marked on the board. On the regular usb port, I hooked up an otg cable connected to a usb ethernet adapter. Raspian saw the ethernet adapter without any problem. As for audio, you have to use the hdmi adapter, though to connect to a regular hdmi cable you will need a mini to standard adapter. So you might as well get  hdmi monitor. T

Touchpad plus.

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RPi. Touch pads good or bad are becoming so inexpensive that for the buck they are a better value than the lcd (liquid crystal displays) screens.  Also lcd's require interfacing. Just wanted something simple and elegant. So when thinking about making a portable device such as the Raspberry Pi, the touch pads had to be considered. Of course, other ways were considered also. For example you could use an an old black and white portable tv screen. Though portable and having it's own power source to power itself and the Raspberry Pi, they can be a bit bulky. Then another choice was a bit less bulky and you had the advantage of having a dual purpose media device as a monitor. Yes a cd/dvd play could be considered if it has a least video in and a usb port for powering the Raspberry Pi.  As with the tv you will need to make a special case, but that is no big deal.  The best choice it seemed to me would be to use a touch pad. But how to connect them both to