Raspberry PI – Exploration Space

AI, .NET and the Digital Microscope – Cape Town

August 24, 2024September 2, 2024 apead

Thank you to everyone that attended my session at Microsoft Season of AI!

The live demo sample code can be found here: https://github.com/apead/seasonofaiintrodemos

Slides for the session

Seasons of AI AI, .NET and the Digital Microscope Download

Where to buy the parts for Building a Microscope

Camera

Microscope Lense

https://www.pishop.co.za/store/microscope-raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera—012-18x

Unicorn HAT

https://www.pishop.co.za/store/unicorn-hat

Raspberry Pi

https://www.pishop.co.za/store/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-4gb

Microscope Stand

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CBLT82BK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

5″ Display

https://www.pishop.co.za/store/5inch-hdmi-lcd—bi-colour-case-for-raspberry-pi

Tips

SuperVisor

Keeping your .NET Apps Alive with Supervisor

You can find the MicroLights source code here:

https://github.com/apead/DevConf2024

Connecting a Pimoroni Environmental Monitor to IoT Central

January 23, 2021April 5, 2021 apead

The Pimoroni Environmental monitor is an amazing piece of hardware. I recently purchased a few to monitor air quality around the house. https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/enviro?variant=31155658457171

Packed into the HAT for a Raspberry Pi Zero you will find:

BME280 temperature, pressure, humidity sensor
LTR-559 light and proximity sensor
MICS6814 analog gas sensor
ADS1015 analog to digital converter (ADC)
MEMS microphone
0.96″ colour LCD (160×80)
Connector for particulate matter (PM) sensor (available separately)
Pimoroni breakout-compatible pin header

Device Definition json file is in the github repository along with the source code. This can be imported into Azure IoT Central and the views generated.

Source code: https://github.com/apead/Pimoroni-Env-Monitor-IoT-Central

Product Information: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/enviro?variant=31155658457171

Where to buy?

https://www.pishop.co.za/store/enviro–for-raspberry-pi

Installing Node-RED in a Container

August 3, 2020April 5, 2021 apead

Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.

It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

Running Node-RED is easiest in a Docker container. This is really easy to set up.

docker pull nodered/node-red

Pull the container from the Docker Repository

sudo docker run -d -p 1880:1880 -v /home/ubuntu/docker-nodered/data:/data --name mynodered nodered/node-red

Start Mosquitto.

The default port for Node-RED is 1880. Also ensure that the volumes are mapped to a local folder on the host to preserve the configuration.

Azure and the Internet of Things at GXUGSA

October 11, 2017October 12, 2017 apead

Always fun to fly to Johannesburg and speak at GXUGSA. I hope it was useful.

I’ve made all content available.

Event: https://www.meetup.com/Gauteng-Xamarin-User-Group/events/241783761/

Presentation: https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/12092017

Android Things Weatherstation (Android Studio): https://github.com/androidthings/weatherstation

Android Things Weatherstation (Xamarin): https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

MX Chip kit Twitter Shake-Shake: https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/docs/projects/shake-shake/

MX Chip orders available from DFRobot: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1616.html

This session featured

Azure Functions

Azure Iot Hub

Azure Stream Analytics

Azure Machine Learning

Power BI

Android Things

MX Chip Azure Iot Kit

And other Iot platforms and devices (Arduino, Netduino, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10 Iot, Xamarin Iot)

Happy Cross Platform IoT’ing

Visual Studio: The one IDE to rule them all

July 22, 2017July 22, 2017 apead

This week there was some great news about .NET MF and the return of the Netduino!(http://blog.wildernesslabs.co/netduino-is-back/)

I was inspired enough to dust off one of my older projects which included .NET MF and the Xamarin Monkey Robotics project. I then decided to consolidate and rearrange it with some of the newer stuff I’m playing with in the “Iot” space. It’s also an example of how Visual Studio can handle projects of all types, held together and fully “debuggable” within one solution. This seems like a good time to do this especially with the recent talks at the Xamarin User Groups in Cape Town (http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/07/20/cross-platform-iot-at-ctxug/) and Johannesburg (http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/07/12/cross-platform-iot-at-gxugsa/) on the topic.

Visual Studio Controller of Things Solution

I do still have to port all this to Visual Studio 15.3 preview 3 so I can have Xamarin Iot working in the solution as well.

Still a lot of on the list to do today, so I’ll end off here.

Happy Iot’ing!

Xamarin Iot comes to Visual Studio 2017 on Windows

June 21, 2017June 21, 2017 apead

I recently had a quick look at Xamarin Iot. The post can be found here: http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/06/07/first-look-at-xamarin-iot/.

