Playing with Scratch and thought now that Chromium is the default browser in Raspbian Pixel whether the web based Scratch would work.
So, I went to http://scratch.mit.edu and picked a project to load. Up came the usual jigsaw piece saying a plug in was missing. Right clicked to enable the plug in and nothing happened. Oh, well nothing has changed. We still have NuScratch installed on the Pi.
Before shutting down I did an update/upgrade, just to keep the machine up to date.
A whole bunch of updates for LibreOffice and NuScratch were downloaded as well as an update to Chromium. Nothing looked too interested.
Then a strange thing happened. Half way through the upgrade a screen appears asking me to confirm installing the Flash plugin. I accepted and let the upgrade take it's course.
Intrigued by this I went back to the Scratch website and selected the project again.
Again, the jigsaw piece appeared.
Again, I selected to enable the plugin.
Except this time the outcome was different. The panel went white and the familiar Scratch loading bar appeared. It was working and working well.
See the video below.
Mike Horne did a post on his website this and Simon Long who does Raspbian and specifically Pixel
Looks like Chromium had an update on the 11th and by chance I did an update to my machine soon after the release. From Simon's post this needs ARMv7 so only works on Raspberry Pi 2 and 3. Not an option for older Raspberry Pi or the PiZero.
Earlier this year I backed the NexDock Indiegogo. The NexDock was primarily being promoted as a Windows Phone accessory as it supports Continuum, but since it has a miniHDMI some of us thought it might be a great partner for the Raspberry Pi.
It took them 2 attempts to get funded but made it in the end.
Then they had a fire at the factory which set the project back even further.
All respect to the NexDock team, instead of throwing in the towel they rallied and with their ODM partner picked up the pieces, had new NexDock manufactured and in the end I took delivery on the 9th of September and have been using the NexDock a fair bit since.
My life with a NexDock didn't start too well when I noticed it wasn't charging.
The charger did look a bit ropey but thought since it passed QA at the factory it must have been OK.
Not the cleanest. Should still be OK, right
A bit of dirt never hurt anyone
I'm sure it's fine
Checked the power supply with a multimeter and it was dead.
I submitted a Help Desk request on the support site and NexDock replied quickly that this shouldn't have happened and they were very sorry. Advising it would take a while to send me a replacement power supply so as an alternative if I was OK with it they would refund me $15 as that is the equivalent cost of a PSU on Amazon. Les Pounder who has blogged his experience here (http://bigl.es/nexdock-initial-impressions/) decided the US power supply with an adapter was not for him and he bought a suitable supply with 3.2A from CPC (http://cpc.farnell.com/stontronics/t5004st/ac-dc-power-supply-5v-3-2a-universal/dp/PW03046)
I still have to get a replacement power supply so in the short term I used a microUSB adapter board with the original cable to make a solution that would allow me to use any of the many microUSB chargers I have due to my Raspberry Pi addiction.
Functional, but maybe not a long term solution
This is what I have been using with the NexDock and it's served me well. The green light you can see is the power LED. Orange when charging and Green when fully charged.
Teething problems out of the way. What is the NexDock like to use.
Keyboard and Trackpad
The keyboard is a decent size. The travel on the keys is comfortable.
One irritation for me is the power button is where the [delete] key should be and the [delete] key has been placed below the [backspace] . So, when I make a mistake and blindly stab at [delete] I'm pressing [power] and no delete happens. Luckily the power button has to be held down for the usual 5 seconds to turn off the NexDock. What it did mean is for a while I kept thinking the keyboard unpaired from the Pi and so I went into the menu, disconnected and reconnect the NexDock.
Once I figured out it was user error all was good. Still, funky placement of keys is becoming an ongoing annoyance on laptops as manufacturers pick different places for keys.
Oh, and the keyboard layout is US. I'm in the UK. I can live with it as I am comfortable using different keyboard layouts, just something to be aware of.
