89: I Installed a LIVE System!

(after 2+ years of messing around)
-- Revised below 10/11/15 --

Until recently, I have assumed that when it came to installing a real life system I would base it on a Raspberry Pi. But then the Particle Photon came along. Three weeks ago I installed Particle Photon in my granddaughter's farm hoop house (they used to be called "green houses"). It is programmed to support 2 temperature sensors, 2 soil moisture sensors and it provides control of 2 switched devices: an electrified deer fence and a water valve for drip irrigation. Here's the smartphone web page image:

as of 10pm, September 15

Data comes from my Photon program via Particle's "cloud" interface. The electric fence is normally turned on and off by time-of-day (the cloud provides UNIX-like time functions). But that timing can be overridden by the web page above (password secured).

I originally intended to use a Raspberry Pi but the $19 Photon's simple web interface trumped the Pi's many advantages (especially the mature software development environment).

However, the Pi is not all together out of the picture: a Pi-based cron task checks on the Photon every few minutes and sends text messages if anything has gone wrong. It also accumulates statistics and provides a specialized weather report.

The Photon, sensors, switches and wiring cost under $70. My control program in C++ is about 80 lines long (originally, now expanded to 200 lines).

Does anyone know of a reliable motor setup for safely rolling the sides of the hoop house up and down (to control inside temperature)?

Revision: I've added more information on this setup (answering questions) at --

dicks-Photon-Arduino.blogspot.com

88: Battery Backup, Revised Again

After my failures with the Adafruit Powerboost 1000 I complained at an Adafruit forum. Their responce as  that I should have used a Powerboost 1000C instead. Note the subtly added letter "C". So, gritting my teeth, I paid $19.99 (plus their pricey shipping) and tried again.

has powered a Pi for 3 weeks now

I let this setup run for over 24 hours powering either a Raspberry Pi (drawing .34 amps -- using the post 87 device) or a Particle Photon (drawing 1/8th as much) and both worked fine. I could disconnect external USB without the computers noticing but pulling the battery plug caused both processors to restart. Not nice but not a deal killer.

Note input power LED in the image. If you aimed a photo sensor at it your program could detect external power failure. You would  then have time to send out a text message and shut down "gracefully" -- whatever that means.

87: Handy Electrical Gadget 

I got a "Charger Doctor" from Adafruit. Not a very enlightening name but a useful device.

It alternates displaying voltage and amps (a few seconds each). The 7-segment display can make a capital 'A' (main image) but can only manage a lame 'u' for 'V' (insert).

Place your 'Doctor' between the USB source and your device to be measured. The image above shows the usual 5v in plus that my Raspberry Pi B+ with USB wifi dongle uses .32 amps.

86: Solenoid Water Valves

My new mistakes:

1. The image above shows 2 seemingly identical .5 inch plastic valves. But the one on the right has tapered threads (about $10 from Adafruit). The left (cheaper) one did not. To get the brass fittings screwed on I had to carefully file down the end threads so I could get the adapters screwed on without butchering the plastic. Very time-consuming -- and irritating.

2. Also, why did I go cheap? For about $25 I could have a brass valve to go with the pair of $15 fittings. And the whole thing would likely have been more reliable.

85: The Particle Photon Moves Up
* updated 8/26/15 *

My $19 Photons are moving farther ahead of Arduinos and edging toward Rpi. Having accurate time functions available from the cloud makes a difference. It isn't crontab but operations can be scheduled. See http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/. Getting connected to wifi & the cloud is a cinch; program development: not so great (yet)!

84: Adding a Small Monitor

I'm installing an Rpi away from my iMac and SSH. So I bought a cheap keyboard and a 7" 1024x600 HDMI monitor.  To make this work, you first need to make the following change:

% sudo nano /boot/config.txt
(delete the "#" from this line)
#disable_overscan=1

(delete the "#" and change 1280 to 1024)
#framebuffer_width=1280
(delete the "#" and change 720 to 600)
#framebuffer_height=720

(press CTRL/o, type y, press CTRL/x)
% sudo reboot

I then needed to enlarge the console font size from 6x16 pixels to something I could read. I did it like this:

When you log in to Linux (or Unix) a file named ".profile" is executed by the shell. To make the little screen readable I edited the .profile file and added the following line at the end:

setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Uni3-Terminus28x14.pst.gz

(another reboot)

The 14x28 pixel font works for me. There many (hundreds of) fonts. If you like a bit smaller try 24x12 or bigger 32x16.

