Steampunk Lasercut Enclosure for Raspberry Pi

Having access to a laser cutter makes it possible to design custom enclosures. This one is for a Raspberry Pi in a Steampunk design:

Steampunk Enclosure

Steampunk Enclosure

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Log2Ram: Extending SD Card Lifetime for Raspberry Pi LoRaWAN Gateway

My LoRaWAN gateway (“Contributing an IoT LoRaWAN Raspberry Pi RAK831 Gateway to The Things Network” is running and working great now for more than a month and it already has transmitted more than 30k messages:

Gateway Overview

Gateway Overview

This creates a lot of log entries on the micro SD card of the Raspberry Pi. To avoid writing too many times log data, I have installed Log2Ram.

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Contributing an IoT LoRaWAN Raspberry Pi RAK831 Gateway to The Things Network

LoRa and LoRaWAN is getting the de-facto wireless IoT network in my area. No surprise that traditional telecom providers like Swisscom trying to monetize the ‘Internet of Things’ area. Luckily there is an open and free alternative: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/. Volunteers, enthusiasts and members in the different TTN communities build gateways and offer free LoRaWAN network access. I wanted to contribute to that grassroots movement with building my gateway, providing LoRaWAN access to my neighborhood.

LoRaWAN TheThingsNetwork Gateway

LoRaWAN TheThingsNetwork Gateway

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Lasercut Plywood Board for Raspberry Pi

Need a quick way how to attach a LED, a push button and two resistors to the Raspberry Pi header? One way is to use some ‘flying’ wires. Or to use three pieces of lasercut plywood for a nice looking Raspy extension board:

Wood Board on Raspberry Pi

Wood Circuit Board on Raspberry Pi

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Using Python to Store Data from many BLE Devices

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) sensor devices like the Hexiwear are great, but they cannot store a large amount of data. For a research project I have to collect data from many BLE devices for later processing. What I’m using is a Python script running on the Raspberry Pi which collects the data and stores it on a file:

Raspberry Pi with Python controlling a set of Hexiwear BLE Devices

Raspberry Pi with Python controlling a set of Hexiwear BLE Devices

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Using Python, Gatttool and Bluetooth Low Energy with Hexiwear

Now I can use the data on the Hexiwear over BLE with the gatttool (see “Tutorial: Hexiwear Bluetooth Low Energy Packet Sniffing with Wireshark” and “Tutorial: BLE Pairing the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with Hexiwear“). This article is taking things a step further and uses a Python script on Linux to access the sensor data on the BLE device:

Accessing Hexiwear Sensor Data with Python

Accessing Hexiwear Sensor Data with Python

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VNC Server on Raspberry Pi with Autostart

The Raspberry Pi is a versatile mini computer: as such I can use it with USB keyboard, mouse and HDMI LCD monitor. But having multiple keyboards and mouse on my desktop is not my thing: somehow I always grab the wrong one. So what I prefer is to run the Raspberry with VNC (Virtual Network Computing). That way I have the Linux GUI as a window on my normal desktop, and no messing up with keyboards and mouse 🙂 :

Raspberry Pi on my Dekstop

Raspberry Pi on my Dekstop

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Tutorial: BLE Pairing the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with Hexiwear

The Hexiwear (see “Hexiwear: Teardown of the Hackable ‘Do-Anything’ Device“) is a small and portable sensor node with built-in BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) transceiver. In a research project we try to use multiple Hexiwear in a classroom environment and to collect sensor data on a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B running Linux has an on-board BLE transceiver too, so why not binding them (wirelessly) together?

Raspberry Pi 3 connected with Hexiwear over BLE

Raspberry Pi 3 connected with Hexiwear over BLE

Well, things seemed easy at the beginning, and as always, there are many things to learn on a journey like this…

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USB CDC with the Raspberry Pi

For my home automation project with openHAB I want to attach Freescale (now NXP) FRDM (Freedom) boards so they can take care about the realtime aspects and to act as gateways to my other systems. One way is to use USB CDC (Serial over USB) as communication channel. USB has the advantage that it powers the board, plus I can attach multiple devices: up to four on the Raspberry Pi 2 and even more with using a USB hub. In a standard configuration with a USB WiFi and a USB HID (mouse plus keyboard) dongle I still can attach two Freescale (ahem, NXP) Freedom boards to the Raspberry Pi:

FRDM-K22F and FRDM-K64F attached to Raspberry Pi 2

FRDM-K22F and FRDM-K64F attached to Raspberry Pi 2

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Blinky LED with openHAB on Raspberry Pi

In my earlier post I showed how I have installed the open source openHAB home automation system (see “Installing openHAB Home Automation on Raspberry Pi“). In this post I show how to control a local LED on the Raspberry Pi with openHAB home automation system: how to control any GPIO pin on the Raspberry Pi from remote:

Controlling the LED with openHAB

Controlling the LED with openHAB

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