There are some great gadget ideas too
My Hull Pixelbot rugby article is in this month’s HackSpace magazine. It tells you how to add WiFi to your Raspberry Pi PICO powered robot and then control the robot from a web page. And maybe make a rugby team out of them.
And if you pick up a copy of the Raspberry Pi MagPi magazine (also a cracking read) you will find my article on making a haunted red telephone.
I think this camera works
Ages ago I bought a cheap old camera, just to get the lenses that came with it. Then I put a film in the camera just to see if it would work. It didn’t. The the pictures through the viewfinder looked sharp but the finished prints were full of blur. Now that I’m back into photography (in what seems like a big way) I thought I’d see about replacing the dodgy camera; a Canon 650, with another, less dodgy one. So I did. The replacement cost me ten pounds and came with a smart little case. I took it out for a walk today and shot a bunch of pictures.
Can you guess what time this picture was taken
This camera works a treat. It is fully automatic. It focusses, works out the exposure and even winds the film on after each shot. And it seems to be getting it all right too. I was using a “nifty fifty” (a prime lens with a 50mm focal length) that I happened to have lying around for these shots and they came out lovely and sharp. It allows full manual control too, if you want to make your pictures the hard way.
The whole thing brought home just how cheaply you can get into analogue photography. There is nothing wrong with the Canon 650 except hat it is out of fashion. It is very plasticky and a bit of an ugly lump. But that was the fashion in 1987 when it was released. As a first camera I think it would be hard to beat. You’ll have to find a lens for it (search for “canon ef 50mm”) and you will find that they tend to cost a bit more than the camera. However, you should be able to get started for less than the price of a modern video game. And there is always the chance that if you ask around the family someone might confess to having an old camera like this in the back of a wardrobe somewhere.
I’m certainly going to use my 650 quite a bit. While I quite like the process of working out the exposure and getting the focus right, it is rather nice to have a camera just do all that stuff for you every now and then.
Not sure why they make a big deal of “Open & Play”. We’ve been doing that with our games for years..
My Gold Mine is a nice little game. Particularly if you allow nice to mean “Setting up fellow players for a bit of dragon flambé”. The rules are simple enough. Each turn you have to decide whether to head for he exit or pick up some more gold and maybe move towards the dragon (a brave move).
The risk is that if you find yourself occupying the same position as the dragon you end up roasted and out of the round. Some of the moves let you mess with your fellow players, swapping places with them or dragging everyone towards the exit when you’re ahead in the game.
The game plays over three rounds and the tension racks up nicely as you head for the final that will decide the winner. It was great fun and comes strongly recommended. Even though I didn’t win..
The light was really nice this morning
One of the things about old cameras is that they like a bit of exercise. And, with the weight of some of them they give you a bit of exercise too. Ho ho. (With the increasing use of ChatGPT in these hallowed pages I feel I must make it clear that I personally came up with that line). Anyhoo, I loaded the Pentax 67 up with a roll of film and took it round the block today. The good news is that the camera made all the right clunking noises when I pressed the button. I processed the film and the pictures are all in the right place too which is nice (and not guaranteed with this model of camera). You get an awful lot of detail with a big negative, and the perspective of the lens is really nice.
More of these are coming to our area thanks to the wonders of de-regulation…
I didn’t order a brand new Raspberry Pi 5 when it was first announced. I think I managed to buy the earlier versions on release day, but for some reason this time I wasn’t that interested. However, I had a need for a fast Pi recently and so this week I finally got one.
It is really rather good.
When I got the Raspberry Pi 4 I was kind of expecting it to be a viable desktop alternative. After all, that is what some people were saying it was. It wasn’t. Browsing was slow and Visual Studio Code ran too slowly to be properly useful. But the Pi 5 is much more of a contender. Some of this might be down to the amount of memory available, my Pi 5 has 4G of ram which must help things along. I’m using it over VNC and I think I’d be happy enough to work there. Visual Studio Code seems to trundle along quite happily and web pages open instantly.
It is much more expensive than the original Pi. And of course you have to add the cost of the case, power-supply and micro-sd card to the total price. But for the money I reckon you get something pretty impressive and properly useful. And if you want to go back to the days of tiny, cheap Raspberry Pi’s you just have get yourself a Pi Zero.
