Friday, June 7, 2013

My RaspBerry Pi adventures
chapter 13

Old business:
I had yet another wifi failure with the Frontier DSL modem -- again
ethernet-connected devices continued to get Internet (including my iMac and the Pi)
iPhones and iPad indicated the wifi was available but it didn't work.

So, it looks like a Frontier problem -- not the Pi.

New business:
I need my Pi application to have Internet access. The cheapest option seems to be
by using a cellular modem (e.g.: Verizon Mifi). The best deal at the moment seems
to be a company called Karma (is it bad karma to mess with that name?). It's a
no-contract deal: buy the modem/wifi device and buy megabytes as needed.
However, its coverage doesn't work for me. Not as cheap but Datajack or Virgin no-contract
plans show
good 3G where I need it. Down side: I had Verizon Mifi for a while; it wasn't
terribly reliable.


Sensors:
I got my motion sensor working (PIR device from Adafruit). Like some of the other
devices, it has odd personality quirks. 

What I learned:
* You only have to poll the device about every 5 seconds -- the device keeps returning
"true" for 6 or more seconds after the briefest movement.

* The angle of detection seems to be a bit over 90 degrees.

* The room I'm testing in isn't big enough to tell what the maximum sensing distance
is.

BTW: In case my text formatting looks strange on this page -- well, today blogger.com
doesn't do automatic text wrap -- so I've typed my own line returns. Strange!

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