Tag Archives: Adafruit

Double Dabble for a Compact Clock

I like clocks, and the digital variety make fun little projects. Here’s an example: a tiny LED timepiece based on a trio of Adafruit Feather parts.

Compact time-teller
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Want to bake an Apple Pi? Here’s how you can, for a fiver

Bear with me on this one. What really makes the Raspberry Pi what it is? Linux? No, because there are plenty of machines the open source OS will run on. Linux is a Unix derivative; the basis of macOS is FreeBSD, also a Unix derivative.

Sure the Pi is only 40 quid and small, but for me what really makes the Pi stand out from all those laptop and desktop computers is the fact that it makes its microcontroller’s GPIO pins readily accessible through a handy set of header pins. Unlike all ‘serious’ micros, it’s perfect for connecting to and controlling a whole stack of add-ons, including sensors, displays inputs and actuators.

IMG_0230

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Make a Mac ‘Task Done’ NeoPixel notification light

Update There’s now a new post containing revised, working instructions for this project.

Note This article was written some time ago, and the libraries used do not work with recent versions of macOS.

I regularly back-up my Raspberry Pi storage card because it’s so easy to damage the card with an improper shutdown or some such. I back up to a Mac, and you can read how I do it here. This wasn’t much of a chore in the early days when I was working with 4GB cards, but now I use 16GB Micro SDs and I know of folks who have much, much larger storage capacities thanks to never-cheaper cards. All this means the back-up takes a long time. So I wondered if I could create a gadget to tell me the task was done, allowing me to get on with other jobs in the meantime.

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