Not bad for a 20 year old camera
Took the Lumix DMC-LC5 camera for a walk earlier in the week and I’ve only just got round to getting the pictures out of it. The camera was created by Leica and Panasonic, has an amazing lens and a tiny (by modern standards) sensor. However it is particularly good with some colours, particularly red.
The water levels are quite high at the moment
I must get into the habit of taking these old devices out every now and then. They are quite fun.
It was a quiet meetup on Wednesday this week. Just three of us chatting about 3D printers, life and the universe. It’s always fun to go down to Hull Makerspace and see what people are doing. If you fancy joining us the next one is on Wednesday 7th of February when we will be doing some Robot Rugby. Come along and pick a side. We’ll be starting at around 5:30 pm and going on until around 7:00 pm in Hull Makerspace in the Central Library in Hull.
Hey there, Raspberry Pi enthusiasts! Are you tired of summoning sudo every time you need to commune with your Pico debug probe? Fear not! Today, we're delving into a nifty trick to make your Pico probe obedient without the superuser incantations. And for those of you using Visual Studio Code, this trick is a game-changer.
Summoning sudo for debugging is like wearing a full suit to a casual brunch; it's overkill and can be risky. Moreover, when you're using elegant tools like Visual Studio Code, running the debugger as a superuser inside the tool is a bit tricky. Let's simplify this, shall we?
In the Linux realm, udev rules are like spells that control how the system interacts with various devices. By crafting a specific udev rule, we can grant ourselves permission to access the Pico debug probe without escalating our privileges to the superuser level.
Most Pico debug probes share the same Vendor and Product IDs, so we can usually use a standard rule for all. Here's how to do it:
The Magic Numbers: For the Pico debug probe, the typical IDs are: Vendor ID 2e8a and Product ID 000c. We'll use these in our rule.
Creating Your Rule: Head over to /etc/udev/rules.d/ and conjure a new file called 99-pico-debug-probe.rules Sprinkle the following line into it:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2e8a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="000c", MODE="0666"This incantation essentially tells your system, "Hey, let everyone read and write to this device, will you?"
Enforcing the Rule: To make the rule take effect, use this spell:
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm triggerGot a different device? No problem! Plug it in, run lsusb, and look for the ID format VendorID:ProductID. Use these values to create a custom rule.
Your new rule is like a loyal house-elf, diligently working after every reboot, ensuring smooth, sudo-free access to your debug probe.
And there you have it! A simple yet elegant solution to make your debugging sessions with Raspberry Pi Pico as smooth as butter. No more sudo, no more hassle, especially when you're working in sophisticated environments like Visual Studio Code.
Happy debugging, and may your code be bug-free!
Author’s note: I didn’t write this. ChatGPT did. I worked with ChatGPT to solve my problem and then asked it to write a blog post about the solution “In the style of Rob Miles”. I’m quite proud of this, although I didn’t do much of the work….
I’ve signed up for a ChatGPT subscription. It’s become very useful and I want to see what else it can do. Just for giggles I’ve created a GPT from the text of the C# Yellow Book. You can ask it questions about the text and it seems to give quite sensible answers. I’ve made it public and you should be able to find it here.
Thanks again Dal-e
On Radio Humberside talking about cold batteries. Apparently Tick Tockers (whatever they are) have been noticing that they can’t make as many videos on their phone in the cold weather. This is what I said:
Low temperature increases the “internal resistance” of the battery. This limits the amount of power you can get from it. It also means that to get a certain level of performance it takes more power out of the battery.
Electric cars are affected too. They heat up the battery in cold weather. If you have the car plugged in at home you can “pre-condition” the battery to warm it up. This can improve the range, which is a good idea in winter because cold substantially reduces range (at least by a third).
Always Be Charging. There’s no advantage in running your lithium battery right down before charging it (in fact flattening a lithium battery can destroy it). Keep your battery charged every chance you get. The only reason to let the battery run down is so that the phone can work out the battery life.
Keep your phone in an inside pocket so that you keep it warm.
If you give your phone something hard to do this will warm it up (although of course it will also flatten the battery). There are even “hand-warmer” apps that do this – but they are not a particularly good idea.
Charge the battery when it is warmer.
Warm your phone up before you do something that consumes a lot of power.
Nice work Dal-E. Not sure about the number of door handles though….
