Final Project Idea

I think I finally decided what I want to do for my final project. I'm going to turn my Raspberry Pi into handheld video game system. I found a website that has many different models for turning a Raspberry Pi into a retro game console. While all of these look cool I gravitated to the PiGRRL 2. It looks like the original GameBoy by Nintendo. I like the retro look of it, as well as the fact that it is portable.

I did research on this model and found a site called adafruit that shows you the materials needed, and the steps to make it. You can also buy some of the parts from the site. The parts needed include a screen, battery, speaker, and buttons. A custom 3D printed case is also needed. Hopefully this won't cost too much...

Raspberry Pi General Info

    "What is a Raspberry Pi," you may have asked yourself when looking at my blog. A Raspberry Pi is a mini computer. It is equipped with a 900 MHz quad-core processor and 1 Gb of RAM. While it is nowhere near the specs of a modern computer, it can still do pretty impressive things. For example it can be used to control robots. One would program the Pi so that a rover-like robot could do things like autonomously traverse a certain terrain looking for something. An example of a robot can be seen here.

    Something else the Pi can do, something I'm more interested in, is using it to play old video games, such as Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon. It can run all old games up to the Playstation and Nintendo 64! Maybe I'll do this for my final project...

Project 1: LED Dance

My first project is officially completed!

The project was to further my work with the LEDs and make them 'dance'. I made them turn on and off in sequences to make it look like a light show.


I first hooked up 6 LEDs to my breadboard and connected them to different GPIOs. This allowed me to control each light individually!





I used Fritzing to help me map where all the components go. This allowed me to clean up my first design, and produce something much easier to look at and understand.


Then I used python to make the light show! I made different functions based on patterns that I thought would look cool. I then called the functions in a sequence to make a light show. I made two different light shows. Depending on the time on the pi, it will play a different light show!











 Below you can find the videos for both light shows!

LEDs Work!

My LEDs worked flawlessly today! I think the problem yesterday was that I didn't have the T-cobbler plugged in correctly. It might also have something to do with me trying to use the command line to turn the LEDs on and off. When I switched to the Python script, it worked perfectly fine.
The next feat is to make the LEDs "dance". Hopefully it won't be too complicated...

LED Problems

Tried working on the LED project, however I ran into multiple complications. The first one was trying to turn the light on and off. When I first tried this in class, it worked, but it was in reverse. Now, it does not work at all. Then, when I tried to make a script, I was getting errors.

Tried to blog from the Pi, but the browser wasn't cooperating tonight, so I might download Firefox (if I can figure it out)...

Day 1: It's a Wonderful Day for Pi!!!!

I set up my pi today and was able to follow along in class!
My wifi adapter wasn't working at first, but after restarting my pi, it worked fine.

In class we worked on getting LEDs to light up using the pi's GPIO and a breadboard. I successfully got an LED to light up. I tried to get a second one to light up, but I accidentally blew it out (whoops!). Hopefully I don't mess up the other LEDs!