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by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:54 pm
Forum: Troubleshooting
Topic: Googles slides won't show up in Chromium
Replies: 1
Views: 249

Re: Googles slides won't show up in Chromium

It should work. Try another slides from somewhere? If it doesn't, report a bug at bugs.chromium.org.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:52 pm
Forum: Off topic discussion
Topic: Burning down California
Replies: 18
Views: 4852

Re: Burning down California

Flying into San Francisco on Monday, wondering how bad it will be.

On a related note, I hope rpiboy is safe (no post since latest wave of hurricanes, but if he's in Puerto Rico that could be due to lack of power).
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:42 pm
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Backup battery for Pi Zero in a car
Replies: 3
Views: 1408

Re: Backup battery for Pi Zero in a car

Easiest thing is to go to a discount store (e.g. "dollar" store) and get one of those little USB battery backup things. Use its USB output to help power the Pi. Use its charge input to keep it charged. It should have overcharge protection built in. Now, how to get it all hooked up, I'm not sure. But...
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:37 pm
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Raspbian with Read-only Root
Replies: 195
Views: 102763

Re: Raspbian with Read-only Root

Google has many incentives to ensure Android phones are updated, and provides incentives to manufacturers to do so. Unfortunately, there is a cost and manufacturers generally do not like to pay it. Ultimately, it comes down to how much (in)security consumers are willing to tolerate, and so far consu...
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:29 pm
Forum: Gaming
Topic: Mini retro computer, eg. Amiga, C64?
Replies: 6
Views: 1649

Re: Mini retro computer, eg. Amiga, C64?

Actually, doesn't one of the WD PiDrive thingies do just this (be able to boot a variety of OSes off the hard drive)? I'd look into that as a solution that doesn't require physically swapping microSD cards.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:27 pm
Forum: Gaming
Topic: Setting up Raspbian compatablitity with N64 cpu
Replies: 4
Views: 940

Re: Setting up Raspbian compatablitity with N64 cpu

It is possible to add processing power to a Raspberry Pi by adding extra Pi Zero boards in "gadget mode". See clusterhat.com for details.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:26 pm
Forum: Advanced users
Topic: Communication between multiple Arduino and single Raspberry Pi
Replies: 16
Views: 10107

Re: Communication between multiple Arduino and single Raspberry Pi

Just a note that if they were all close together, the answer might have been I2C.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 14, 2017 10:24 pm
Forum: Automation, sensing and robotics
Topic: Echo and Google Home on Same Pi?
Replies: 3
Views: 1744

Re: Echo and Google Home on Same Pi?

I'd like to put Amazon Alexa on my AIY (which already runs a sort of Google Home) and somehow be able to select which one I talk to. So I'm interested as well.
by mlepage
Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:31 pm
Forum: Off topic discussion
Topic: is software harder than hardware? :)
Replies: 43
Views: 12937

Re: is software harder than hardware? :)

The only other thing I want to say is it's easy to try a bit of hardware or software and feel it's "easy". Do a bit of soldering, read a data sheet, hook something up to an Arduino, and it's easy. Write a Hello World, respond to a web request, put an entry in a database, and it's easy. This of cours...
by mlepage
Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:27 pm
Forum: Interfacing (DSI, CSI, I2C, etc.)
Topic: Get Pi to turn on an arduino?
Replies: 3
Views: 934

Re: Get Pi to turn on an arduino?

Just guessing but I suppose you could make scripts for shutdown which would directly (via GPIO) control the relay.
by mlepage
Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:16 pm
Forum: Other projects
Topic: Use 2 raspberry pi to send pictures to a computer as fast as possible
Replies: 1
Views: 531

Re: Use 2 raspberry pi to send pictures to a computer as fast as possible

My understanding is that you can use two Pi Zero in USB gadget mode, each with a camera and some processing capability. They both would plug into a Pi 3. Maybe that would be enough processing power?
by mlepage
Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:14 pm
Forum: Interfacing (DSI, CSI, I2C, etc.)
Topic: Get Pi to turn on an arduino?
Replies: 3
Views: 934

Re: Get Pi to turn on an arduino?

