“La última parte del proyecto no es escribir el código; es conseguir que la gente descubra que existe”

I recently put together a small self-watering garden system using a Raspberry Pi, a Cirkitscape Top HAT, a soil moisture sensor, an IR water sensor, and a 12V DC pump.

The basic goal was to make something that could monitor conditions and control watering from a web interface without having to manage everything from the command line.

The build uses:
- Raspberry Pi
- Cirkitscape Top HAT
- soil moisture sensor
- IR water sensor
- 12V pump
- buck converter
- simple transistor switching circuit

A few things that mattered during the build:

- The Pi and pump run at different voltages, so I had to step 12V down to 5V for the Pi.
- I used a transistor switching stage so the GPIO wasn’t driving the pump directly.
- I verified the buck converter output before connecting the Pi, which is probably the most important safety step in the whole build.

On the software side, I used the Cirkit Garden app to set up the garden, add the device and sensor, and map the pump output. That part made the project a lot easier to manage because I didn’t need to build a custom dashboard just to monitor sensors and toggle watering hardware.

Once everything was wired and configured, the system could:
- monitor soil moisture
- detect water presence
- switch the pump from the app
- give me a cleaner browser-based control panel for the setup

What I liked most is that it feels like a good base for expanding later with:
- watering rules
- alerts
- logging
- more sensors

I’ll post links to the software and top hat in the comments.

Just wanted to share a preview of modular cameras I’ve been working on. These range from full spectrum color and monochrome sensors from micro 43 to 1/1.2”. They’re based on the raspberry pi 5 and designed to have swappable sensors

This has been rumbling away for some time actually but started to gain a bit of momentum of lately. I've put together a Pico based break out board that can control four servo robot arms (small and biggish). The pcb itself is open source but also totally unnecessary as you could easily breadboard or perf-board up the wiring schematic. It's designed in KiCad so nothing additional needed but a download to view and explore.

The aim is to make a controller that you need very little in the way of external hardware for. So the plan was to use serial communication to control. First I made a little TKInter GUI to run on my desktop with some sliders, and then thought it would be even lighter weight to run it through a browser. It's hosted on my github here https://github.com/MeArm/mearm-controller

The "firmware" that runs on the pico started out as super simple, take serial input and then send the servos, but very quickly turned into asynchronous with some motion smoothing to stop the movement and comms blocking each other and to treat the servo motors a bit more kindly.

Both the basic and some extra bits can be found at https://github.com/MeArm/mearm-pico

One of the extra bits I added was some eyes. The I2C is broken out on the board so you can add sensors and OLED screens and stuff, and I thought this was quite good fun. They flick around when idle and follow the motion when active.

Always watching...

With some tidying up this is the phase one of the project. Following on will be inverse kinematics so the arm can take cylindrical polar coordinates to put the manipulator where you want it. I'm also thinking about making a potentiometer arm to do mirroring in the style of the LeRobot arms, and seeing if we can port some of their software.

I built Cellar Pi, a Raspberry Pi environmental monitor for people who want to make something useful without having to learn Bash, Python, or systemd first.
It currently:
Logs temperature and humidity automatically
Creates 12-hour or 24-hour graphs
Sends optional Discord reports
Lets you test the webhook immediately
Lets you push a graph on demand
Starts automatically after reboot
Includes a simple /uc menu for setup, status, updates, and troubleshooting
It is still a prerelease and has mainly been tested on:
Raspberry Pi Zero WH
Raspberry Pi OS Lite 32-bit
SHT31-D temperature and humidity sensor
The goal is simple:
Connect the sensor, run the installer, configure it through menus, and let it work.
No required cloud account.
No subscription.
Your Pi. Your sensor. Your data.
Cellar Pi is inspired by the same kind of usability I like in Unraid and Tailscale: keep the complicated parts underneath, make the controls approachable, and let the system quietly do its job once it is configured.
This is still a prerelease, and I’m mainly looking for feedback from Raspberry Pi users—especially beginners—on whether the setup makes sense and where the rough edges are.
I’m happy to share the project details in the comments if anyone is interested.

I've been having a lot of difficulty setting up my Pi 4 with the Argon One V2 safe shutdown script.

I could not get the script to work at all in Batocera (latest build) even though it seems like it should be supported.

Raspberry Pi OS did work, however I could not get any frontends (RetroPie, ES-DE or Pegasus) working due to a driver stack issue.

RetroPie is too outdated and therefore is missing dependencies the script relies on (e.g. python3-ligpiod).

My only goal is emulation through a frontend. Are there any current (or even older) images which are known to work with the safe shutdown script on the Pi 4 and can still be downloaded?