83: Battery Backup Correction
** revised 7/16/15 **

See http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/, post 16.

As I am wont to do, I posted without enough testing. Hopefully, corrected now. I'm surprised (shocked?) at how little interest there is in this topic. Anyway, the setup pictured only works if the USB out draws less than 500mV. None of my Nano test setups take this little -- nor does my Particle Core. So regardless of 5V USB input the the system fails when the battery runs down (USB output drops to 4.1V).

82: Soil Moisture Sensor

These things need analog. So I'll read it through the ether (wifi) from a Particle Core (like Arduino Mega with built-in Cloud access). See my Arduino/Particle blog post 15.

http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/

81: Let's Review

Apr 25, revised: May 2, Aug 1, Nov 18, 2015

Devices I've wired/programmed* for the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Spark Core (now Particle Photon)

• LEDs (everyone starts with these) - RAS
• Push buttons - RA
• PIR motion detector - R
• Magnetic door sensor - RAS
• Photosensor RAS
• DS18B20 temperature sensor - RAS
• DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor - RAS
• TMP36 temperature sensor - AS
• Raspberry Pi camera (B/W conversion, timelapse, security cam) - R
• Relay Switches - RS
• Water (moisture) sensor - R
• Soil moisture sensor - AS
• Water valve/solenoid control - RS
• Rangefinder: ultrasonic, IR (several models) - RA
• Speakers - RA
• CO gas sensor - A
• Natural gas/propane sensor - A
• Mini vibrating motors - A
• Pi - Arduino Com over USB - A to R
• RF read & write - A
• RFID sensor - AS
• 16x2 LCD text device - RA
• 7-segment clock device - R

To make the above work--

• resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, 
• Darlington array - R 
• I2C (MPC2308) - RS 
• MPC3008 (analog) - R
• PWM - A
• Backup battery setup - RAS
• Also: Internet upload/download, email, text message - RS

* Programmed in Python, C, C++, Linux Shell, Crontab

(also posted at http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/)

80: More on My UPS Battery Setup

I have tested the setup shown in post 79 (explained better in my Arduino blog post 11: dicks-arduino-nano-travails.blogspot.com).

First, I tried it with an Arduino Nano (most expendable). Worked.

Then, my Spark Core setup. Worked, too. I let the battery run down on this test. I'm not sure how long that took (+2 hours?) and I had not recharged the battery after trying it with the Nano. Then something nasty happened: the Powerboost 1000 sort of hiccuped off and on powering the Spark back on for a second each time. Good old Spark survived this but I wouldn't bet on a Pi doing as well. Also, the Powerboost was fried (Adafruit replaced it).

Finally, on a Raspberry Pi B (rev 2) with a fair number of GPIO pins connected including a WIFI dongle, a Pi-powered relay switch and a 7-segment clock display. I let it go nearly an hour then the Pi stopped running while the Powerboost still showed its green "powered" LED. Hummmm.

This is what I want for my Pi setups:

1. Detect fail (eg: by reading photosensor pointed at extern power light on Lipo charger).

2. Send out email and text msg warnings to humans (if internet-connected):
    "Power fail. Shutting DOWN! date/time".

3. In Linux: kill my running processes (especially anything writing files):
   % pgrep -u pi | sudo xargs kill -9 (for user "pi").

4. Linux: % sync; sync; sleep 5

5. Shut off 5v power from battery before voltage drops but so the system will restart when external power is restored.

Suggestions? Will the "Pi Juice" (see Kickstarter) do all of this?

79: I built a UPS (uninterruptible power supply/battery backup)

Under $35. Works with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. I'm surprised UPS (reasonable price/size) isn't a hot topic in this (computer geek?) world.

