ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS ON A RASPBERRY PI ZERO
The tiny version of the Raspberry Pi computer, the Pi Zero, is barely larger than a stick of gum yet is a full Linux-based computer. It's less powerful than the larger Pi 2 & 3 models, but it uses much less power than they do. It's a great field sensor platform for some applications, and super quick to implement in all sorts of projects. This canned environmental sensor attachment and running a Jupyter server on the Pi allows us to analyze/view the sensor data in a web-based Python notebook, directly on the Pi.RUNNING JASPER (INTERACTIVE SPEECH) ON A RASPBERRY PI ZERO
Here we attach a USB mic and audio amplifier/speaker add-on and implement the Jasper speech/voice-control agent on a Raspberry Pi Zero. It's not quite Alexa territory, maybe more like Alexa's temperamental little toddler brother, who doesn't always listen and is limited in what he can do and requires you to word your instructions really simply, but still he's pretty cute.RTL-SDR ON A RASPBERRY PI ZERO
The RTL-SDR is a popular little software-defined-radio USB stick -- at its simplest you literally just pop it into one of your computer's USB slots on one end, attach a cute little pre-made antenna onto the other end, and install a GUI based SDR app and start browsing the airwaves! So that was cool in terms of direct manual experimentation, but now I wanted to go a step farther and set it up for ongoing remote operation and logging of signals of interest, without taking up my notebook computer for it. I want to set it up on a Raspberry Pi in the corner and hide it away doing its thing, aside from occasionally connecting over network for troubleshooting or reconfiguration. And not just any Raspberry Pi, but as long as we're tucking things out of the way, let's see how far we can take this when using just a little Raspberry Pi Zero.INFRARED NIGHT VIEWING ON RASPBERRY PI ZERO, PART I
Attaching a near-infrared camera and taking nighttime photos in our back yard after dark.