The Raspberry Pi Thread [3]

Anytime your in town Jack. If nobodies home you know where to look.

Just started modifying my breadboard rig, again, lol. I cut one of my proto perf boards in half and mounted (soldered) two female USB jacks to it. They'll be plugged into the Pi via cables. There were no fuses in the other cables and power came directly from my power pack. Bad things would have happened if I got a short so I've added some 500ma Poly resettable fuses, one for each USB port. Better safe than sorry. I also added a volume control (variable resister) for my audio amp to the perf board. And a 1.1 amp poly fuse for the audio amp. It also was originally fed power right from the power pack. The perf board will be mounted with screws to the front on my open beam frame, under the breadboard. I'll put a couple of fiber washers in so nothing shorts out on the frame. The perf board I'm talking about is this one, https://www.adafruit.com/product/1609 I cut from screw hole to screw hole. I'll post some pics later. The power bus running full length makes soldering in and wiring up the poly fuses pretty easy. Nice common ground too. Just taking a lunch break.

Had to call it quits for today, will finish it off tomorrow, hopefully. I have to hunt up some longer screws to use with my open beam stuff. I "should" be able to find what I need at Home Depot. Last time I looked they had a good selection of metric nut and bolts. Plus my backs getting sore. I need a few other odds and end I think I can also get at Home Depot. I'll post pics tomorrow some time.

Took things outside to work on today
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Made some progress but didn't finish it. Back got sore so I had to stop. Almost done though.

I can see a screw up though. My USB ports are too close together, not enough room to plug two devices in side by side at the same time. I think I have room to move one over closer to the edge of the perf board. Two holes,rows hopefully. It's not going to be easy to remove it. I have a spare if need be though. It's the big tabs on the side of the shell that will be an issue. I may have to cut one with a cutting wheel. It's doable, just a bit of a PITA. Unsoldering the cables and moving them is easy enough. Same deal with the poly fuse and jumpers. Just wish I would have noticed before I soldered it all in place. It wasn't till I mounted it and had a straight on look that I did the

I like doing that type of stuff, even when I screw it up, lol. It gets my mind working like it did when I was still working. In the early years, when I did installation, I got to do some circuit design. We even etched our own circuit boards and silk screened them. That was fun stuff. Silk screening is painting all the component marking etc on the board. We did panels too. The lettering like Volume, power on off etc to show what the buttons did. The paint is applied through a silk screen.

Once I switched to the maintenance side of things it was just check it to make sure it works, and fix it if it doesn't work. The only time you got to play around with stuff was when you got stuck working the weekend lol.

I miss some of it. Don't miss the 4AM phone call in the middle of a storm to go get something back on the air though.

Modified my portable weather clock the other day too.



That's the SI1145 UV light sensor. It's not working 100% though? Cuts out occasionally and just shows 0.0? Shutdown and restart and it works again. It's done it a couple of times. Took it all apart today and double checked my connections. Re soldered a couple connections. Only because I had it all apart though. They looked fine under a magnifying glass. Soldering iron was hot so why not. I don't think its a wiring issue though? It's either my python code or the GitHub stuff I used. Adafruit only has Arduino code on their site. I had to hunt up some stuff somebody else ported over for use on the Pi. I'm not really sure what I'm seeing is accurate?

do you still need the female to female wire, If yes, I will be over tomorrow after noon with it.
is there anything else you need that I might have , I got 10 of these today[and will never use a 10 I'm sure ] to use for reset ,and shutdown buttons .
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01...?ie=UTF8&psc=1