This week's assignment
Set up communication/network between 2 devices with
separate processors. I am using this week to set up and initiate
communication to the Raspberry Pi board and associated camera
(which I will use in the final project).
Basic Pi Board Hardware and connectivity requirements
- Pi Board
- SD Card
- Cable from Pi Board to Monitor (HDMI to HDMI
is best depending on what you are using for a display - I
started out with a TV)
- Ethernet cable
- Keyboard and Mouse (with USB, I was surprised
to find that none of the keyboards in my home were USB)
- Power supply with 5V and micro USB connection
(I found an old Blackberry supply which worked well)
Basic Pi Board Setup Steps
- Download the NOOBS software on to the SD card
- Load the SD card on to the Pi board
- Connect the mouse and keyboard to the Pi board
- Connect the monitor or TV to the Pi board
(make sure you have the correct input selected on the TV)
- Connect your ethernet cablefrom a network
connection to the Pi board.
- Connect the power to boot the Pi.
- Select an operating system (I used Raspbian)
The following link is helpful:
Basic
setup Information
Useful Pi Commands
Requirement
|
Command
|
| To go to windows desktop |
$ startx |
To check configuration |
$ifconfig |
| To check connection |
$ ping as220.org (or
alternate web location)
|
| To play video on Pi |
$ omxplayer video.h264 (or
appropriate filename) |
Setting up the camera module
There is an excellent tutorial at http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/peripherals/how-to-install-the-raspberry-pi-camera-module-1172034
I set up the camera and took some test photos and
videos using the raspistill and raspivid commands. Another helpful link is http://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-raspberry-pi-camera-module/
Setting up VNC
The process of setting up the connections listed
above is time consuming. An alternative is to work on the Pi
remotely from any location and this can be done using VNC (Virtual
Network Computing). This requires a VNC download to the Pi and
also to the PC to be used.
Instructions for downloading Tight VNC Package on to Raspberry Pi
http://elinux.org/RPi_VNC_Server
Download Tightvnc to laptop
http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php
It takes some time to work through this process but I was able to
connect remotely from the PC to the Pi (use the ifconfig command
to determine the Pi's IP address).
Communication and Programming
For initial communication, I downloaded Arduino to
the Pi and ran some basic programs (Blink, etc.) to verify the
communication. Then I ran some simple programs via Arduino to do
serial communication between Arduino and the Pi. Finally for now,
I created some very basic Python programs to take an Arduino
output signal and execute a command on the Pi (taking a still
photo).
Summary
This week's work has resulted in a lot of progress
towards my final project. I have the Pi setup complete and have a
very basic understanding of the communication and programming
required to program it in my application.