Raspberry Pi Zero - Screenshots - Sunday Dec. 6th Update!

Here are the screenshots that I promised in my first post about the Pi Zero.

First off, we have a "Jessie" screenshot of the Pi 2 B,

you can see that it is running at 900mHz and that it has almost 1gb of RAM.

Secondly, we have the same SD image of "Jessie" in the Zero and

it shows it running at 1gHz with 512mbs of RAM.

Here is the next shot of the default web browser with a DuckDuckGo search page, GIMP in the lower right-hand corner and the Task Manager; showing about 1/3 of the RAM being used with very little CPU time.

Finally we have the MagPi website up, Libre Office Writer and the Task Manager shows the about the same amount of RAM being used as before, but due to the activity of the web page the CPU is maxed out, which isn't surprising.

I will add to this same page with additional screenshots Sunday afternoon.  They will include the menus off of the "Menu" button.

Please stay tuned!

Sunday Dec. 6th.  Update!
The Following screenshots, are of the the items in the MENU bar, but I was not able to take direct screenshots of it.  These are the same items just in their 'file explorer' under 'Applications' view, instead.

Accessories

Games

Internet

Office [Libre Office]

Preferences

Programming

Applications

Raspberry Pi Zero - Initial Thoughts

My Pi Zero arrived this evening and here are some of my first experiences with it.

I bought mine from Adafruit in the wee hours of the 26th and right after I checked out and confirmed my order, I went back to the page for the Pi Zero and saw that it had already sold out.  It has been re-stocked at least twice, that I know of, and has sold out again within an half an hour each time.

Here is what I got:  Pi Zero, Pi Protector, HDMI Mini to Standard HDMI adapter, USB OTG host cable, and 2 sets of headers for the GPIO; the straight ones - male to male and male to 90° angle female.  All for less than the cost of 5 *bucks coffee drinks.

The Adafruit box, in it's glory, at least to me.  

I have had many of these boxes arrive before but this one seemed to be special

What appeared inside, after I pulled the pulled the important stuff to the surface.

Now the Zero out of it's ESD bag.

Here we see the Zero hooked up and some other items for size comparison.

The standard SD card shows that this is just about the same size, in height and about 3 across in width.

This is the current USB hub that I am using with power.

As prepared as I was, I still ran into some snags.  First, before it arrived I imaged a couple of micro SD cards with the latest Raspbian, Jessie on them.  So, when I had it setup and connected I just plugged one in and booted it up.  Upon start-up I was greeted by the new interface and realized that I couldn't do any updates yet, due to, my fault really, in unable to find the WPA-GUI program.  This was my first issue that I researched, from another computer and found the answer pretty quickly.  The Network icon down near the clock had all the functionality of the old program but none of the clunky stuff , which is great!

After this, I loaded the new Add-Remove Software program, and found it really easy to use, with the caveat being, that you can only use either the Install OR the Uninstall at one time, you can't install one thing while uninstalling something else.

One thing that I did find, while using some of my Wheezy cards, I had to update them with  my Pi 2 B, first, then load them up in the Zero, so having a B+ and/or a Pi 2 B very handy if you want/need to keep Wheezy around for use in your Zero.

Next time:  Some screenshots and some stats for your enjoyment!

Raspberry Pi Tips and Tricks and AlaMode Setup - [Part 2]

Setting up the Alamode for a Brick Set Shield

In this post I will show you how to setup the Alamode for use with the Seeed Studio Brick Set.  Above you can see the Brick Shield on top of my Alamode on top on my Model B.

All that is needed is to place the shield on top of the Alamode and add power to the Pi.  There's a power LED on the shield that indicates that it has power and is ready for action.

Next we load a lesson from the PDF that I have linked below:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30598156/brickbook-word-v1-03.pdf

I have even added the lessons to my GitHub account page for ease of use:

https://github.com/SalvorinFex/RasPi-Testing/tree/master/INO%20Files/Brick%20Lessons

Here I have Lesson #1 loaded onto the Alamode and when I press the the button the LED stays on as long as I hold the button down.

