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.