The Raspberry Pi Thread [6]

caperjack · 02 Jul 2021

great stuff, you'll be a-busy Pico-ing all summer ,if summer ever arrives ..I have not touched anything for awhile ,still going through the junk and tossing it out the door! plus helping Darlene with some belated spring cleaning ..

alphanumeric said:

Soldered headers on 3 PICO's, left one as is for now, I have more than enough with headers for all my packs etc.
Plugged a 240x240 LCD SPI Breakout in to my PICO Breakout garden, the 1.3 inch one. The PICO Pimoroni Micro Python demo ran with no edits required. The bouncing balls one.
The RV3028 RTC demo ran with no edits too. It looks to have set it to GMT time though? I'll have to sort that out at some point as I'll want local time.
No code listed for the BME280, BME680, or BME688? I ordered a BME688 as it was all that was in stock. I could swap it for one of my already in use BME280's if need be though. I may just do that as I do believe there is code posted for the BME280 on the Pimoroni forum. That's a tomorrow to do thing though.

alphanumeric · 02 Jul 2021

Tinkering with the RV3028 on my PICO Breakout Garden at the moment. I cheated and set the correct time from a Pi with it plugged into my Pi Breakout Garden. Then edited the demo PICO file so it doesn't auto update. I have it showing local time and got it to show in 12 hour instead of 24 hour time. It's a start.
I was swapping two RV3028's in and out of the PICO Breakout Garden. One got messed up and wouldn't set correctly on a Pi? I took the backup battery out for about 5 min and now its OK again? Not sure what happened, probably something went wrong when I was messing around with the PICO example? I tried some things that didn't work and it got me some strange date and times? Looks to fine now though? Calling it a night now, as far as tinkering goes.

caperjack · 02 Jul 2021

good stuff, Jay's Game on now , some beer and crunchies..

alphanumeric said:

Tinkering with the RV3028 on my PICO Breakout Garden at the moment. I cheated and set the correct time from a Pi with it plugged into my Pi Breakout Garden. Then edited the demo PICO file so it doesn't auto update. I have it showing local time and got it to show in 12 hour instead of 24 hour time. It's a start.
I was swapping two RV3028's in and out of the PICO Breakout Garden. One got messed up and wouldn't set correctly on a Pi? I took the backup battery out for about 5 min and now its OK again? Not sure what happened, probably something went wrong when I was messing around with the PICO example? I tried some things that didn't work and it got me some strange date and times? Looks to fine now though? Calling it a night now, as far as tinkering goes.

alphanumeric · 03 Jul 2021

To make life a little easier I moved one of my Breakout Garden setups from a Pi Zero to my Pi 400. I just swapped out the Pi Zero, swapped in a ribbon cable, and plugged it into the back of the Pi 400. I took all the breakouts out and double checked that the +5V, 3.3V and Ground where where they should be.

If they are right everything else will be good to go.
It gets me two i2c sockets and one SPI, enough for now. It's the Breakout Garden Mini SPI / i2c mounted on Hack3r board. I can add a second i2c mini for 3 more i2c slots if need be. No having to mess with hooking up a monitor keyboard mouse and power supply to the Pi Zero.

I'm really liking the Breakout Garden stuff a lot. No soldering on headers, just plug it in. I have several Pi based setups, and the new PICO version. My only one real complaint, which is just me being picky if I'm honest, is the two SPI slots one behind the other. It's not a big deal if your prototyping / coding etc, which is what its for. The front display blocks the back one though? On the Pi hat and PICO board which have two SPI. I would have put the two SPI side by side in front and 3 i2c in the second row.

caperjack · 03 Jul 2021

Sounds interesting ,, I just spent some time tidying up my Pi desk .. I packed up the Full Pi kit I bought for Christmas . when I get the other Pi's all running a PHat or Hat and running coded ,like the SenseHat ,I'll take it back out and use it as my Main Pi Room Computer . Then I'll tinker with the Pioco stuff....Should be Christmas again by then ,lol

alphanumeric said:

To make life a little easier I moved one of my Breakout Garden setups from a Pi Zero to my Pi 400. I just swapped out the Pi Zero, swapped in a ribbon cable, and plugged it into the back of the Pi 400. I took all the breakouts out and double checked that the +5V, 3.3V and Ground where where they should be.

If they are right everything else will be good to go.
It gets me two i2c sockets and one SPI, enough for now. It's the Breakout Garden Mini SPI / i2c mounted on Hack3r board. I can add a second i2c mini for 3 more i2c slots if need be. No having to mess with hooking up a monitor keyboard mouse and power supply to the Pi Zero.