Next up is Lesson #2, this one uses a Tilt Switch and 2 LEDs, Green for normal and Red for tilted.

You can use the Brick Set with a standard Arduino, but what's the fun in that  :)

Next Time:  I will connect to the Alamode with out the Pi and use the FTDI cable and try to recreate some of these lessons using the Visual IDE: Visuino!

Raspberry Pi Tips and Tricks and AlaMode Setup - [Part 1]

Tips for the Raspberry Pi

I have been using my various Pis for going on 2 years now and have done some projects that worked and some that didn't.  I have found some tips that I thought I should pass on.  First off is organizing your SD cards, these little beauties were found at ACE hardware during a sale for a buck each, just $1.

The regular SD cards fit fine and just enough room to slide out when you tip the case over a bit.

Above you can see the size comparison with my Pis in the Coupe cases by Pimoroni. I really like these Pi cases mainly because they allow full access to the GPIO headers and all the ports and look great!

Another Tip for you is if you have several SD cards for your Pis and there isn't room to label them with what you might be doing with each one, I create a "Projects" file on the desktop of each one so I can quickly look at it to see what is installed and what I had planned for it.  I use 'Abiword' for mine but you can use whatever you choose.

The Alamode Board

The Alamode is a board that adds an Arduino MCU to your Pi and allows you to program it with the Linux version of the Arduino IDE.  It's even on sale right now through the MakerShed.com website.

Now to adding the Alamode to the Pi, it just plugs into the GPIO header of the Pi just like a HAT would.

I am just using my Model B but the Alamode is compatible with the B+ and 2 B.

There are steps to get Raspbian setup for the Alamode that can be found here: http://bit.ly/1UCap1b

It is quite lengthy so I won't re-hash the whole thing here but it should not be too difficult to figure out.

Part of those steps is to install the Arduino IDE for Raspbian, version 1.0.1 to be precise.

Even though it's an older version is still functions just fine for everything I have thrown at it.

Next time:  I will visit the Seeed Electronic Brick Starter Kit and compiling some lessons from a PDF related to the Brick set using the Alamode and the Pi.

Raspberry Pi and Bitcoin Mining - Tutorial / Experiment [Minera]

This is a basic tutorial on how to setup your Raspberry Pi for Bitcoin mining using the image for Minera

Minera is an all in one solution for Bitcoin mining on the Raspberry Pi and is relatively easy to setup.  

First you need to Download the Image file which can be found here:  http://getminera.com/, there is also an option for a Manual Install  but that is for full desktops/laptops not a Pi install.

Next using one off the Image writing instructions listed on this link, you need to write it to an SD card:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md
I would recommend a 4 GB SD card and in this case the Class of the card doesn't really matter, I used a Class 4 Kingston micro card that I hadn't done anything with in a while.  

After writing the card all you need to do is put it into your Pi, I used a B+, and connect Network, powered USB hub with your miners plugged in and either a wired or wireless network connection, then add the power plug and wait about 3-5 minutes.

Next, you need to, most likely, after you power the Pi on, go to http://minera on your home network.  I tried this on mine, but I am running a domain and the DNS hadn't propagated yet, so I just went to my router and found out the IP address of the Pi that way and just typed in 192.169.1.20.

You will be brought to a screen that requires a login, the default password is minera .  Next you should see something like this on your web browser of choice.

This screenshot was my setup after running for about 15 minutes.

 There has been an upgrade to the version of Minera, to 0.6.0, since I took this screenshot, but I have not logged into it since I am away from home right now to update this capture.  There are some updated screenshots here:  http://getminera.com/#screenshots

The next steps are to go to Settings on the left hand side and input your Pool and Miner settings that you can customize on the fly.  I don't have any more screenshots that I took because they have my BTC Wallet info in them and I didn't have a chance to clean them before posting.

For most help related inquiries answers can either be found on the GitHub project page, here: https://github.com/michelem09/minera or the Forum page here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=596620.0

Please let me know if you have any question in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.