Atari ST/STE/Mega ST/STE – connecting to a VGA monitor in color mode

The Atari ST/STE/Mega ST/STE computers had dedicated monitors to support the graphics modes that were implemented by the engineers who left Commodore with Jack Tramiel in 1984: mono – black and white – 640×400 resolution, 35KHz horizontal frequency, 71Hz vertical frequency – which is available on most VGA monitors color – standard 16 colors from a palette of 512 (9-bit) or 4096 (12-bit) on the STE – resolution was 320×200, horizontal frequency 15KHz, vertical frequency 50 or 60Hz, which is a bit of a problem…

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RGB2HDMI boards

Atari ST / STE: hardware mod gives perfect HDMI picture thanks to the RGB2HDMI and Raspberry Pi Zero

RGB2HDMI for Atari ST/STE is a great project to add modern video to an old home computer. How old? Atari ST is almost 40 years old (today: 37), based on a 16 /32 bit MC68000 processor with 8MHz clock and a maximum of whole 4MB RAM. Nowadays, almost every new micro-controller is much faster and more capable, but this is not what makes it iteresting – that would be the nostalgia. Thanks to this “noSTalgia”, new versions of games are still created today – i.e., …

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Raspberry Pi Zero W with camera

Raspberry Pi Zero – updating the gate opener with water meter OCR

Introduction My Raspberry Pi 1B+ has been opening garage and letting me know of the conditions for work nearly 4 years. Recently I’ve decided to replace this 2014 small board computer (SBC) with newer version. I’ve also looked at better (the principle Keep it Small and Simple – KISS) solutions that became available – i.e. ESP Easy on ESP8266 (controlling the relay and reading the contact switch is not too much for this platform, even with addition of environmental sensors), but after some thinking –…

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Domoticz, InfluxDB, Grafana

Domoticz part 5: Grafana, InfluxDB, Telegraf – beautiful and easy graphs

Grafana is the answer to the nagging question we’be been asking ourselves over the years – how to quickly and nicely present our data gathered from devices. InfluxDB on the other hand is the database that is as easy and simple to use, thus making it an ideal candidate for this job. Let me show you how to quickly and easily put our data from domoticz and other devices to InfluxDB and then using Grafana – display in much more useful way than default domoticz…

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Raspberry Pi 4 Top View

Raspberry Pi 4 – a surprise but also radical change in the project’s direction

The new Raspberry Pi 4 is a very interesting change in the direction of the original project. Why? I will summarize what we already know, right after the premiere: new CPU, with much more computing power – not because of the clock, but ARM cores in version A72. The execution process – 28nm, is perhaps not the newest (it has never been) and, as tests show – the current is the higher temperature of the plate, and clearly the warmer PMIC system than in RPi…

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Wyświetlacz OLED SSD1306 - tekst

0.96″ OLED SSD1306 display and Raspberry Pi

[Update: 2019-03-30] Our reader, Paweł Kopacz, noticed that pip, setuptools and wheel are also needed Quick and visually compelling projects don’t come easy ? Naaah, just like last time – let’s get on a very nice and easy project – attaching display onto Raspberry Pi. As we were chating on the Malinowe Pi Group, Hubert Wu pointed me to a OLED 128×64 display, monochrome. With a quite decent resolution of 128×64 and based on OLED technology this is a nice 0.96 inch display. Well, my…

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SMOG = Raspberry Pi B z SDS011

[UPDATED 03-02-2018] SMOG sensor – 2,5 and 10 micro meter particles

[Last changes]: 07-11-2017: Additional data from richer stations, Open-Smog Integration 20-12-2017: USB power control on Raspberry Pi 3, thanks to reader 02-03-2018: New API from GIOŚ Poland SMOG is common nowadays in big cities. Let’s put together a working, precise own SMOG sensor, first for the 2,5 and 10 μm size particles. There is one issue – the choices are many, but only few are reliable, precise and have affordable price. Finally – after a log searching, I’ve chosen Nova Fitness SDS011: precision is OK fan…

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ESP8266 ESP Easy MEGA 2.0

ESP8266 and SMOG part four: Sleep mode for SDS011 in ESPEasy MEGA 2.0

The SMOG sensor project became a bit complex – along with the addition of relay. In the mean time thanks to Gijs Noorlander and yours- since you build, ask and use the sensor – we got updated version of ESPEasy MEGA 2.0 for ESP8266. Why the new blog entry? That’s because Gijs added the included in SDS011 function that when sent over serial connections allows to put SDS011 to sleep. Simple, elegant solution to extend the life and quality of the measurements of the SDS011…

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CCS811 & BME680 with Raspberry Pi 0 W

Measuring air quality using Bosch BME680 and AMS CCS811 – IAQ, TVOC, eCO2

Measurement of basic environmental data in our apartment – temperature and humidity is one of the most popular applications of commonly available sensors for Raspberry Pi (RPi), Orange Pi (OPi) and ESP8266. Then we added ability to measure the SMOG otuside and inside and today we will deal with two new and very interesting air quality sensors.

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