Our Nissan Cube is getting on a bit. As are we all. He’s not perfect, but he is good enough to pass the MOT test for another year. I’m going to get his underside comprehensively clarted with wax and whatnot to try and stave of the inevitable onset of rust (poetic prose) but it is nice to have him around for at least one more year.
Printer Poop produced when switching colours
We’re having a hardware meetup next Wednesday evening at Hull Makerspace in the Central Library in Hull. We’ll be opening 5:30 pm with a presentation of 3D printing lithophanes and the HueForge program starting around 6:00 pm. We’ll finish around 7:00pm
There’s no need to book, just turn up and look interested. If you’ve got anything to show off we’d love to see it.
I’ve Cropped off the very dark areas
I thought it might be fun to make a lithophane of a colour test chart just to get an idea of how well colours are resolved and what colours you could get. Above you can see the original chart. I ran it through Colour Lithophane Maker and then printed it.
This is 0.1mm layers with a 0.4mm nozzle
This is the lithophane that I got. Quite interesting. I think it might be worth running your images through a “posterise” filter of some kind before making the lithophane.
Looks like rain dear
Today I’ve filed my tax return and merged two branches in GitHub.
What a man…
The computer is eight years old though….
What do you think I was doing to raise the CPU loading to the dizzy heights you can see above?
Well, I was moving some files from one folder to another. There were quite a few files, but even so.
I think I need a new computer.
Just plug your Pixelbot into your computer to set up the network
The latest version of the Raspberry Pi PICO Powered Pixelbot (I love a bit of alliteration) now supports Wi-Fi programming. You can connect your robot to your local network and then use a web interface to create and deploy programs into the robot. You can find all the details, plus the images you need to put into your PICO-W here.
The MakerSpace is a good looking place..
I’ve put together a schedule for hardware meetups for the first part of this year:
I'll bring in some examples of colour printing and show how to use Bambu Studio to colourise prints and create lithopanes. I'll also show off some work made with HueForge (https://thehueforge.com/)
We'll set up a Hull Pixelbot rugby match and get a game going.
I'll bring in a bunch of MIDI music devices (some Pico and Pi powered) and we'll have a go at making some tunes
I'll show you how to get started taking analogue photographs on instant and black and white home-processed film. If we can have access to running water in the Hackspace we can take a bunch of pictures and process them on the night.
All the meetups are in the Makerspace in the Central Library in Hull. Doors open at 5:30 pm and we start the presentations and whatnot at 6:00pm after some chat. We finish around 7:15pm or so. Anyone can turn up and you don’t need to book. If you have a topic that you’d like us to cover (or better yet you fancy running a session yourself) get in touch. If you want find out more you can find it all on our Mattermost page here.
Every time they failed to deliver the chair they added a new one to the order…
We needed a chair bed to put up a family member at Christmas. So we ordered one. The delivery came and went, and came and went again. Chairs were not delivered owing to “un-foreseen circumstances”.
There are worse things in life than missing out on chair deliveries. Although after four attempts where we had changed our arrangements to fit around their schedule we were getting a bit fed up.
The chair arrived today. Just three weeks or so late. It is very nice. They’ve sent me an email asking for my opinion of the service they provided. Every single person I dealt with, from the folks on the first call to the delivery team, has been lovely to deal with. But I’m forced to conclude that they are trapped in a system which is not working very well.
Built some shelves today. There were no nuts or bolts, the parts just needed to be slotted together and tapped into place. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve made something using a hammer.
A few attempts and the camera I’m trying to use
I’ve been trying to print Minox film cassettes for a while now with no success. I love the Minox system for its tinyness and amazing design, not to mention the nice pictures you can get with it. But I’ve only got a few film cassettes and I’m too mean to buy any more. So I thought I’d print some with my lovely new printer. It kind of works. The finished articles are almost useable. But not quite. Even if I use the high resolution 0.2mm nozzle. The problem is that some of the sides of the cassette lids are just one strand of filament wide. The printer can print these just fine, but they haven’t got enough strength to stay attached to the lid for very long, as you can see above.
I’d be happy to trace printability for film length: in other words a 24 shot exposure film held in a cassette that has double thick walls would be just fine with me. Unfortunately I’ve not found a way to tweak the design just yet. If anyone reading this can point me at designs I can work with I’d love to have another go.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
Begin to Code with JavaScript is now available for purchase and download. You can find it here
