CRT - Cat Residence Tenement

 

The Cathode Ray Tube revolutionised how we saw graphical display and has been around for a good number of years. But due to its high power consumption and bulkiness, the CRT has been replaced with more efficient display technologies like the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and LED (Light Emitting Diode) and Plasma. The result is a high number of waste CRT tubes lying in warehouses and homes, un-used.

I being a user of the CRT, my old Compaq V570 15 Inch PC screen has been lying around and didnt know what to do with it. In all my electronic experiments, my curious cat has always been watching as I work and the recent cold days in Nairobi have not spared him either. To stop him from sleeping in electical cables when he's bored, I designed the CRT - Cat Residence Tenement. This will see my cat (Patches) get a snoozing home during the day/night. I removed the tube and wires plus cobwebs, cleaned up the corners and laid several layers of cardboard and in the future, include a small blanket.

Cheap & Durable Raspberry Pi Case

Since the Raspberry Pi was released, there has been a frenzy to make a case for it since the Pi comes as a circuit-board or motherboard only. There have been many individuals who have invested some cool cases for the pi and even some using LEGO bricks to achieve this. Great work.

 However these do not come easy for the pocket, which will not go inline with the whole idea of making the Pi cheap, so I have made one that is a recycle from the many devices that we buy.

Raspberry Pi Basic Setup - Hardware

Since I got my hands on the Raspberry Pi (Model B) its been tinkering and tinkering. As you can see in the image above, I built my own case with the help of JKUAT Arch. colleague of mine who assisted with the dimensions and the white cardboard.
Away from that, today I want to show you the basic hardware that when out together with the Pi will make a successful run.

Wind Power Kenya is 3 Years Old

Happy New Year to all my readers, hope your year started on a high voltage. Today Wind Power Kenya turns 3 years old, a milestone and remarkable achievement it is. Looking back its been a long and informative electric journey and I am very thankful to you all for taking time to read, comment  & correct me where I make a mistake.

Now this year will be one very busy for me as I try to master my Chinese - which I started learning last year May. Yeah, Chinese is not easy but al make it. Also since now I have my Raspberry Pi and Arduino UNO there is pressure to put them to work so I will be juggling very many things. Anyway Chinese will come first so the rest can chill a little bit. Also I want to start a year long project to model an outdoor  substation so a s to lean what happens inside to detail.

Anyway, that's my year planned, lemme celebrate this achievement :-) [circuit open]

My Raspberry Pi Model B

The Raspberry Pi is perhaps the most sought after device by programmers, hobbyists, electronics gurus,modders and hackers in the embedded systems realms. It also doubles up as a powerful, energy efficient, light and flexible home multimedia system that can work across many peripherals.

So much is the usage that 24hrs after its release, it went out of stock leaving many disappointed. However soon after stocks were replenished and currently its available but not yet in Kenya, sad :-(

The updated model, Model B is the latest in the series from its predecessor, Model A. Am going to cover details later. So mine arrived 2weeks ago and since then its been exploring the device, day in day out, and to say the least about this device....its great. So lets get into details about this device

• Introduction
• General Specifications
• Unboxing
• Usage & Images
• More specs and hacks

Introduction.
In the simplest of terms the Raspberry Pi is small ATM card sized computer developed in UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the main intention to teaching basic computer skills in schools. Its distributed by Element 14 and RS Electronics online. The device is quite simple in design and appearance further enhancing its main purpose. There are 2 Models, A and B with B being the latest (29th Feb 2012) and the best. A was released much earlier so am going to concentrate on Model B.

General Specifications.
From an engineering perspective specs are what describe a machine and not paragraphs of information so am going to list the specs in the most understandable manner.

1. Processor: Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (System on a Chip) - ARM1176JZF-S 700Mhz (can be overclocked to 1.3GHz [danger tho'])
2. GPU: VideoCore IV
3. RAM: 512Mb