Almost there.............

Andy Williams song.

The bench is nearly finished, just a couple more things to do. I have received most of the goodies I ordered this week including the Raspberry Pi starter set from S K Pang (see suppliers on left). This is a very well made piece of kit that holds the Pi in place beside a breadboard. The set also comes with the components for an interactive game and a few other useful bits and pieces to make use of the GPIO interface. There will be some more about this soon.

Well,

the old desk has gone. Tonight, I begin assembling the new bench.

I have also, some more bits and pieces due soon. I have a supply of 10k resistors and some through board pins ordered and also a Freeduino type board with a prototype area and without a chip. It takes the same chip as the Duemilanove so I will be burning and swapping a bit with that one. I also ordered a zif 28 pin socket so that I could make up a writer unit from one of my Duemilanove boards. When I have that working, I will post details in case anyone else wants to follow the same path.

Success!

And on both fronts.

I have now completely finished the switch unit and all works very nicely. In addition, I am very close to finishing the basic build of my new bench system. The bench will take a little longer to complete because I have to remove my existing desk and everything in and on it first. This will almost certainly take longer than the final build will, hey ho. Nonetheless, all the parts have now been manufactured and the assembly should be very simple once I get that far. Whilst this isn't the most complicated structure I have ever made, it is by far the biggest free standing piece I have ever attempted and also looks pretty elegant as well. There will be a photo soon.

Coming along nicely

I finished the full version of my control unit yesterday. It still looks a bit scrappy but is very solidly built and works as I want it to every time. On switch on, it has a minor flutter whilst it finds itself and then settles down to all off. Each button pressed once switches on its related relay and, on the second press, switches it off. I only needed this for four relays but the system is good for six without any changes other than adding more connections to the interface board and a few more lines of code to the sketch. To expand it further will require some extra chips as well. My next move on this theme will be after I have built my FM radio and have that working. Both of these projects will qualify for testing with a DIY built setup just using components on a circuit board. As I haven't been too well for the past couple of days, I am hoping to spend some time this evening sanding the upright supports for the bench in the attic. Once that is done, I will be able to set up the first of the two units and get a lot of my equipment either stored under or on the new worktop. From then on, it should be a fairly speedy journey to completely finishing the whole unit and making a large amount of free space in the attic. I have also 'inherited' from my son and daughter-in-law a large screen TV with plenty of inputs so that will soon be sitting up there and working to at least two computers.

Sometimes,

you get a bit of good news.

I was having a bad time with my back/hip yesterday evening and decided to try the chair in the attic. As I was there anyway, I had a look at the sketch for the relay control unit and I now have a working script for up to six outputs with LED tell-tales. Once I have the hardware built, tested and working every time I will publish the script on our Google code site.

Sadly,

the other Debian version isn't too great either. There are known problems with it for some people and I am once again part of the some people. Still, it's hardly a major problem at present so I will just get on with the rest of my plans for the Pi.

The supports for the bench (part one) are now made and, apart from a bit of sanding down, I'm ready to begin assembling it. This should make my life a lot easier in both the short and the long term.

I'm in the majority then.........

The media OS failed again so I am now in the happy position of being one of the many who can get no satisfaction from it. However, tonight I will try out the Debian-XBMC OS as it stands a much better chance of running and installs in the same way as the standard one. If everything comes together as I wish this weekend, I will be constructing the first set of uprights for the bench and, hopefully, mounting the first part of the worktop on it up in the attic. From then on, I will have more room and a lot more freedom to play with the toys...............

Oh and one more thing. The title of this blog has been changed, very slightly. This is to reflect the addition of the Raspberry Pi into our area of interest and the possibilities of linking the two systems together.

Kewl

As Todd would say. The other boards and Duemilanove controllers arrived today and I have already got one of the Arduinos running its intended sketch on a breadboard. I also ran off a copy of the media install for the Raspberry Pi but that wasn't quite so good as it had something missing in the built version. I have re-installed it but I suspect I may need to download the software again. I have also ordered a case for the Pi today and that should be on it's way by next week.

Well I thought yesterday was good but...............

Then today came.

And so did my Raspberry Pi.

I am currently preparing an operating system for it and then I shall attempt the first boot up.

I also ordered a couple of Duemilanove Arduinos and some Adafruit pcbs from Phenoptix and they may well be here this week. Life is good.

Life is even gooder! The operating system worked perfectly first time and I have the Pi running on my Hi Def TV. The resolution is amazing. Yes, the speed of application execution isn't as good as the quad core that I'm typing this on but wow! it's still pretty good and it has such fantastic graphics and it costs so little.

Woohoo!!!!!

It works!

Thanks to Jack Christensen, I now have not only a working switching system but also a very simple and elegant one as well. Judging from some of the responses to my forum post, this has been a problem for quite a few people and Jack has created a library to solve the problem. Well done him! I am now in a position to build my proper test unit and explore the possibilities. I must also get that bench built.

Frustration!

I am still having problems with my 'simple' piece of work to toggle some relays on and off by using the same switch. I have spent more time on this one than I did getting an unknown LCD display to work on an Arduino.

I went to the official forum at the weekend and have three answers so far. None of them has made a difference. The problem has to be in my hardware but I simply cannot see how I could make a mistake on such a simple circuit. This morning, the new push switches arrived and I will get a few made up as breadboard switches as a priority in order to try again.

I have also bought the first pack of wood I need to make up the bench in the attic so I will, hopefully, begin that job this week.