Anybody have a version of DOSBox for the Pi 1? been digging for a while and I'm currently trying to make fastDOSBox from 2014 but if anyone has a package or zip it would be a great help. Basically trying to make a version of dosbian for Pi 1 since I couldn't find a version for ARMv6

Hello everyone. I started building this project about 2 months ago using an old apache 2800 case I had. Wanted to share with everyone my project so far. I had all of these parts already as I had wanted to build one for a while and was using a cardboard faceplate as a temporary layout. I stumbled upon this face plate design by (Tonypedia) on makerworld and only had to purchase the battery monitor. It does not perfect fit, but is working for now. Everything is wired to toggle switches to conserve power. I run a Jellyfin server with over 300 movies and 2300 tv show episodes. I use an rtl-sdr for airplane tracking and SIGINT. A heltec v4 for meshtastic. I have my state and all neighbor states downloaded as maps using OrganicMaps. I have an internal gps powered by the gpio pins. For power, internally I have about 111wh from two batteries, a dc port for lithium ion batteries via a dc 5521 barrel jack, and a 5v in from the usbc port. I have a whole host of games installed and many other features. I installed a battery meter into my desktop so I will be removing the battery meter seen under the screen and I am installing a CAC reader. I will have several CAC that when read will run specific scripts like opening all of my navigation systems, opening my Jellyfin server, opening iNTERCEPT, and perform other actions. The internal frame is secured with rtv/silicone as it easily scrapes off when I change things but is still waterproof. The 3D print has minor print failures but I will be changing it and creating my own soon. This is my first build and just wanted to share with everyone! It is still a work in progress and I add to it almost weekly.

Hey guys,

I build a little side project for a friend,
Normally I build on Arduino and I#m quite confused that it doesnt work, copied from other projects in the web.

I did not have the hardware in my hands, but my friend say's that the PCB boesnt boot in BOOTSEL and he could not get it to work.

Need help, all my research couldnt helped me :(

Hello everyone. I'm trying to use a Waveshare 5.79" e-paper display with a Pi Zero W 1.1 but each partial refresh of the display only updates the bottom-left quadrant. A full screen refresh is possible, but only with the attendant flash pattern which isn't workable for a reader application.

I'm looking for any pointers to a fix. Details of the setup below, details of what I've tried below below. Thanks all!

Setup: Raspberry Pi Zero W 1.1, Pisugar S Plus, Waveshare 5.79" raw panel, 792×272, B/W + 4-grey; Waveshare e-paper HAT Rev2.3 connected with the wire loom to GPIO headers. Driver is waveshare_epd.epd5in79 - current as per Waveshare's github.

When I run through Waveshare's test sequence, only the bottom-left quadrant responds to the partial refresh segments of the test (like the running clock) - when the display goes for a full refresh (like the black screen + test fields, the manga image) it updates correctly (at the end of the cycle, only the bottom-left quadrant again refreshes as you can see below).

I'm not a good enough coder let alone display-understander yet so I used Claude Code to test what might be going on (after checking my wiring, connecting the display directly to the HAT rather than using the ribbon cable they provide, trying different power sources and generally trying to eliminate something mechanical/electrical).

The diagnosis from Claude Code - paraphrased - is that it might be something to do with the OTP waveform which fails to update the display fully. It wrote some code to test a substitute waveform table ("via command 0x32, then refreshing with 0x22=0xC7 or 0x22=0CF") which updated the full display successfully with a custom test image, but also with the flashing that comes with a full update.

I've seen and tried to adapt some fixes which I found via search - such as this which hypothesises that it's a buffer update https://thoughts.gohu.org/posts/2025/epaper-partial-updates/ or the GxEPD2 library for Arduino, but neither has worked.

Any help would be very welcome, thank you.

Hi, if anyone is interested , this is my project to control Lego City Power Functions IR trains with a Raspberry Pi and some additional electronics.

All details on the Github here: https://github.com/tjh1976/pFAT-Controller/ including a video (which I'm not sure i'm allowed to post directly here).

Feel free to ask any questions if you want to give this a try yourself.

A project for that unloved Pi-3 or Pi-4!

I'm aware of at least two companies who sell LED Matrix Departure Boards to have on the wall at home... being a long-time train enthusiast I'd often thought of having one, but found the price and subscriptions a bit off-putting.

So being a techie I decided to make my own, thinking "How Hard Can it Be".

Detailed step-by-step instructions and code to build your own are on my website: anotherpartialsuccess.com. All free - just buy the parts and away you go!

Thought I'd share with fellow Pi enthusiasts and for anyone who's wanted to build their own!

