The Raspberry Pi Thread [4]

Does the micro USB power etc jacks point up or down on the Pi on the back of your Pi foundation display? Mine point down, but I think on most they point up, to make plugging in your power supply easier. Mine originally pointed up and that screwed up the orientation or the GPIO ribbon cable. It ended up backwards, PIN 1 on the wrong side, when it got to the cobbler. I don't know if you can remember way back when, but I ended up separating all the wires one by one with an exacto knife so I could flip one end 180. I still have that cable if you end up needing it. It will save you some aggravation as its really tricky separating all 40 wires without nicking or cutting one. You can see it in this picture

HDMI and USB power down is better, IMHO. View angle is better that way for the Pi foundation screen, according to their forum anyway. There were complaints of having to flip the image via config.txt for some display stands. And having that impact the viewing angle. It would also mess up the touch if you used the wrong command to do it. At one time, mine would start out upside down, then flip when I ran sudo apt-get update upgrade. Then I would have to edit config.txt to get it back the other way around. Then when a new version of Raspbian came out it was flipped right from the get go, so I physically rotated my screen 180. Something like that.

I just bought one of these, https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product...B&gclsrc=aw.ds
Bought it at Walmart though, same price. I hope to link it to the Pi Zero in my rover and use it for control instead of the wireless keyboard. That's my plan anyway. So far I haven't done anything other than take it out of the box. If it works I'll likely go get another one. It's cheapish plastic so time will tell if it holds up under constant use. Assuming I get it working.

The blurb on the box says for use with a VR headset. No ambition to do anything tonight though. This damp weather has me a bit sore. Maybe tomorrow. Linking it to the Pi will hopefully be the easy part. Setting it up to what I want is going to be the hard part. I want the little thump pad joy stick button to do the forward reverse turn etc. And a button to shut the Pi down, maybe another one to exit the program but leave Raspbian running. My original plan was to look for an inexpensive wireless game controller. I saw this and figured I'd give it a try. If I get it working it will pretty intuitive to anybody that picks it up.

Just started playing around with my Bluetooth controller. I did the link via the terminal window. Following these instructions. You'd only need to do it this way if your running Raspbian Lite. Otherwise just click the BlueTooth Icon in the tray.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
sudo bluetoothctl
power on
agent on
default-agent
scan on
Turn on game controller and rescan.
Make a note of the device address which is formatted in pairs of alphanumeric digits:
Now that you’ve got the device ID, pair with it using the following formatting:
pair XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

Wait for pairing to complete, then click ‘Ok’ on the dialogue box, then close the terminal.

Working OK in Raspbian in Mouse Mode. This controller also has a Music Video Mode, so I may have a go at getting it working with Pirate Radio.
Next step is to install evdev and get the codes. I've used evdev in the past, way back when I first started playing with a Pi. I think with the sense hat?
Anyway, not sure how far I'll get with this today but at least I know it works with the Pi Zero's Bluetooth and no need for a USB dongle. It didn't come with one anyway. I can see buying 1 or 2 more of these.

This is the guide I'm using, https://core-electronics.com.au/tuto...th-python.html

Mine worked in mouse mode. I could move the cursor with the joystick thing and click with the trigger button on the end, or what ever it is. Once Carolyn gets up I want to fire up my Pirate Radio and see if will adjust the volume etc. I think I'm going to have to do it in python with evdev but we'll see. My Pirate radio is in our bedroom so I'll have to wait till she's up to play with it.