Themes with Cairo were always a goal, but never implemented. Now, with PiClock, they are a reality.
wifi
Back in October I started work on a new app for PiBox: an XM radio player. The hardware is an XMPCR, a device sold in the early 2000’s that connected over USB to a PC. The device didn’t last long. I think there was some concern that people would steal […]
PiBox: XM radio app (PiXM) and wifi scanning in PNC
I don’t enter many contests. I see little value in getting something for free. It’s far more interesting to earn them. But every now and then something catches my eye that seems worth the minor effort of a big reward. So a while back, perhaps back in September or so, […]
Halloween haul from Arrow
I just found out that I’ll be demo’ing PiBox at the Mini Maker Faire at Barnes and Noble, on Briargate Blvd just south of Chapel Hills mall on Saturday November 5th from 3-5pm. It’s the same demo I did for the larger CS Maker Faire but with less signage. I […]
PiBox @ Mini Maker Faire @ Barnes and Noble
Programming the ESP8266 is rather easy. I’m using the Arduino libraries and the makeEspArduino build system because I like to use the command line, not IDEs. Stock libraries provide everything you’d expect: Wifi setup, web servers, DNS support, etc. There’s even a library that allows you to boot into the […]
ESP8266: its’ all about power
I’ve been fiddling with an ESP8266 this week that is being powered by an FTDIBasic board from SparkFun. The setup is simple enough and it’s easy enough to get a simple web server running on it but I don’t have a power switch so the whole thing is powered through […]
udev rule for FTDIBasic from SparkFun
One of the directions my PiBox project is headed is as a central hub for sensor management. This implies the ability to communicate between the PiBox and the sensor node using BLE or Wifi. PiBox can do that already over Wifi (and supports basic BLE communication though lacks a meaningful […]
Embedded project: 4 channel Arduino-based power controller
This past weekend I took PiBox out in the trailer for a field trial. The box was mounted under a cabinet with power and HDMI wrapped around to a 7″ HDMI-input monitor. Power on worked fine and the system came right up. But not everything worked as expected. Here is […]
PiBox field trial results
I’ve been working on PiBox now for a couple of years. The immediate goal is a consumer-oriented device for video playback while not connected to the Internet. In other words, play movies while camping. I have longer term goals for it, but that’s where the project is aimed currently. At […]
Raspberry Pi: Kodi vs PiBox use case comparison
Over the holiday I managed to close out a few nagging issues in the builds. First, logins stopped working until I realized that I’d turned off the getty’s on tty0 and tty02. This wasn’t the complete fix, however, as Busybox was adding /etc/securetty to the rootfs and that file did […]
BeagleBox: working Xorg and eth support
I placed an order for a gray Peek from Amazon. The gray Peek’s are$2 less than the colored ones. Who needs a colored one for hacking? Anyway, it should arrive by Saturday. In the meantime I’ve been watching the videos and scanning online resources to learn about the internals of […]
Peek ordered, learning about the hardware
My displeasure grows with my latest upgrade. F10 on my laptop caused my firefox and evolution sessions to always start up in offline mode. I’m never in offline mode – I have a cable modem and I’m always connected to the Internet. So I wasn’t sure why things had changed. […]