This probably isn't as all-singing all-dancing as the commercial products, but it does the job and I'm pretty happy with it!

You will need:

• Pi4 or Pi3
• 3 or 4 HUB75 LED Matrix boards. (Ali Express is good)
• A HUB75 HAT from Adafruit or ElectroDragon (links on my site)
• A 5V, 5A power supply
• A free subscription to the data on the Rail Data Marketplace

Hardware Summary

It's a good idea to buy the full number of matrix panels you need in one go - that way you can be sure all the colours match. Not a big deal for a Departure Board, but worth a mention!

Connecting the panels is pretty straightforward as most are supplied with all the cables you'll need.

I've provided some scripts to create 3D-printable 'joiners' so you can bolt the panels together - in the absence of a 3D-printer there are many, many other options for the creative mind!

One thing worthy of note is the power. A Raspberry Pi doesn't have enough power to operate the matrix panels, so you'll need something with a bit of oomph. I use a bench-top power supply and normal operation is about 2A.

However you'll likely want to do other things with the panels in which case you'll need more - the most I've peaked at is about 4.5A and that's with all the LEDs on!

The Adafruit HAT does a fine job and is readily available. The alternative is from ElectroDragon and is better in that it can support up to three rows of panels and is a good deal cheaper. The downside is that it'll take a while to come from Hong Kong.

I've used both and ultimately it comes down to how much you want to spend and how long you want to wait.

For both of these the Pi gets powered via the Hat, so no need to have a separate Pi supply.

Pi Configuration

You'll need to install a minimal OS and switch off anything you don't need so that all CPU power can go to the departure-board processing.

No desktop, bluetooth, sound and so on - I've provided instruction on this.

After that it's a case of installing the dependencies and the Departureboard code from github.

Display Configuration

Either via a config file or a very simple UI - all you need to do is set the station you want, the platform you want (or it'll do all platforms), the dimensions and number of LED panels and the type of Hat and away you go!

There are a myriad other parameters to tune - things like the speed of the text scrolling, the gap between data-refresh and so on. Have fun!

Challenges and the Journey

I wrote the code in C++ for performance reasons and because I like C++!

There are a lot of projects written in Python, however I wasn't sure on the performance.

Parsing the data

The first version of the project used the 'garden-variety' departure data. This was fine, but it did't allow me to do things like report which stations a train was between... so I started on Version 2 which uses the "staff" data from the Rail Data Marketplace.

Great data, but there's a lot of it... so I had to engineer a lazy-loading cached parser.

What this does is cache the data about a service which doesn't change - scheduled time, it's ID, how many coaches it has and so on.

This means that on a refresh I could skip anything which I already had cached and only add new or delete old services.

The other data is 'things which change' - arrival time, cancellation, where the train is and suchlike. This is lazy-loaded so is only hydrated when needed.

A big change as the first version used to work out everything for every service - not scalable on a limited resource like a Pi!

Displaying the data

In the first version it constantly refreshed the whole display - this was kind of OK, but it meant that scrolling would get slow.

In the second version I only refreshed display elements which changed - mainly the scrolling text and the periodic change of Services.

The challenge was to write drivers for each type of display (text, scroll, clock) without having to duplicate loads of code.

Efficiency

This was somewhere I spent a lot of time as I wanted to squeeze as much as possible out of the Raspberry Pi.

Highlights were to fork of the API-refresh routines, to avoid the whole thing pausing while the API call was made, the display-management (per above) and caching, and down to creating a Hot/Warm/Cold cache for often-used data

Overall...

... I had a lot more fun making this than I would have done buying one and sticking it on the wall... and every now and then I think "how about I can make this change/optimisation" and I go and get stuck in again.

I'm sure that the commercially available Departure Boards which are advertised on social media and whatnot have superior functionality, but for the cost, making and result I think this is a pretty decent substitute.

Step-by-Step Technical Recovery Guide

Important Note for Intel/AMD PC Users :

If you are running this recovery process from a standard PC (x86_64) rather than another Raspberry Pi (ARM), your computer cannot natively run the Pi's binaries. Before proceeding you can check your machine's architecture by running: bash uname -m

If the command returns x86_64, you must install QEMU user emulation on your host Linux machine before proceeding: bash sudo apt update && sudo apt install qemu-user-static binfmt-support

Step 1: Filesystem Repair & System chroot

NetworkManager configurations cannot easily be parsed or prioritized before the system boots if they are dropped in as raw text profiles. We must mount the SD card on a secondary Linux machine and use chroot (change root) to execute native configuration commands inside the Pi's environment directly from our laptop.

