Raspberry Pi At Home DIY Electronics

Small and inexpensive microcomputers like the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone are increasingly finding applications requiring unattended operation. You can now deploy an affordable solution to all kinds of monitoring and control applications using computers that fit in your pocket. But there is a catch. Computers need to be shutdown in an orderly fashion before power is removed to avoid corruption of the file system which can potentially render it useless. So what happens if there is a power outage or someone removes the power by mistake?

There are two ways to minimise the possibility that your raspberry Pi becomes as useful as a house brick. One way is to ensure that power is never denied to the computer should the mains power fail. Or you can detect a power fail condition and have the computer shut itself down until power returns. This series of articles looks at a variety of simple solutions to this problem. More...

Cheap microcomputer boards like the Raspberry Pi and the Beaglebone are finding applications in many places. They bring breathtaking computer power to seemingly simplistic tasks opening up a world of possibilities. But they are microcomputers and you can't simply switch them off without performing an orderly shutdown. If you do you risk corrupting the file system and rendering the device unusable. More...

Get your Raspberry Pi setup and ready to develop projects. If you haven't seen what this little baby can do yet then you are in for a treat. Find out how to download and flash an operating system onto an SD card. Learn how to connect it up then communicate with it remotely as if you where there. Connect it into your local network so that you can share files. More...

Do you have a 5v FTDI serial adapter and a 3.3v Arduino or Raspberry Pi? You know that you can't plug the adapter directly into the 3.3v microcontroller right but did you know that it's quite possible to build a simple voltage level converter to solve the problem?

I bought a 3.3v Arduino Pro Mini compatible board for a project but I made the mistake of ordering the wrong FTDI serial adapter. I got a 5v unit instead of a 3.3v one but I needed to use it quickly so I used 3 resistors to convert the levels so that I could use FTDI adapter with the 3.3v microcontroller. I thought that you might find this little converter board useful too More...

Using a Buck switching power converter makes powering all the different parts of your project a breeze. Do you need 12V for a display and 5V for your Raspberry Pi and Arduinos but you don't want multiple supplies plugged into the wall? One of these high powered converters could be the solution to your problem. More...