The Raspberry Pi Thread [6]

Sorry it took so long to post these. I haven't been feeling very well lately, mentally and physically. There have been some personal family matters that have been stressing me out, and not helping with my chronic pain issues. That aside, tinkering with my Pi and Pico's is a big help taking my mind off of what is troubling me.

It's not ideal but the battery is now hidden away in the bottom of the case under the Pi 5. You can still see the battery cable from the top. And the cable for the extra on / off button I added. I can live with it. The added on / off button looks clumsy, but it is so much easier to use than the one on the Pi 5 itself. Especially so with my NVMe addon being in the way of using it.

I am so not impressed with Adafuit's Circuit Python.
I have a Pi Pico based USB HID Keypad that runs Circuit Python, in use on my main Windows PC. It does what its supposed to, what I wanted it to do. It's a major PITA when plugged into the USB port though. If I plug any other PICO in, in boot mode, I get an unrecognized device USB error. Unplug the RGB Keypad and no problems. I can then flash them with a UF2 no problem.

The other annoyance is it shows up a CIRCUITPY in explorer. You can hide it, I did that, and it seemed to solve the above issue? That was until I tried to setup a second Pico with Circuit Python. I was able to flash it, but not able to actually connect to it via Thonny until I unplugged the Circuit Python RGB Keypad.

Some stuff I ordered just recently showed up. I wanted to solder some headers on and run some test code. That's when the started.

This latest build will, hopefully, solve an annoyance with another bit of tech that I use daily. I'll see if you can figure out what I'm up to.

CAN BUS, OBD. Think, automotive.
I'll need to order one of these at some point.
OBD Plug (16-pin) to DE-9 (DB-9) Socket Adapter Cable [1 meter long] : ID 4841 : $5.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

Your only seeing the (I guess?) back side of the PiCowbell board in my picture. I double and triple checked it before I soldered the headers on. It just didn't look right in the Pimoroni Decker Quad Expander.
Adafruit PiCowbell CAN Bus for Pico - MCP2515 CAN Controller : ID 5728 : $12.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits

My KIA RIO has some annoying quirks that can't be changed via the dash setup menu. The auto door locks drive me nuts some times. Put it in drive and they all lock. Go back to Park and they all unlock. If you stop to pick somebody up, foot on the brake and car in drive, the door is locked. You have to put it in Park or manually unlock the doors. It's a hidden menu only accessible via the OBD port menu. There are a few other things I want to look for too, but that's the big one I want to try and change. On my Ford Focus it was easy peasy to change via the dash setup menu.

Got my newest Raspberry Pi Pan Tilt Camera up and running. I was getting some blue colored flashes in the video stream. Eventually traced it to a bad camera ribbon cable. I had a spare so no big deal. Just very annoying trying to trouble shoot it. This Pi 4B is in a heatsink case, that makes getting at the ribbon cable connector tricky. Those things are easy to break if your not very careful.

Aluminium Heatsink Case for Raspberry Pi 4 - Rhodolite Red

I was wanting to change the Hostname on my Pi 5, to make it easier to spot on my network. That didn't go well though. Changing it from raspberrypi to raspberrypi5 breaks Chrome? It refuses to launch? Change the hostname back to the default raspberrypi and its working again. Same deal on my Pi 4B running Legacy OS. No error message, nothing happens when you click the icon to launch it. Change it back to the default and all is good again?

Just did a second Covid quick test. Came back negative. I have a persistent hack, runny nose etc. Every now and then I feel like I'm going to cough up a lung. I have a phone appointment with my doctor on Monday, can't get an office appointment until 3 weeks from now.

All three of my Raspberry Pis have host names that I chose. I also configured static IP addresses.
raspberrypi-3Bp (IP=10.0.0.11)
raspberrypi-4B (10.0.0.12)
raspberrypi-5 (10.0.0.13

They are normally headless so I access them remotely using Real VNC Viewer on my laptop.

The VNC Viewer setup for each Pi included its IP address. With DHCP I sometimes found that the router would change the IP address without my knowledge. Because of this I found that I could no longer connect to that Pi with VNC Viewer. I solved that by configuring static IP addresses for each Pi.

I use static IP's for my Pi Camera setups. It makes it easier to connect via putty etc. They get unique hostnames on there own via the Motion Eye OS setup. meye-af43e3c1 for example.

I had run an ip scanner and noticed raspberrypi in the list. I knew it was one of mine, just not which one. I had a pi5 and a pi4 running. That's when I discovered that changing it after the fact breaks things in the OS. What I'll likely start doing is changing it when I image the card. The Pi OS imager has that option. All should be good if I do it that way.

In the following article it shows setting a Hostname in the initial setup. Did you do that?

Install MotionEyeOS on Raspberry Pi – Surveillance Camera System