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Raspberry Pi controlling a LED cube with Python

The above LED cube [VoxCube] is being controlled via a Raspberry Pi, using python and the official Raspberry Pi display.

Buttons were setup using the Kivy. Kivy is a Python library which makes creating buttons and events with a touchscreen very easy.

Here is a very good guide on how to get Kivy setup on a Raspberry Pi.
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Pan and Tilt control for the Raspberry Pi Camera

I was fortunate enough to get access to a prototype of Pi-Pan from www.mindsensors.com during their kickstarter.
The kickstarter has finished and they reached their goal.   However they will be selling Pi-Pan from www.mindsensors.com at a future date.


Pi-Pan provides Pan and tilt movements for your Raspberry Pi Camera.
Pi-Pan can pan 180 degrees (from left to right) and tilt 110 degrees (top to bottom).

Pi-Pan comes with two servos, a controller board, screws, a mount and instructions.  It also comes with some python code that shows how the device can be operated.

(The controller board in the image below is a prototype and the production board will be a lot smaller.)

pipan-opt pipan2-opt pipanparts-opt

 

Expand the Number of GPIO Pins on the Raspberry PI

As of revision 2 boards, there is space to add some header pins to get access to eight more GPIO pins. These are found on the Header 5. Highlighted below.

Raspberry Pi P5 header

Raspberry Pi P5 header

 

 

Here are their functions;
Raspberry Pi P5 header GPIO P5

  • P5-Pin1 - 5v0
  • P5-Pin2 - 3.3v
  • P5-Pin3 - GPIO28
  • P5-Pin4 - GPIO30
  • P5-Pin5 - GPIO29
  • P5-Pin6 - GPIO31
  • P5-Pin7 - GND
  • P5-Pin8 - GND

I needed some more pins for PiBBOT as I want to change my TFT to a character OLED which needed more pins then I had spare, so I decided to make use of these extra pins.

Here are the results, I soldered the head onto the underside of the Pi so I could plug in an IDC cable.

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