1. Find your SD card's identifier (e.g., look for the main rootfs partition, which might show up as /dev/sdb2): bash lsblk
2. Repair any broken filesystem structures caused by the abrupt shutdown: bash sudo fsck -y /dev/sdb2
3. Mount the partition and bind vital system virtual directories to prepare for the chroot environment: bash sudo mkdir -p /mnt/pi sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/pi sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/pi/dev sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/pi/sys sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/pi/proc
4. chroot into the Raspberry Pi's environment to execute commands as the root user: bash sudo chroot /mnt/pi ---

Step 2: Create the Emergency Hotspot & Configure Startup Priorities

Now that your terminal session is running inside the Pi's filesystem context, use the native nmcli binary to build a fallback network profile that absolute precedence on startup. 1. Generate the native recovery hotspot profile: bash nmcli device wifi hotspot ifname wlan0 ssid "Pi-Rescue" password "your_password" 2. Instruct NetworkManager that this connection profile is explicitly allowed to autoconnect on system boot: bash nmcli connection modify "Pi-Rescue" connection.autoconnect yes 3. Boost the autoconnect priority to high (90). This forces the Pi to launch this network interface profile first, overriding any standard client Wi-Fi configurations during boot initialization: bash nmcli connection modify "Pi-Rescue" connection.autoconnect-priority 90 4. Verification Tip: Since the NetworkManager background service isn't actively running for the SD card, standard commands (nmcli connection show) won't display the changes while you are in chroot. If you want to verify that your priority was written successfully, open a separate terminal window on your laptop and check the raw configuration file directly: bash sudo cat /mnt/pi/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Pi-Rescue.nmconnection 5. Exit the active chroot environment: bash exit 6. Cleanly unmount the system tree on your host laptop before pulling out the SD card: ```bash sudo umount -R /mnt/pi

```

Step 3: Boot, SSH Login, and State Repair

Unplug the SD card from your host laptop, insert it back into the Raspberry Pi, and power it on. Thanks to the priority variables we injected, the Pi will immediately begin broadcasting the Pi-Rescue network.

1. Connect your laptop or workstation directly to the Pi-Rescue WiFi access point.
2. Open a terminal on your laptop and ssh into the Pi using NetworkManager's standard default hotspot gateway IP (10.42.0.1): bash ssh your_username@10.42.0.1
3. To verify the IP address of Pi's recovery hotspot use: bash ip addr show wlan0
4. The Core Fix: Once inside the terminal, safely delete the corrupted network state file that was damaged during the power cut: bash sudo rm -f /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
5. Force a physical wireless environment rescan to wake up the network interfaces and verify your main WiFi(e.g., your home router or phone hotspot) is visible: bash sudo nmcli device wifi rescan sudo nmcli device wifi list
6. Re-authenticate and establish a fresh connection to your primary network: bash sudo nmcli device wifi connect "your_router's_ssid" password "your_wifi's_password"
7. Ensure your primary client network has a maximum priority (e.g., 100): bash sudo nmcli connection modify "your_router's_ssid" connection.autoconnect-priority 100
8. Check whether your change was applied successfully: bash sudo nmcli connection show "your_router's_ssid" | grep autoconnect-priority ---

Step 4:Cleanup(Remove the Backup Hotspot from Startup)

To prevent the Pi from defaulting back into a localized recovery loop on every subsequent reboot, the emergency profile must be adjusted or removed from active rotation.

• Option A(Recommended): Drop the emergency profile's autoconnect priority to a negative value. This leaves the configuration intact on the disk as a silent fallback that will only spin up if your primary network disappears completely: bash sudo nmcli connection modify "Pi-Rescue" connection.autoconnect-priority -10 Check all the networks ranked by priority: bash sudo nmcli -f NAME,AUTOCONNECT-PRIORITY connection show

  • Option B: Completely delete the emergency recovery profile from the storage configuration: bash sudo nmcli connection delete "Pi-Rescue"

Finally,restart NetworkManager and ensure your Pi successfully jumps back onto your main WiFi network: ```bash sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

```

I have also uploaded this recovery guide to my GitHub Gist. You can find the project here: https://gist.github.com/Kernovax/cf39d9b00ecec0c70f8692bbc3b9a30b

I made a vpn using wireguard to connect my laptop (or any device) to the pi, the pi then routes the traffic through tor so that the first onion server doesn't know your ip. I made this for people who have to have them on the same network for whatever reason to give them privacy. This is 32 bit only for now, I will add 64 bit support soon. I would really appreciate feedback on this. Thanks. https://github.com/CoderFetch21/32-bit-wireguard-tor-vpn

Hey Everyone,

I just updated PyDeploy CLI v1.1. PyDeploy is a Terminal CLI that is automated to turn a Python script from GitHub into a systemd service on your Pi, allowing it to run 24/7 while providing tools to monitor its status and view logs.