You can see the keyboard layout here
The trackpad works well once you up the speed of the 'mouse' on the Raspberry Pi. No idea why this is needed but it does work.
It's important to note the keyboard and trackpad are Bluetooth and not USB. So, for Pi users this works well for the Pi3, but not the Pi2 or PiZero as they do not have Bluetooth. More on this later.
Screen
The screen, even though LCD and not IPS is sharp and works well for extended use. The resolution is the classic 1366x768. Fairly standard for laptops, but not a mode the Pi has automatically. (http://elinux.org/RPiconfig#Video_mode_options). Not a problem if auto selected from HDMI, but as noted below can cause some fun when working with realVNC.
First boot with Pi3 powered from NexDock
Bluetooth and power
As mentioned above the keyboard and trackpad are Bluetooth. They are not available over USB.
With the Pi3 the NexDock is found when scanning and once paired works well.
You can't back power the Pi3 through USB so it has to be powered from the microUSB power connection. This means when powering the Pi3 from the NexDock the USB devices built-in (webcam, microphone, microSD slot and USB port on the right) to the NexDock are not available. The USB port on the left that provides power is also the hub connection port.
On the Pimoroni Bilge Tank they had a a frankin-cable that does power the Pi3 and connect USB so all devices are available.
Also, Mike Redrobe did the diagram below showing the connections.
Connections on NexDock
Personally, I haven't needed the webcam or other devices so it hasn't been a problem for me so far.
I just use the USB ports on the Pi3 to connect my devices.
We know that the PiZero can be back powered through USB so this looked like it could be ideal, except the keyboard and trackpad are Bluetooth.
I connected a PiZero and powered it from the NexDock. Then connected aBluetooth dongle bought on eBay to the port on the right.
All booted, Bluetooth dongle seen, paired with NexDock. Working great, then Bluetooth device disappears. Icon in top bar grayed out. As an eBay purchase I suspected it might be faulty so used on a couple of PCs and plugged directly into a USB port on a Pi2 with the NexDock and all worked well.
My conclusion is that even though there is a nice big battery inside the NexDock the USB port on the right is not a powered port and so doesn't have enough power to support the Bluetooth Dongle. It works great for an external mouse and other lower power devices, but this Bluetooth dongle seems to need more power than the port can handle.
Continuing my adventure with the PiZero I used a Zero4U USB hub bought at Cambridge Raspberry Jam from Ryanteck.
This attaches directly to the PiZero taking it's power from the 5V line directly to give a powered hub.
With this and again back powering the PiZero from the NexDock the Bluetooth dongle worked great.
Now I have a PiZero computer with keyboard/trackpad, webcam, microphone, speakers, 3.5MM headphone jack, another USB port and a microSD slot.
One thing to note on Bluetooth with the Raspberry Pi is that in Raspbian Bluetooth is not set up to auto pair with devices on boot up, so for first set up you need an external mouse to pair the NexDock and the Pi.
NexDock address this on their support page and give instruction on how to set up a cronjob to enable the pairing each time your Raspberry Pi starts up.
The support page also explains how to get the internal speakers working and a couple of other things.
The longest time the NexDock was running was at the Cambridge Jam in September which runs from 10:30am to 4:30pm. The NexDock was set up with a Pi3 powered externally so the USB from the Pi3 was connected to the NexDock to enable the webcam. It was running Scratch Pac Man and a simple webcam viewer python program showing the person using the computer their image. Code on GitHub
Battery test
The last thing is the battery in the NexDock. It's a 10,000mA battery, so a decent size.
Powering a Pi3 idle it lasted ~6 hours and powering a Pi3 under load it lasted 3 1/2 hours..
These were the times I expected using back of an envelope calculations.
To run these tests I ran sysbench in one terminal window and in a second window ran a small python script that recorded to start time and every 60 seconds recorded the time.
The Pi3/NexDock ran until it shut down. Then starting the Pi3 again it was just a matter of subtracting one time from the other.