Not difficult! Details at my Arduino blog, post 11--

http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/

78: Controlling my Spark Core Wirelessly over the Internet

My Raspberry Pi can now read sensors and switch relays on my Spark and post results to a Web page! Details at --

http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/

Battery powered Spark Core

77: More About* Time Lapse with the Pi Camera

For my last example (post 71) I used the timing/counting features of the raspistill command to record my image sequence. But this time I want to capture a JPEG per minute from sunrise to sunset. Here's the shell program I wrote:

ct=0

hr=`date +%H` # just the hour

while [ "$hr" -ge "07" ] && [ "$hr" -le "20" ] ; #e.g.: 7am to 8pm

do

  ct=`expr $ct + 1`

  num=`expr 0000$ct : '.*\(....\)$'`

  raspistill -w 1280 -h 720 -t 1 -o i${num}.jpg

  sleep 60

  hr=`date +%H`

done

The 2nd expr command makes sure that the $num variable is a zero-filled 4-digit number (required in the convert-to-movie step). Also, about 1975 I wrote the original UNIX expr command -- so I like to use it.

_______
* Did you know that when millions of English words were checked, the first (most common) 130 were all one syllable. The first two-syllable word was "about." Does that mean something? Trust me, "exactly" was way, way down the list.

76: Raspberry Pi to Spark Core

It wasn't too painful. I have successfully sent a command to the Spark and gotten data back. My Core is sitting a foot from the Pi but it could be anywhere there's Internet. Details at my Arduino site:

http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/

Spark Core in its cute box

75: A New Way to Connect an RPI?

Spark Core: Where have I been? Sounds like what I've been looking for. See--

https://store.spark.io/?product=spark-core

I ordered one. Let you know.

74: Raspberry Pi B 2 and "Real Time"

Many posts ago (50 & 54) I complained that the otherwise convenient Linux multiprocessing overhead could screw up getting time-critical readings from certain sensors. I don't have a Pi 2 yet but with a quad processor that problem may be history. I'll let you know when I find out.

73: I've split off my Arduino comments

Check out--

http://dicks-arduino-nano.blogspot.com/

72: Raspberry Pi 2 as a "PC"

So if you already have a monitor (HDMI or DVI -- forget others), USB keyboard & mouse and $100 you can have a desktop Linux that is now (with the new ARM7) very responsive. Still no Adobe Flash support but otherwise...

What do you need?

* Pi 2 $35 (?)
* 16gb micro SD $25
* Wifi USB plug $15
* Powered USB hub (more ports + power for the Pi) $20
* HDMI cable $5 (or HDMI to DVI: $25)
* Case for Pi $10 (and up)

Most of the apps PC or Mac users are used to will be available with Linux, but with different names & they will be quirky. Here's an analogy with hiking trail difficulty: out East where it's fairly flat they use these terms--

1. Easy
2. Easy/Moderate
3. Moderate
4. Moderate/Difficult
5. Difficult

Changing to Linux has to be a 2.5, at least.

Comments?

71: My Pi as a Time Lapse Camera

I used raspistill taking 1 still per minute. Moved the JPEGs to my Mac and turned it into MP4 at 10fps. 450 minutes crunched to 45 seconds.

The .mov clip below is seriously down-sampled.

Noon to Sunset

Nothing much happening.

This command on the Pi took the stills:

  raspistill -w 1280 -h 720 -tl 60000 -o i%04d.jpg -t 28000000

(Having to time everything in milliseconds is tiresome.)

On my iMac this converted the stills to MP4/10 frames-per-second:

  ffmpeg -r 10 -i i%04d.jpg clip.mp4

I could have done this step on the Pi but it would have taken a lot longer. BTW: the video quality from this step was very good -- not like the above.

70: PWM -- Another Reason to Front-end Your Pi with an Arduino

I just discovered the joys of Arduino PWM (pulse width modulation). Easy on my Nano, except for 1 GPIO pin is's a nasty kludge on the Pi. Ha! (I listed USB-connected source code for Pi and Arduino back in Post 66.)

BTW: PWM is useful for things like dimming LEDs. In my case, I wanted a user to notice differences in output of mini-motor vibrators (e.g., from Adafruit). You have 256 output levels: 0=none(OFF), 127=half, 255=full(ON).

P.S.: While Pi prices are pretty standardized, Arduino prices are all over the place. I've noted Internet-listed Nanos (my favorite model) at anywhere from over $30 down to $3.30 (no cable, soldering required, delivery from China).