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Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#711

I use a Raspberry PI Zero / 3 together with a phat dac for a bluetooth audio receiver / Airplay in my car: Auto-Installer: https://github.com/BaReinhard/Super-Simple-Raspberry-Pi-Audi... PhatDac (hardware): https://www.amazon.com/Pimoroni-24-bit-192KHz-Sound-Raspberr... Alternative (hardware): https://www.amazon.com/Audio-AUDIO-Raspberry-Better-quality/... It can be controlled via buttons over bluez / dbus via infrar…

I don't know anything about Bluetooth. Does bluez always mount devices on /org/bluez/hci0/dev_${DEVICE_NAME} ?

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#712

I don't have a project yet -- but one I'm really interested in is having a Raspberry Pi run and store historical data from an air quality (particle) measurement sensor. I'm hoping to measure how the air quality outside my home (near a freeway) changes during the day and night with traffic, and also how the indoor air quality is impacted. It outputs UART 9600 baud data ( https://sensing.honeywell.com/honeywell-sensing…

Have a look it at https://luftdaten.info/en/home-en/ . Not exactly using an rPi, but the goal of the project seems to fit with your plan.

I have a spare RPi2 sitting next to my router and running InfluxDB precisely for collecting Luftdaten readouts.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#713
post #583
post #495

I've done digital signage, controlled servos, used them as cameras, the works. Right now I have: - A 5-node Pi 2 cluster running k3s.io ( https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster ), and a separate Pi 2 I use as a Docker build box and local Docker registry. - A Pi 3B+ as a "lab" desktop computer with an USB oscilloscope and FTDI cables to flash ESP8266 and Arduinos - A Lakka.tv arcade/MAME box for the kids with a PS3 c…

What SW do you use for digital signage?

The first one I did (back in the original Pi era) was this:

https://github.com/rcarmo/digital-signage-client

We then iterated upon that over the years, tried Android boxes, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#714
post #534

I live in an apartment with quite strict fire-protection standards. Due to the fact that I have a cat that absolutly loves to go outside, I needed to find a solution for him to get outside without a catdoor trough my door. So I installed a fire-protecion-approved door drive that is hooked to a raspberry pi. Another raspberry pi then analyzes a video stream and detects my cat. If my cat is in the frame for n amount of…

Do you have a screengrab of your cat?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#715
post #622

College student here with a part-time data entry job. I have automated nearly all of it using Python, Selenium, and a few nasty bash scripts called by periodic cronjobs. Recently purchased a 3b+ for the task so that I can travel without worrying about AirBnB wifi speeds. If I need anything I can just SSH or VNC into it from a coffee shop. It just sits next to my router and blinks all day doing my job for me! Best $35…

Can you explain more about what kind of data entry is that exactly? Also how exactly did you automate it? Have you written about it anywhere?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#716
I did a whistle box. A NAS for whistle blowers and journalists. https://github.com/Guiraud/WB

The Idea is for anyone to make a low cost NAS that allows a TOR service to upload/dowload files , pgp encrypted them with the key of the journalist, while having the simpliest interface as possible. I did'nt update for a long time tho.

There's a Slide in french language here : https://fr.slideshare.net/Fred2baro/la-whistlebox

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#717

I live in an apartment with quite strict fire-protection standards. Due to the fact that I have a cat that absolutly loves to go outside, I needed to find a solution for him to get outside without a catdoor trough my door. So I installed a fire-protecion-approved door drive that is hooked to a raspberry pi. Another raspberry pi then analyzes a video stream and detects my cat. If my cat is in the frame for n amount of…

Do you have a link to the "door drive" that you're using? I've had this idea for a long time and really want to build it.

I don't use this specific drive due to the fact that another company gave me a better deal for some marketing. But if I had to choose again, I would buy a dormakaba ED 100 or ED 250 (depending on the weight of your door). They support multiple opening angles depending on how you activate it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#718
Many hospitals in S.Korea adopted my rpi based system. It is a network organized, synchronized, distributed video signage with weather/news web feeds and touch screen based vision acuity tester integrations. The major key factor in it is a framebuffer driver by pure python which is open sourced by myself through Github. https://github.com/chidea/FBpyGIF

Recent haul-over includes ESP8266 based remote power management.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?

#720
I started a company that constructed booths which used 70 accurately sync'd Pis with custom PiCams (fitted with lenses) to take pictures of human subjects, for turning them into avatars like this:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/pete-swagger-walk-a55d807de1...

At the beginning of the project, I'd barely powered up the Pis I had collecting dust in my drawer. By the end, I was a legitimate domain expert in several niches within niches of Pi dark arts. For example, since Pis do not have hardware clocks, you have to rely on NTP. However, you need to take pains to make sure that each Pi is getting the same amount of voltage or else they will run at different speeds. If you want to power 70 Pis in a constrained space, you need to devise a customized power distribution system with adequate heat venting.

Due to the thin effect, voltage drops over distance, so the distance a Pi was from the power would impact the voltage and therefore the speed. The major breakthrough came when I realized that I could start with a high end power supply outputting 14 volts and terminate each parallel line with a device known as a UBEC. They are used primarily by drone enthusiasts to make efficient use of battery packs.

A UBEC is designed to drop down a supply voltage to 5v without bleeding off the excess voltage as heat. Since this could also describe a fuse, we felt comfortable bypassing the Pi's MicroUSB power supply and attaching the UBEC's pins directly to the top pins on the Pi's GPIO breakout.

That's just a tiny example of the hijinx. The Pi is an incredible tool if you're patient and clever.

What a rollercoaster.

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