Other findings
I mentioned above about connecting over realVNC. Using the Pi3 on a NexDock as the client and then realVNC running on a PiZero as the server. realVNC by default sets the screen resolution to 640x480 and this function, but as you'd expect a bit painful to do anything constructive.
You can change the Pi resolution by modifying the config.txt file in /boot.
Problem is there is no 1366x768 resolution option, meaning full native NexDock resolution wasn't possible. I could do 1360x768(mode 39) and this worked but it did leave a few unused pixels either side of the screen. Not a massive thing, just worth noting.
I also tried to enable the experimental OpenGL drivers and this failed completely. Black screen. No flashing cursor, no scrolling of the messages at start up (pre Raspbian PIXEL)
To be fair to the NexDock I have the same problem with the pi-topCEED, so it might be something to do with the default non-standard (to the Pi) resolution.
So, it looks like the experimental OpenGL drivers are not compatible with the NexDock display. Pity as this could have been fun for Minetest, the Minecraft-a-like open source game that is in the repo so can be installed with apt-get install minetest.
It's not the latest version, but it plays great on a Pi3 with OpenGL enabled and 256MB set aside for the GPU. NOTE: Minetest makes the SOC run hot. If you are going to play Minetest on the Pi2/3 then you will need a fan. I have a heatsink on a Pi3 and that's not enough. Previous blog post about Minetest on the Pi3
Also on Minetest, if you are walking/flying around and you use the trackpad to change direction you stop moving. I don't know if this is a Bluetooth keyboard/trackpad combo thing or if this is NexDock specific. Either way it means on the NexDock you can play Minecraft, but if you want to change direction while moving you have to release the forward/backward key and press it again Conclusions and wish list
With everything above I do like the NexDock. It feels nice to use. The keyboard and trackpad work well. For it's intended use with Windows Phone I expect it is a perfect match. With the Raspberry Pi the needs are a bit different but it does provide what I need to use it regularly.
With that said for me it would go from being great to amazing as a Raspberry Pi device if:
Left side had 2 USB ports. One capable of providing power and USB connection, second one USB connection at standard power rating.
Keyboard/trackpad with the option to connect as Bluetooth or USB
2 USB ports on the right.
Powered internal USB hub meaning the 2 (wish list) USB ports on the right would be able to handle devices that need power like the Bluetooth dongle and external hard drives.
UK Power supply instead of US with adapter
UK keyboard layout option
I see myself using the NexDock as my primary Pi device and will over time be doing the expected nerd/geek activity of covering it in stickers which to me is a real sign of a keeper that you expect to have part of your life for a good while to come.
IMPORTANT: The code in this blog post is the original code which does work but may not have all the enhancements. If you're building your own I recommend grabbing the code from GitHub.
GitHub link: https://github.com/winkleink/buttonFlash
Update: 19th September: Took buttonFlash to the Cambridge Raspberry Jam on the 17th of September and it got a proper outing.
UPDATE: 25th August:
Made Raspberry Pi program look prettier
Added sound effects
A few years ago I thought it would be fun to come up with an outdoor game that would get people running around. The Whack-a-Mole/reflexes button game came to mind and this is the result. A game where you have to press buttons as quickly as possible.
Whack-a-Pi was in constant play at the Raspberry Pi 4th Party.
The concept for buttonFlash is similar to Whack-a-Pi but with the ability for the buttons to be much further apart. Goal is to get people running around. With the buttons further apart there was no way I was going to be managing physical wires as it would be a trip hazard and I didn't want to have to manage that many wires. So, wireless communication between the base and the buttons seemed the obvious choice.
Most fields don't have wifi. I could bring along my trusty Vocore and create a local WiFi hot spot but again I want this to be simple to set up and use.
VoCore. Basically guts of a Wifi router
So, I thought the NRF24L01 would do the trick. They're a really cheap transceiver. They can transmit and receive signals making them ideal for short range two way communication.
