More Arduino workshops coming soon

By -
Shrimp and Pi
I'm excited that I've been asked to run a workshop in April at #CG3 - the next Covent Garden Jam. Contents and date to be decided, but I've had at least one request for a Shrimp and Pi session, which would be a lot of fun.

There are a couple of ways that you can connect the Shrimp to a Raspberry Pi. You can use the CP2102 USB-to-serial converter normally used to program the Shrimp, or connect the Pi's serial port on the expansion header to the header on the Shrimp.

Either way you can then
  • program the Shrimp via the Pi using the Arduino IDE, and
  • use Serial communications to send data between the Pi and the Shrimp.
I have a fun application in mind, and it should be easy to set up as it combines one of my first bits of software on the Pi with a sketch from my Life after Blink workshop (see below). I'll tell you more when I've got it running :)

Shrimping It solo!

A couple of people have lamented that they couldn't attend last Saturday's workshop at the Southend Raspberry Pi jam.

The workshops are great fun but it's perfectly possible to build the Shrimp on your own. You can buy what you need from the Shrimping It! website:
  • The basic Shrimp Kit
  • A suitable breadboard
  • A Programmer
You may already have a suitable breadboard, and you can use a 5v FTDI cable if you have one, but if not, the parts will cost under £10 + postage, which is just £1 for UK customers.

There are good instructions on the Shrimping It! website, but if you want you can splash out $1.49 (+VAT if you are in the UK) for a copy of Making the Shrimp.

That's the e-book I wrote for use on the workshops.

It's only 95% complete, since I don't yet cover making a stripboard version of the Shrimp, but if you buy books on Leanpub you get future updates free.

Life after Blink is on its way

I'm nearly ready to release another e-book on Leanpub.

Called Life after Blink, it's based on an online course I ran last year.

It's a risk-free purchase, since Leanpub offer an unconditional 45-day money-back guarantee. I'll also be releasing a sample so you can try before you buy.

Life after Blink covers a series of experiments you can do after you've uploaded your first Arduino LED-blinking sketch.

You'll learn how to
  • program an Arduino-based cookie server to dispense wisdom to your laptop
  • generate and flash Morse code signals from text you type
  • control a family of LEDs to display ripple patterns and binary numbers
  • annoy your friends and family by making sounds from inside your sketches
  • monitor light levels using an LDR sensor
You can purchase the components you'll need individually or get an inexpensive kit from SK Pang.

You'll also need an Arduino or a Shrimp.

You can register your interest here to get notified by email when the book is available.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Controlling a Raspberry Pi Pico remotely using PySerial

By -
Image
Update : I'm using thie code below in another project, and found that I had not correctly fixed the reported bug. The new version passes automated tests, and I am pretty sure it works OK. I have changed the name of the class to Talker  since it can both send and receive information. Apologies to all concerned for the bug! Introduction You can use a Raspberry Pi Pico as a powerful peripheral to a host - a Raspberry Pi, a Jetson Nano, a laptop or workstation. In this article you'll see how to interact with a Pico running MicroPython or CircuitPython by writing some Python code that runs on the host. The software is easy to use. It enables you to send a Python statement to the Pico and read the results. The statement can be any valid MicroPython code. Setting up the host and the Pico For this article I've used a Raspberry Pi as the host, but any computer running Windows, Linux or Mac OS will do so long as it has Python 3.5 or later installed. In particular, you can use this t
Read more

Five steps to connect Jetson Nano and Arduino

By -
Image
Yesterday's post showed how to link a micro:bit to the Jetson Nano. One of the members of the (unofficial) NVIDIA Jetson Nano group on Facebook asked about connecting an Arduino to the Jetson. Here's a simple recipe for getting data from the Arduino to the Jetson Nano. It should work on all the Jetson models, not just the Nano, but I only have Nanos to hand. On request, I've added a recipe at the end of this post which sends data from the Jetson Nano to the Arduino; it turns the default LED on the Arduino on or off. The recipe for sending data from the Arduino to the Jetson has just 5 stages: Program the Arduino. (I used the ASCIITable example). Connect the Arduino to the Jetson using a USB connector Install pyserial on the Jetson Download a three-line Python script Run the script.   Programming the Arduino I used an Arduino Uno, and checked it on a verteran Duemilanove (above), but any Arduino should work. You'll need to do this step usi
Read more

Raspberry Pi Pico project 2 - MCP3008

By -
Image
This post show you how to drive the MCP3008 8-channel ADC using a Raspberry Pi Pico. I'll start with a personally embarrassing and annoyingly relevant story. I'll also tell you about a minor 'gotcha' when using SPI on the Pico, and how you can avoid it. Finally, I've include the code and fritzing diagram I used to test the interface. First, the story. Back in 2012, when the Raspberry Pi was fresh and new, I was running a startup called Quick2Wire.  We made add-on boards for the Pi. Just before Christmas we sent out our first batch of boards to a small army of beta-testers. The beta boards didn't work. Somehow a single trace on the pcb had got deleted and one of the GPIO pins was isolated. The boards were still usable and it wasn't too hard to solder in a jumper wire to replace the missing trace, but it was very embarrassing. It wasn't just that we'd shipped boards with a defect. The really annoying thing was that I'd set up an  automated loop-bac
Read more