I'm really liking the Breakout Garden stuff a lot. No soldering on headers, just plug it in. I have several Pi based setups, and the new PICO version. My only one real complaint, which is just me being picky if I'm honest, is the two SPI slots one behind the other. It's not a big deal if your prototyping / coding etc, which is what its for. The front display blocks the back one though? On the Pi hat and PICO board which have two SPI. I would have put the two SPI side by side in front and 3 i2c in the second row.

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2021

When we bought new furniture for our bedroom I picked out two Media Hutches. They look like low dressers and match her dresser. One is at the foot of the bed with a TV and my X Box. The bottom draws are just like a normal dresser and we use them as such. The one at the foot of the bed has our sweaters etc in it. The other is on my side of the bed. All my cloths are in the bottom drawers. At the top there are two cubby holes where you put your TV Cable box or X Box etc. And a nice low flat top. I put my clock radio etc in there. The top lines up with the bottom of the window frame on my side of the bed which worked out perfect. I have my Pi 400 on that one and one or two headless Pi builds, weather display ones. If I keep it tidy Carolyn is fine with some Pi stuff on it. The only draw back is I can't use it until she gets up for the day.
All the rest of the mess is in the spare bedroom which is now my computer room, and storage for all the boxes of Pi stuff.

caperjack · 04 Jul 2021

Except for being in the bedroom ,that's kind of like my Pi stuff ,all over the place ,still working on making a "Tidy Pi family in the corner of the room ,leaving the rest for all the other mess, that I'm trying to get rid of. The rest of stuff is a lifetime of collecting music ! Records, Cassettes,8 Track and Cd's ,Both Media and Players ,,and its a mess!

alphanumeric said:

When we bought new furniture for our bedroom I picked out two Media Hutches. They look like low dressers and match her dresser. One is at the foot of the bed with a TV and my X Box. The bottom draws are just like a normal dresser and we use them as such. The one at the foot of the bed has our sweaters etc in it. The other is on my side of the bed. All my cloths are in the bottom drawers. At the top there are two cubby holes where you put your TV Cable box or X Box etc. And a nice low flat top. I put my clock radio etc in there. The top lines up with the bottom of the window frame on my side of the bed which worked out perfect. I have my Pi 400 on that one and one or two headless Pi builds, weather display ones. If I keep it tidy Carolyn is fine with some Pi stuff on it. The only draw back is I can't use it until she gets up for the day.
All the rest of the mess is in the spare bedroom which is now my computer room, and storage for all the boxes of Pi stuff.

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2021

Just ordered some more stuff.

Instead of getting the Pi 400 breakout garden thingy, I'm going to go with the Flat Hat Hacker.

Flat HAT Hacker – Pimoroni

No ribbon cable, it just plugs into the back Pi 400. I'll put my Breakout Garden Mini SPI / i2c on it along with my Breakout Garden Mini i2c.
That gets me one SPI socket and five i2c sockets. I'll put some standoffs on the bottom side as legs to keep it level. I bought two packs of the nylon ones from Adafruit a while back. It's not bad, many different sizes / lengths. And lots of screws.
Black Nylon Machine Screw and Stand-off Set – M2.5 Thread : ID 3299 : $16.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

I already have the two Breakout Garden Mini's. Also ordered one of those 1.54" SPI Color Square LCD (240x240) Breakouts,
1.54" SPI Colour Square LCD (240x240) Breakout – Pimoroni

I got 15% off with the shiny code.

alphanumeric · 04 Jul 2021

My Pi 400 now inadvertently has a Real Time Clock. I plugged an RV3028 in the Breakout Garden to set the time, so I could use it on my PICO set to local time. I had a spare so I left that one in and did the full setup. Testing a BME688 as I type this.

The only gotcha with this setup is remembering to switch the interpreter in Thonny from Micro Python PICO to Python 3. If I don't I get errors.

caperjack · 04 Jul 2021

yeah, way to much for me to remember sometimes .,I have done nuttin lately ,but will tomorrow for awhile and see how it goes, I have 2 flat hat hackers , Edit , just went through my stuff and I have 3 flat hackers,, I'll defiantly put something on them soon ,, been meaning to for awhile now ,lol

...

alphanumeric said:

My Pi 400 now inadvertently has a Real Time Clock. I plugged an RV3028 in the Breakout Garden to set the time, so I could use it on my PICO set to local time. I had a spare so I left that one in and did the full setup. Testing a BME688 as I type this.

The only gotcha with this setup is remembering to switch the interpreter in Thonny from Micro Python PICO to Python 3. If I don't I get errors.