On the Arduino I used the RF24 library. If you've the latest version of the Arduino IDE you can install this through the library manager or if you prefer you can go old school and download it from the GitHub repository at the link above. More details on using the NRF24 with Arduino
The Arduino side was relatively straightforward to get working while the Raspberry Pi side had me stumped for a while. Then earlier this year I had a breakthrough when I met +Elliot Pittam. He had seen the first Wimbledon Raspberry Jam and was interested in coming along. On email we discussed what we were working on and Elliot said he was using the NRF24L01 with the Pi and Arduino. We then met at a HackWimbledon event where he showed me his set up and shared his working code. Elliot helped me sort my circuit and pointed me to 2 great videos on using the NRF24L01 with both Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
Tutorial 34 - Part 1
Tutorial 35 - Part 2
With Elliot's assistance I successfully had the Raspberry Pi communicating with the Arduino.
Many of the example I found did not clearly identify which pins on the Arduino or Raspberry Pi were connected to which pins on the NRF24L01. Therefore, below is the wiring I used for the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino with the code provided. So, it all matches up nicely.
NRF Pi GPIO Pin
VCC 3.3V 1
GND GND 6
CSN GPIO8 24
CE CPIO17 11
MOSI GPIO10 19
MISO GPIO9 21
SCK GPIO11 23
NRF Arduino VCC 3.3V GND GND CSN Digital 10 CE Digital 9 MOSI Digital 11 MISO Digital 12 SCK Digital 13
For the Arduino to keep it compact I went with Arduino Nano compatible board on a small 170 pin breadboard. Easy build and easy maintenance.
It's important to know these compatibles use the CH340G serial chip which is different to the Arduino branded. You will need additional driversto get these working with some computers.
To make each of the buttons base I needed a suitable container to hold the button and the rest of the electronics and of course the button. I'd seen these great 60mm buttons with LEDs built in so I order some. Again from eBay UK these are about ~£7.00 for five.
RED 60mm LED button
The ones I ordered are 12V rated which is the power for the LED. Opening it up these things just have a standard LED and a current limited resistors. The resistor was a 460 Ohm for the 12 volts. Without knowing the specific LEDs and their voltage drop and maximum current I played it safe and replaced the 460 Ohm with 150 Ohm resistors. The buttons did light very dimly with the 460s but were far brighter with the 150 Ohm. Below is the button being taken apart.
button in place
unscrew the button/LED assembly
pull out the LED (like Christmas lights)
remove LED with resistor on Anode (+ side, other goes to GND)
solder on replacement resistor and put it all back together
To test the LED at each stage I ran an Arduino with the blink sketched and wired the LED across pins GND and 13. Once all reassemble with the wires attached again I tested to make sure I didn't mess things up in putting it back together.
Next, for each Arduino I wired the NRF24L01 as per above. The LED was wired to Pin 2 and Button was wired to Pin 3. In code I activated the internal pull up resistor so the button is held high until you press it and then it goes low.
it all wired up.
As the Raspberry Pi needed to send a message to the Arduinos to let them know which one is to activate their button and wait for it to be pressed before replying I came up with a simple message that is extendable. Basically, the number of the Arduino followed by 'P' Examples: 1P, 2P, 3P, 4P, 5P
This would be the message sent out.
All Arduino would receive it and then using a simple IF statement would decide if it means they are to be activated. If not go back to listening. If yes light the button and wait for it to be pressed. Once pressed reply to the Raspberry Pi that the button has been pressed.
In this way the Arduino are dumb. They only respond to a request for the button and reply it's been pressed. They don't care if they are the first, second, third,... button to be pressed in the game. All that is managed at the Raspberry Pi.
To make it easier to setup and to test I included a test mode.
When you press 't' it sends the test message and all the Arduino flash their LEDs 5 time. Then Arduino 1 (as there will always be at least 2 Arduino) replies that it is completed.
The Raspberry Pi doesn't do anything with this message as the test is to see if it is sent and replied to which the users sees in the console.
This means Button/Arduino 1 has slightly different code to all the rest of the buttons.