That was using Xamarin Iot on Visual Studio for the Mac (Preview). Xamarin Iot is also however available for Visual Studio 2017 on Windows (Preview 2.1) too. Below is the identical solution just running from Visual Studio 2017 on Windows. Have a look!

This is just a quick look at Xamarin Iot running on a Raspberry Pi Zero, this time on Visual Studio on Windows. More in-depth content coming soon!

Happy Iot’ing!

First Look at Xamarin IOT

June 7, 2017June 7, 2017 apead

This is a first look at the new Xamarin Iot functionality found within Visual Studio for Mac 7.1 Preview. I will dig much further into detail in future posts, but lets have a very quick look and it. I’m really excited about this addition to the already awesome Xamarin tooling!

A new project type has been added for Iot. This project type or template will create the solution and project needed to run on the Iot device.

Manage devices option

What’s immediately apparent is the new run option for the Iot project type. There’s now a new item called “Manage Devices”

The Iot Device Manager allows all the connected devices to be managed. This setup is very similar to the Mac Agent used for iOS development with the Xamarin Visual Studio for Windows extension, however it will display all the Linux based devices running on the network. In this case and screenshot it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero running Raspian (Jesse). Configuring the device will allow remote deploys to the device from your Mac. This will require a user name and password of a user on the Raspberry Pi. This user will be used to connect to the Raspberry pi via SSH. Also note, SSH needs to be enabled on the Raspberry Pi for this to work.

Now you can start developing your Iot solution. What’s really awesome is, all the things you expect to work will just work. This includes break points and a full debugging experience. All this can happen wirelessly to a “headless” device.

The build and execution process is very similar to the Mac Agent when you do iOS development from Windows (Visual Studio) to a Mac. The difference in this case, it is from a Mac (Visual Studio) to a Linux instance (Raspberry Pi). On the very first execution, the mono run time will be copied over to the device. This will be used to execute the built app. The application itself and it’s “built code” is also synchronized with the Raspberry Pi. This compiled Iot app is then in turn executed on the device remotely.

Lets see it in action! Here is a simple example of the now standard Iot demo of a flashing LED, but running on a tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W. What’s really nice about this implementation is, it runs on devices that is not supported by other Iot platforms, like Android Things and Windows 10 Iot Core. It will run on the myriad of Linux based devices out there.

There is much more to show and tell. So there’s much more blogs to come on this topic! This will also include how Android Things and Xamarin Iot can work together to make cross platform Iot simpler.

But for now: Happy Xamarin Iot’ing! 🙂

Build 2015: Windows 10 IoT Preview on a Raspberry Pi 2

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015 apead

Day 1 of Build 2015 has been great! The IoT inclusions especially have been very exciting for me.

We now have Windows 10 IoT core released and running on:

Raspberry Pi 2
MinnowBoard Max
Galileo

Also very interesting and exciting news is, we have Arduino support from Microsoft.

Windows Remote Arduino
Windows Virtual Shields for Arduino

Let’s start by installing Windows 10 IoT Core Preview on a Raspberry PI 2. I know many of you that bought a PI just to do this, I know I did. 🙂

Start by downloading the “Windows_IoT_Core_RPI2_BUILD” from “https://connect.microsoft.com/windowsembeddedIoT/Downloads“. I had to accept some EULAs and click around before anything appeared to be selected for download. It could have also been a timing problem as I was a bit eager to download and perhaps it was not available that soon.

The requirement for the installation is a Windows 10 Build 10069 or higher PC to copy the Windows 10 IoT installation onto an SD card . I downloaded the new Windows 10 Build 10074 ISO that was released today from “http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso-update-1504“.

Install Windows 10. I ignored the recommendations and installed on a Virtual Machine (on VMWare) and not a physical PC. VMWare passes through the SD card without problems to Windows 10.

Once everything is installed, copy the “Flash.ffu” file from the downloaded “Windows_IoT_Core_RPI2_BUILD” zip file to a folder on the Windows 10 PC.

From an Administrator Command line run the following command:

diskpart
list disk
exit

Note the number of the disk associated with the SDCard.

Run the dism command replacing the N in “\PhysicalDriveN” to the number noted above.

dism.exe /Apply-Image /ImageFile:flash.ffu /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDriveN /SkipPlatformCheck

After a short wait, you should see: “Operation completed successfully”. Eject the SD card.

Insert the SD card into the SD card slot in the Raspberry PI 2. Plug the HDMI cable into the PI and of course the monitor. Plug the power cable into the Raspberry PI. After a few worrying minutes Windows 10 IoT should be all booted up. It will reboot once during the initial setup process and the interesting blocks displayed in-between the Windows Logo appearing and final boot-up seems normal.

Next step is to make it do something useful! 🙂

For full detail instructions you can follow this link: http://ms-iot.github.io/content/win10/SetupRPI.htm