Won't the lighting require its own power supply and relays? Maybe just use an extra relay to provide power to the Arduino, controlling the relay from the Pi.
by mlepage
Sun Oct 08, 2017 8:48 pm
Forum: HATs and other add-ons
Topic: Receive 'struct' from Arduino with Raspberry Pi (Python)
Replies: 2
Views: 1839

Re: Receive 'struct' from Arduino with Raspberry Pi (Python)

No idea, but this example https://tmrh20.github.io/RF24/pingpair_dyn_8py-example.html has: radio = RF24(22, 0) radio.enableDynamicPayloads() len = radio.getDynamicPayloadSize() receive_payload = radio.read(len) receive_payload.decode('utf-8') If the Python is just a wrapper, then it should have func...
by mlepage
Sun Oct 08, 2017 5:27 pm
Forum: Raspberry Pi OS
Topic: chromium-browser source code
Replies: 14
Views: 3996

Re: chromium-browser source code

Raw Chromium code is here: https://www.chromium.org/developers/how ... t-the-code

I don't know if that includes building for Raspberry Pi. Note that you would still typically build for Raspberry Pi on Windows, Mac, or Linux (i.e. cross-compile).
by mlepage
Sat Oct 07, 2017 11:22 pm
Forum: Beginners
Topic: Curious thing
Replies: 15
Views: 2165

Re: Curious thing

I had a dd write fail, then succeed when I did it again. If at first it doesn't succeed, try try again.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:04 pm
Forum: Beginners
Topic: 64 bit distro
Replies: 4
Views: 1711

Re: 64 bit distro

The answer is more or less no.
by mlepage
Sat Oct 07, 2017 9:58 pm
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Why no enthusiast Raspberry Pi products?
Replies: 53
Views: 8478

Re: Why no enthusiast Raspberry Pi products?

What's eating up the education market around here (southern Ontario) is Chromebooks. A Pi 3 is $50 CAD bare, whereas a Chromebook is $250, and comes with an Intel Celeron chipset (handy for dual booting Linux using Crouton), 4 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD, USB 3, ruggedized case, display, keyboard, trackpad, c...
by mlepage
Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:39 am
Forum: Off topic discussion
Topic: is software harder than hardware? :)
Replies: 43
Views: 12937

Re: is software harder than hardware? :)

I work on both software and hardware. Remember that BOM (cost to manufacture) tends to limit hardware, on the one side. And on the otherwise, sometimes you have software writing software. In my opinion, software is usually more complex in general. But each case is different, and each domain brings w...
by mlepage
Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:32 am
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?
Replies: 14
Views: 8338

Re: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?

Thanks for all the tips. Trust me I'm not new to computers or to Linux. What I was most interested in, was people's experience running the Pi as desktop and advice for doing so, which a few of you have provided. I'd be curious to know if Chromium has any settings which can be tweaked. As it happens,...
by mlepage
Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:20 am
Forum: Other projects
Topic: Pi laptop
Replies: 1
Views: 640

Re: Pi laptop

I was hoping to, someday. I was thinking of using one of the older Apple Wireless Keyboards, without numeric keypad, to put in as the keyboard, since it's quite thin (once you remove the place for AA batteries of course).
by mlepage
Tue Oct 03, 2017 3:39 am
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?
Replies: 14
Views: 8338

Re: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?

Thanks guys.

I removed the CPU usage monitor from the LXDE top panel, and instead added the resource monitor, which can graph CPU and memory usage, so I could keep an eye on it. (Maybe that should be default.)

I'll try gpu_mem=256 for a while and see how it goes. (Default is 64.)
by mlepage
Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:44 am
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?
Replies: 14
Views: 8338

Re: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?

Understood. My OCZ Vertex 2 is apparently around 250 MB/s. The SD card maxes out at 40 MB/s (interface limitation). So it could be faster, but not that fast, because USB 2 itself is limited to 60 MB/s, but I'm reading that practical limit is only about 40 MB/s. And it's a shared bus. :-( Really need...
by mlepage
Tue Oct 03, 2017 2:11 am
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?
Replies: 14
Views: 8338

Re: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?

So an SSD through USB? Will that be faster? What's the fastest MB/s I could get for read/write, assuming a sufficiently fast SSD? (I have an OCZ Vertex 2 I could use.)
by mlepage
Tue Oct 03, 2017 1:56 am
Forum: General discussion
Topic: Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?
Replies: 14
Views: 8338

Using Pi as Desktop, how to manage RAM?

I've been experimenting for a week with using the Raspberry Pi 3 as my desktop, using the latest (Sep 2017) Raspbian. As you can imagine, the challenges are limited CPU, and low (1 GB) RAM. I am keeping htop running in a terminal so I can monitor the CPU usage of all 4 cores, and also the memory usa...

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