Button/Arduino 1 code with the extra bit for Arduino 1 only highlighted in RED
For each Button/Arduino the text highlighted in BLUEneeds to be changed to matched the relevant reference in the Raspberry Pi list. This text is the same in all 3 locations so you can do a Find/Replace to do it in one go.
Serial.println("We sent our message: " + String(text));
}
// Test scenario
if (stringMessage == "TEST") {
for(x=0; x < 5; x++){
digitalWrite(ledPin,HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(500);
}
Serial.println("Test completed");
const char text[] = "Test done";
radio.write(text, sizeof(text));
Serial.println("We sent our message: " + String(text));
}
}
delay(100);
}
On the Raspberry Pi side the code is a little more interesting as it sets up the NRF24L01 and then creates a graphical window using pygame and finally runs the game. At this stage it displays Score and High Score.
The steps to get the Raspberry Pi ready are:
Wire up the NRF24L01 as per above
Use the Raspberry Po configuration program to enable SPI (you have to reboot after this)
Then run the following commands.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-dev python3.dev -y
I'm assuming you're in hour home directory for the rest of this.
mkdir buttonFlash
git clone https://github.com/Gadgetoid/py-spidev
cd py-spidev
sudo python setup.py install
sudo python3 setup.py install
cd ..
git clone https://github.com/BLavery/lib_nrf24
cd lib_nrf24/
cp lib_nrf24.py ~/buttonFlash
cd ..
You should now have SPI working with the python SPI libraries installed for Python 2 and 3 as well as the required lib_nrf24 for working with the NRF24L01 from python.
Finally the library file is copied to the buttonFlash directory.
Copy the Raspberry Pi code into the buttonFlash directory and run it.
Here is a short example of it running after the initial build.
With the electronics sorted and the programs functioning the next requirement was a housing for the buttons. I thought I found the perfect one when I got this spaghetti container from Home Bargains. It all fit comfortable and the button was really secure.
Only problem was when I went back to get more they were out of stock with no idea when/if more would be coming in. Then I saw the Pringles can and tried it out and it worked. Pringles cans for the win.
Oh, and I had to eat another 4 cans of Pringles to get the 5 required.
As this is designed to be played indoors or outdoors I needed to fina a way to make them stable when placed in a field. I went super simple and bought 150mm bolts with nuts and passed them through the bottom of the Pringles cans. You'll notice I numbered each can and there is also a colour listed. I bought 5 different coloured breadboards so I could tell which Button/Arduino was in each can.
You can see the bottoms of the tubes are deformed a bit. Ends up Pringles cans aren't super strong. Means I have to re-tighten the nuts as they work lose. Wonder if an application from a glue gun will sort this out.
bottom of each Tube with bolt, number and colour
all the bits outside the can.
If you watched the video at the top or the video at the bottom you might have noticed the Pringles cans have a bit of a base to keep them stable for indoor use. In the rush to push the buttons the Pringles cans were falling over. The solution was some microwave pots that tapered from the bottom to the top turned upside down and with a hole cut int he bottom. This gives a nice wide base. If further stability is needed these pots could be filled with sand or stones to weigh down the bottom even more.
microwave pot used as base
This was an interesting build as I never used NRF24L01s before. Finding the information on how to get them to work and wire them up was interesting as most of the guides nearly provided the full details and they all seemed to provide slightly different information. So, I enjoyed solving that riddle and end up with a playable game that scales in the number of buttons and also the space.
This could be set up as 10 buttons on a table with all the cans tied to each other or as 20 buttons around the outside of a field. You'll hear in the video below that the Raspberry Pi can call out the button numbers. This definitely made it a bit easier as you quickly learn which button is which position. For outdoor use if it is very sunny I have a feeling the LEDs in the buttons will not be bright enough. So, next I will be adding more lights and indicators to the buttons so they can be identified outdoors.
Here's another video of the game being played at the Cambridge Raspberry Jam.
If you have any questions or comments let me know.
