Devices/Embedded: BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi, and More
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Embedded Linux course labs now available on Beagle Bone - Bootlin's blog
Following the release of the improved version of our embedded Linux course, we are happy to announce that we have finished porting our new labs to the BeagleBone Black and BeagleBone Black wireless boards.
Actually, other BeagleBone boards based on the TI AM335x System on Chip (“blue” or “green” for example), should be easy to use as they are very similar and their connectors are compatible.
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Raspberry Pi Turns Its IQAudio HATs Green | Tom's Hardware
Raspberry Pi has revamped many of its audio add-ons, replacing the previously black PCBs of the HATs with green ones to match the SBCs they’re paired with. There are a few minor layout and connector alterations too, but otherwise, the boards remain functionally unchanged. In a blog post, Raspberry Pi-maker Eben Upton explained what’s going on.
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Raspberry Pi Drives 'Sidecar' Internet Access for Psion PDA | Tom's Hardware
Maker and developer Kian Ryan has a huge passion for old-school technology. When it came time to tinker around with a Psion PDA from the 90s, he knew he had to throw a Raspberry Pi into the mix. Today, we’re showing off his Sidecar creation that uses a Raspberry Pi to function as both a working Linux serial terminal as well as a modem to connect the Psion to the internet.
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Cool Pi 4: The RK3588S Eight-Core Raspberry Pi Alternative | Tom's Hardware
For those times when the Raspberry Pi 4 just isn’t powerful enough, Cool Pi has a new board that can offer a little more in the way of processing ability. The Cool Pi 4 B is the same size and shape as the Raspberry Pi board, but features an eight-core CPU and an NPU, plus 8K video too. It’s also more expensive, but there seem to be plenty in stock.
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Raspberry Pi Pico Powers Armachat Touch Doomsday Computer | Tom's Hardware
Maker Bobricius is at it again with another Raspberry Pi-powered doomsday creation—the Armachat Touch Picomputer. This custom PCB is powered by our favorite microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico. It features a keyboard for input and allows users to communicate directly using LoRa wireless communication.
This is one of several “Doomsday Computers” that Bobricius has made involving some version of the Pi. Previous editions include support for the Raspberry Pi Zero. This one is Pico-powered with a slew of exciting features like an LED-backlit keyboard for text input and glowing green LEDs.
According to Bobricius, his PCB doesn’t use any additional chip for processing apart from the Raspberry Pi Pico. He’s able to run the entire operation using the Pico alone with the help of some software he obtained from Adafruit. With his custom configuration, he’s able to handle input from 30 separate keys via 12 GPIO on the Pico using a CircuitPython library called Touchio.
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Raspberry Pi Pico Easily Connects Guests to Your Wi-Fi | Tom's Hardware
The $4 Raspberry Pi Pico, and its $6 Wi-Fi enabled sibling the Raspberry Pi Pico W have proven to be an excellent foundation for great projects and this QR code display project from Predrag Mijatovic is inspired. The simple aim of the project is to display a QR code that enables a device to connect to Wi-Fi.
Mijatovic's project "qr_wifi" displays a QR code to enable guests to connect to a guest Wi-Fi network. The QR code stores the SSID, security (WEP/WPA) and password details for the network connection. All the user has to do is scan the code with their device's camera and their device will connect.
What interests us the most is the approach taken which sees a Raspberry Pi Pico accessory, specifically Waveshare's Pico OLED 1.3 inch (64 x 128 pixels) screen display the QR code. All of the code for the project is written in MicroPython and in the video we can see Mijatovic generate the QR code using qrencode, a useful terminal command to generate QR codes from data. The QR code is written to a text file as ASCII text.