MY latest home improvement - removed wall for an "Open Concept"

I have removed the wall between the dining room and kitchen.  This creates an open concept, making the living room and kitchen seem bigger.

Being a mobile home there was already two 8 inch by 2 inch laminated beams down the center.  There was a one inch gap in the center between the beams that was filled with plywood to bring the beam size to 8 inches by 5 inches.  The existing wall was not a supporting wall as it was only under one of the beams and was made out of two pieces, having a top and bottom half.  The beam was then covered with 1 by 8's to make it look better.

To fix the floor was a little bit tricky as the flooring material was no longer available.  I found some similar laminated flooring that almost matched the old flooring and then used that.  I used a real oak bridge to fill the gap between the laminate of the living room and the kitchen flooring.

Raspberry Pi with 2.4 inch parallel interface TFT LCD

After about 2 weeks of trying I finally got a parallel interface LCD to work in Python.  I converted the code from C for the Arduino.  It did not appear to be working until I slowed it way down and discovered little lines appearing on one of the LCD's.  The driver is roughly a ILI9325 driver based on the Arduino code and the ILI9325 specifications.

The picture shows two screens and they both work with the same software.

Here is what the text looks like on the other screen.

Here is the first video demonstrating that it works.


Here is a second video, I added a Analog to Digital converter and made an "Etch-a-Sketch".

2016 Chaffee NY Hamfest

The 2016 Chaffee Hamfest was last weekend.  It was supposed to rain so we used the pavilions.  It was a little too windy for my books so I kept them in a box, and hence did not sell many of them.  I did sell about 1/2 of the stuff that I brought.

This first picture is of my stuff for sale.

 Here is the next pavilion.

Here is a picture of the main pavilion.

 This next picture is of the Pioneer school's stuff.

I used to go to a lot of Hamfests but these days I only get to two or three of them every year.

My Respberry Pi family is expanding.

The Raspberry Pi Zero was supposed to be a $5 single board computer.  However they were quickly bought up and resold for $25 or more.  With the introduction of the Raspberry Pi Zero camera edition the prices are now coming down to around $18.  So I bought one and a kit to be able to use it for another $15.  To be able to use the Zero you will need a micro SD card with NOOBS on it, a 5V 2 Amp AC adapter, a mini USB to regular USB adapter/hub and a Mini HDMI to regular HDMI adapter/cable.  A case to hold it in helps a lot too.  To be able to use the GPIO pins you will need to solder in your own 26 or 40 pin header.

This first picture is of the Raspberry Pi Zero camera edition.

This picture shows the Raspberry Pi 1A, 2B, and Zero next to each other.

This third picture shows the Raspberry Pi's in their cases.  I have a model 2/3 case on order from china that has not arrived yet.

As far as cases go the case on the left broke off one of the corners.  The hole for the ribbon cable does not fit the ribbon cable connector.  I was not happy with that style of case.  The case for the zero consists of two layers of Plexiglas and that style of case is what I ordered for the Raspberry Pi 2.

Here they are all in their cases.

Raspberry Pi and ILI9341 2.8 inch SPI 320 by 240 LCD

Over the holiday weekend I finished up writing my code for this 2.8 inch LCD.  It can now do bmp graphics as well as text and even large text.  All of the code is written in Python, so there are no dependencies except for SPI support that is now built into the Raspberry Pi operating system.

This picture shows a sample of the text.  It supports colors as two sizes of text.

This is the wiring chart:

LCD	Raspberry Pi
1 – Vcc	Pin 1
2 - Gnd	Pin 6
3 - CS	Pin 24/GPIO8/CE0
4 – RST	Pin 18/GPIO24
5 – D/C	Pin 16/GPIO23
6 – SDI/MOSI	Pin 19/GPIO10/MOSI
7 – SCK	Pin 23/GPIO11/SCLK
8 – LCD	10 ohms to Vcc
9 – SDO/MISO	NC
10-14	NC

This is the code to display the bmp graphics:

def Image (filename):

  Write_CD (( 0X2A, 0X00, 0X00, 0X00, 0XEf )) #240 Columns

  Write_CD (( 0X2B, 0X00, 0X00, 0X01, 0X3F )) #320 rows

  Write_cmd ( 0X2C ) # Next: red, Green, Blue bytes

  GPIO.output (RS, True )  # RS = 1 will send data

  try:  # Prevents crashing when images do not work

    with open(filename, 'rb') as bitmap: # Must be 240x240-320 image

      for x in range ( 0,320 ):

        pixline = []

        for y in range ( 0,720 ):   # 720=240*3

          bitmap.seek(0x36 + x*720 + (719-y)) # 36 is header size

          Pixel = ord(bitmap.read(1)) # 719-y reverses image horizontally

          pixline.append (Pixel)

        spi.writebytes (pixline)

  except:

      pass

Here is a video of it running.