[ale] My Raspberry π is here

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Excellent ideas.  Many of these concepts would also be welcome for discussion over at the Atlanta Hobby Robot Club.  They love PI too.

http://www.botlanta.com/

Sincerely,

Ron


"mike at trausch.us" <mike at trausch.us> wrote:

>On 10/17/2012 10:11 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
>> "mike at trausch.us" <mike at trausch.us> writes:
>> 
>>> On 10/16/2012 04:05 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>>>> Finally got my π today and wifey wasn't here to grill me, so I'm a
>>>> very happy camper! Happy, happy, happy! Playtime now begins. Even
>the
>>>> FedEx guy has already been playing with one already.
>>>
>>> They are wonderful little things.
>>>
>>> I ordered 5 after last month's meeting so that we could play with
>them,
>>> and I am already looking at putting them to use to solve some
>>> long-standing problems that these are just absolutely perfect for
>solving.
>> 
>> Okay, what long-standing problems are they absolutely perfect for
>solving?
>
>#1. I'd like to use it as the new controller for the house security
>system.  Our mainboard for the security system (which we don't have
>monitoring for) died, and I'm fairly confident that I can use the Rπ to
>drive the existing sensors, though I may need to have a board in
>between
>them that converts from 12V or 5V signals to 3.3V ones.  I haven't dug
>in just yet to actually figure out the physical details of this
>security
>system.  (Also, there is a board that allows you to hook up Arduino
>sheilds to a Rπ, available online; Radio Shack seems to sell a lot of
>Arduino stuff, and with such a board, one can easily add GPRS or 3G
>connectivity to the Rπ, making it ideal for use in a security
>application such as this.)
>
>Plus, then I control the security system, and not some hard-wired logic
>or pre-programmed and opaque microcontrollers that ADT installed once
>upon a time, and I can add functionality to it, too.
>
>#2. I'd like to use it to interface with ad-hoc circuits to do various
>things in my goals learning low-level electronics.  One problem that I
>have had is I've been paralyzed by both indecision and ignorance on
>this; the Rπ eliminates a lot of that, because there are a lot of GPIO
>pins available, and one can use those pins to interface with any sort
>of
>external circuitry.  Plus, I can learn ARM, very inexpensively.
>
>#3. I'd like to install one in the car to log OBD-II readings when we
>experience troubles, and I'd like to actually build the thing to do
>that.  Not because I can't buy a dongle, because they have OBD-II
>dongles that communicate with smartphones via Bluetooth now, but it'd
>be
>a good learning experience, IMHO, and a useful one as well.
>
>#4. I'd like to use them to control relays so that I can forcibly
>power-on and power-off things remotely.  This, mostly because the
>things
>I want are either too expensive or too inflexible for my needs.  These
>things can allow me to use a custom-written SSH subsystem with
>key-based
>authentication to directly control relays that control AC power, which
>is a nifty capability.  Again, more learning that I want to do and not
>an unpractical application.
>
>#5. A monitoring dashboard!  This thing hooks up to the TV, and can
>output 1920x1080.  A small, DirectFB-based GTK+ application to give me
>a
>ticker and overview of everything I'm responsible for monitoring,
>without eating my PC's video real estate?  I think that's an awesome
>idea.
>
>#6. A MoH system for legacy Avaya Partner systems... which I plan on
>only using until I replace the phone system I want to hook it up to...
>
>I'm sure that there are others that I am presently forgetting.  I've
>had
>many ideas for things that start with "If only I had a powerful
>enough/flexible enough/inexpensive enough device as a core component
>for
>...".
>
>And obviously, prototyping for other things that I'd rather not use an
>Rπ for the production unit, but would want to use an ARM with perhaps
>fewer peripherals or a different form factor.  Not all my applications
>require USB, or even Ethernet.  Virtually none of the applications I
>can
>think of require analog video output, although many require analog
>audio
>input.
>
>	--- Mike


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Ron Frazier
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