Category: Raspberry Pi

PosterPi (Raspberry Pi-based Digital Poster/Picture Display)

PosterPi is a solution I created for turning a flat screen television into a virtual poster display. The script was written in Bash for Linux and designed to run on a Raspberry Pi. Although I designed PosterPi to display pictures of movie posters, it could easily be modified to display digital pictures, digital signage, or just about anything else. Once PosterPi is set up, it should automatically boot up, launch the script, read a list of posters (digital pictures) from a predetermined location, and begin displaying them in random order. My intention was for the entire process to begin without… (read more)

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Parting with Old Computers (It’s Dead, Jim)

Last weekend, I threw away a computer. I threw away a computer that I’ve been hanging on to for at least a decade. And the funny thing is, I couldn’t even tell you why I kept it all this time. From the outside, a Dell Dimension looks like a “modern” computer — and by modern I mean that if you passed by one sitting on a shelf, your first response probably wouldn’t be that it belonged in a museum. Instead, I’d expect you to say that you used to have a computer that looked just like it at work (or… (read more)

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Enabling the Aux HDMI Ports on an LG Hotel Television

I’m away from home this week, working in Texas and staying at a large hotel chain. I’ve been messing around with my Raspberry Pi a bunch lately, so I decided to bring one with me, assuming that the television in my room would have one or two unused HDMI ports that I could connect to. It did — it’s a 40″ LG television, with two HDMI ports available on the side. When you press the “Aux” button on the remote… …this is the menu that pops up. And when you select the second HDMI port, this is what you get:… (read more)

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Old Skool NES Raspberry Pi Case

Last year, Nintendo released the NES Classic Edition. It was a game console that looked like a tiny version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from the 80s. It had 30 built-in games and cost $59.95. Nintendo woefully underestimated demand for the console. Stores couldn’t keep them in stock, and when they did hit shelves, scalpers scooped them up and resold them online for huge profits. And then, with thousands of potential customers begging Nintendo to ramp up production, the company confusingly cancelled the product instead. This led lots of techie people to roll their own solutions, the most… (read more)

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Revisiting RetroPie

I’ve seen a lot of articles over the past month (most recently this one on Ars Technica) suggesting that people who can’t find one of those new NES Classic systems in stores should build their own using a Raspberry Pi. I even mentioned the Raspberry Pi as an alternative to a real NES back in September in my Guide to (Many) NES Alternatives article. Since then I’ve had several people ask me how difficult and time consuming it is to get a Raspberry Pi emulation system up and running from scratch. Today, I decided to build one from scratch. For… (read more)

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A Guide to (Many) NES Alternatives

Big Lots is already consolidating their Halloween shelves to make room for incoming Christmas-themed items. (Yes, in September.) One hot item for retrogamers this holiday season will be Nintendo’s official NES Classic Edition, a miniature version of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that comes with 30 games built-in and goes on sale on November 11, 2016.. If the last video game system you owned was an original NES, you may not be familiar with all the ways you can play those old NES games, which vary greatly in both quality and price. In this post I’ll be discussing all… (read more)

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The new Raspberry Pi Zero!

I’ve been a fan of the Raspberry Pi computer for some time now, although to be honest, I’m as big of a fan of the concept as I am of the actual computer itself. The Raspberry Pi is a small computer designed to run Linux that costs $35. On top of that price you’ll have to provide your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor, but chances are if you’re the type of person who is interested in a $35 computer that runs Linux, you probably have at least one spare keyboard, mouse, and monitor somewhere out in the garage. The original… (read more)

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Painting the Commodore Raspberry Pi Case

When we last saw it, the custom Commodore Raspberry Pi case my friend Aardvark made for me looked like this: Despite a few people’s suggestion to leave it as is, I always envisioned the case being painted the same color as a real Commodore 1541 disk drive. To chose the paint color I used the rather unscientific method of strolling through Walmart’s spray paint aisle and picking one by memory that looked close. Commodore 1541 disk drives tended to change color over time, which actually worked to my advantage. I gave the case a light hand sanding with some 200… (read more)

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Custom Commodore 64/1541 Raspberry Pi Case!

I currently own two cases for my Raspberry Pi. One is the gigantic red plastic case that came with it. The other is one I made out of a plastic Pop-Tart I bought at Big Lots. You can see both of those cases here. Enter my friend Aardvark. Aardvark is a very talented guy who plays guitar and once made a remote controlled phone. Aardvark also does CNC milling, and when he saw my terrible attempt at making my own Raspberry Pi case, he decided to take a stab at making one for me. The day after we had this… (read more)

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New Custom $2 Raspberry Pi Case

In a previous post I shared what the case my Raspberry Pi came with: It’s big and dumb. The other day while shopping in Big Lots, I ran across the following item: (To be honest, I’m not even sure what this thing is meant to do. It looks like it’s a thing that you could put Poptarts in to put them in a kid’s lunch or something. Huh.) The wheels began turning, and for $2, I had to find out. Pretty much everything I know about using a Dremmel, I learned from watching television. I know it spins really fast… (read more)

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