No sooner had I finished my new Debian Jessie installation (see previous blog) than I tested it – I typed in “http://jessie2” – nothing – zilch. Turns out that even the latest Raspbian doesn’t do this properly – so – off I went and: sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin That…
Category: Raspberry Pi 2
Headless Pi Installation
This blog entry refers to installing Jessie, Node Red and other utilities on a Pi 2 (not Pi 1 – there is a minor startup issue with Node-Red with that right now) specifically from the November 2015 Jessie image on the Raspberry Pi site. Grab the November 2015 Jessie image…
Raspberry Pi Volume in Node Red
Over the course of my many experiments with the Raspberry Pi and similar I have had constant problems with volume – I remember wasting ages with the Orange Pi – no WAY could I get sound to come out of the analog output. Things are a bit better with the…
Some thoughts on Node Red variables
In learning how to use Node-Red I’ve changed my coding countless times as I’ve found better ways to do things. Please note that in 2017, the way I use global variables here is out of date. It still works but for example context.global.fred=1 is now written as global.set(“fred”,1). Read this…
Nextion Talking Thermostat
Yes, I changed the title. As often happens with these things, I got carried away. The Nextion display is a touch-sensitive intelligent display. Essentially, you buy the display and you program it with a free editor serially – which lets you easily place icons, buttons, images, text, gauges and more…
Talking Raspberry
Updated 21/DEC/2015 This entry is now DEAD. Google have changed the goalposts and removed the API access for their language translation and text to speech system so that the base program behind this work – a program called Normit – is no dead in the water. I’m doing an update…
Node-Red Madness
As of right now – this is page one of my node-red setup – today I managed to get text to speech running on the Raspberry Pi (not on the Orange Pi as that’s not having sound at all) and note at the bottom right – my latest additions ready…
Raspberry Pi Monster Script Part 3
I’ve updated the script – gotten rid of MYSQL – too many questions about SD life – and I have to say, SQLITE3 – though slightly different takes mininal modification of SQL assuming you’re doing things like logging of data and relatively straight-forward queries – it really is worthwhile. Apart…
You Big Jessie
While waiting for inspiration as to why the new ESP8266-based controller OTA coding is crashing the boards, I thought I’d have another go at rescuing my ill-fated Orange Pi. After much time spend putting operating systems onto microSD and failing to get ANYWHERE, I gave up. Having short of SDs…
Raspberry Pi Monster Script Part 2
Updated 10/10/2015: This won’t make sense without reading part 1 first. In the first of these articles I hopefully got you to the point of having basic access to your Pi2 from a PC – and actually running a simple script that says “Hello”. From there on it’s just a…
Raspberry Pi Monster Script Part 1
It all started innocently enough… Updated 10/10/2015: All I wanted to do was control some ESP8266 and Arduino boards – I spent hours looking at various packages and ultimately decided that none of them really did what I wanted – I resolved to learning about the Raspberry Pi (though frankly…
Backing up Node-Red
For anyone looking in for the first time – I have a home control system based around ESP8266 boards and the odd Arduino. They talk MQTT to a Raspberry Pi which acts as a central controller – using Node-Red – the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’m in the process…
DiskStation Pi
Just in case you thought I’d gone off on holiday.. I’ve been sat at the terminal over the last couple of days, experimenting. You will have seen concerns mentioned here and elsewhere about using a Raspberry Pi as a central hub to control ESP8266s using MQTT and Node-Red. The issue…
Raspberry Pi Run from USB
What a day… I decided this morning that I would run my Raspberry Pi (well one of them anyway) from USB for the following reasons: I have lots of tiny microSD cards and lots of USB sticks or USB adaptors for full size SD cards. And that’s all fine and…
RAMLOG and the mysteries of Linux
Just as I thought I was getting to grips with this – reality comes back to punch me in the teeth… I have 2 Raspberry Pis running Debian (latest 4.1 Linux version) and RAMLOG . In each case at 6.25 in the morning they restart RAMLOG (which for those who…
UPS for Raspberry Pi 2
Being a Sunday I was lying in bed early this morning pondering life when I was reminded that we had 2 short power cuts in a row the night before due to me overdoing the electric heaters here in our cave in Spain where we’re having a short break. The…
Pi2 Keyboard
I’ve been using Raspberry Pi2 now for over a month and while VNC and winSCP are indispensible, when you’re having trouble with the Pi (WIFI?) there’s nothing like controlling it directly. I’ve been swapping monitors back and forth and finally gave the Pi a screen of it’s own. I took…
The Best Laid Schemes
“The best laid schemes of mice and men”… well, there’s a lesson here. I left Spain a few weeks ago with a Raspberry Pi running the watering system and more – I had a hard drive to ensure the MYSQL database would not screw up the SD, I had checks…
Raspberry Pi 2 Logging
Here’s a thing… if you’re using a Raspberry Pi as some kind of central controller for long-term home control or other data logging application you will no doubt be aware of the potential issues with FLASH memory. The Pi will let you use Linux and log stuff and shove information…
ESP8266 Progress
There can be no doubt that I still have some way to go in terms of reliability with my test rig in Spain before putting this stuff in charge of the heating back home in the UK: Raspberry Pi 2 is on an un-interruptible supply but does not 100% recover…