Last time, I talked about setting up my Pi Pico by soldering on the GPIO pins and wiring up an LCD screen. Having something work is obviously no fun. I need another challenge.
I decided to update the display to show the current temperature. I’d read that the Pico has a built-in temperature sensor, so how hard could it be?
I quickly took the sample code from the Pico website and plugged it in. It ran first time, which is quite impressive, and said that it was currently… 10º.
It’s been a productive weekend, at least if you consider doing unnecessary things productive.
For reasons that won’t become clear any time soon, I decided that I wanted to get some of my Arduino components working with my new Raspberry Pi Pico. Like the Arduino, but unlike other Pis, the Pico is a microcontroller. In practical terms – for a programmer at least – this means it doesn’t have a “proper” operating system like Linux but it does have lots of inputs and outputs, both digital and analogue.
Back in 2020 I talked about my Raspberry Pi powered Christmas Tree. Today’s blog delves into what I’ve done this year.
Previously, I decided that setting up a web server on which family members could change the light patterns on the tree was too boring. At the time, I was thinking of extending the sample Python code – much as I did with the OpenCV frontend – with a simple Python-based web server.
Last year I got myself a Raspberry Pi-powered Christmas Tree. It has eleven LEDs, and you can program the Pi to switch them on and off.
Naturally, doing all that takes time, and last year I just didn’t have very much. I just downloaded the sample project and set it up with a random flashing pattern.
It amused me, anyway.
This year I wanted to get a little more sophisticated. I decided that it should be interactive. My first thought was a web server where people could connect using their phones and change the LED patterns. Then I thought better of it. Because of COVID we have no guests, rendering it far less interesting. Also, setting up a web server is hardly very exciting.