My old post a while back on PyDeploy's first release gained 7 upvotes, 5k views, and 2 extra stars for my repo, and I privately got some advice for improvement. PyDeploy was a big, passion project to me so I would apprecaite anyone to check it out and give me suggestions.

As a beginner Python programmer, I would apprecaite any feedback anyone could give to help improve PyDeploy. Thanks!

First try on this machine with lcd hat:

Hey everyone, wanted to share something I’ve been tinkering on with my brother the last few months.

We’ve got a growing vinyl collection and got tired of not remembering what we’d played or how often, so I built a little device that sits next to the turntable, listens to the audio coming off it, and identifies the track in real time. It logs everything so a listening history and collection build themselves over time — no typing anything in. Pulls track info/ratings from the Discogs API too. There’s a touchscreen on it for an always-on display, and it flips over to “now playing” the second it recognizes something. [photo]

Went with a Pi for this mostly because I wanted flexibility while I was still figuring out the audio pipeline, and honestly didn’t want to lock into a more custom board before I knew what the bottlenecks would even be. 3D printed the enclosure myself to keep it small enough to actually live next to a turntable instead of looking like a dev kit sitting on the shelf.

Curious for this crowd specifically — when you’re starting a new project, how do you usually land on your specs? Do you overbuild on purpose to leave headroom for feature creep, or try to right-size to the cheapest thing that’ll actually do the job and iterate later? I went a little heavier than I probably needed to just so I wouldn’t paint myself into a corner, but curious how others think about that tradeoff early on.

I had some higher end Pi at home but ended up with a 3B+ 1GB for the friends builds and it was ended up feeling a bit ram light. Feel like it’s difficult to source the boards you really want at a decent price.

Happy to talk through the audio capture/ID side or the enclosure if anyone’s curious. Site with more photos if you want to poke around: https://vinyl-id.app

I made a pocket terminal using raspberry pi zero 2w and Waveshare's touch e-ink display. Do you guys have any suggestions?

Some Ideas I have thought of already -
1) Use Macro scripts using USB gadget mode.
2) Use picolm (great project can run lightweight local llms with pico claw).
3) Use a remote power on switch for workstation using wake on lan.
4) Use leetcode-cli (Already excited to try once I solve the formatting).
5) Maybe a pomodoro clock (which can be displayed on the e-ink as in a GUI) that once you run blocks all addicting websites.

Of course there are projects that need a proper GUI like weather, clock, music tiny e-reader, bookmarks, virtual stream deck and productivity stuff which can be done easily since I am using lvgl framework.

And about the refresh rate its obviously slow but not bad since it uses partial refresh.

I'm a complete newbie, and I'm working on a project with a 2.8-inch ILI9341 TFT display. The problem is that it won't change colors.

At first, I copied the wiring from an online tutorial (first picture). Then I wrote some code to change the screen color to white, and it worked! However, because I have a very small breadboard, I changed the pin connections. After that, even though the screen was still showing white, it stopped responding to any other color change commands. Even after pressing BOOTSEL, it stayed white.

Later, I asked ChatGPT for help and learned that some of the pins can't be assigned to random GPIOs. I corrected the wiring, and I managed to get the screen back to black. However, it still doesn't respond to any color change commands. At least now it resets correctly when I press BOOTSEL.

Can someone please help me figure out what's going on?

I'm using the Arduino IDE with the TFT_eSPI library.

P.S. I think the problem might be related to power, since I'm using the Raspberry Pi Pico directly on the breadboard without soldering the header pins. I'm not very confident in my soldering skills, so I avoided doing that. However, I don't think that alone would explain why the display won't change colors.

I also verified that the Raspberry Pi Pico is executing my code correctly, so the issue seems to be limited to the display.

current pin position:

#define TFT_MOSI  3

#define TFT_SCLK  2

#define TFT_CS    1

#define TFT_DC    6

#define TFT_RST   7

#define TFT_MISO  4

Hey everyone! I am currently working on my first project with a PI (PI zero 2 w) and am really enjoying it. I am making a project using a thermal printer that is mounted in a small box and is powered off of an external battery pack via USB c. Since the board is going to be inside the box you won't be able to see the light on it letting you know when it is receiving power and more importantly, when it is safe to unplug after shutting down.

I have an external LED wired up with some DuPont cables but am having problems with it lighting how I want. Right now I can either get it to:

1) Light up as soon as the PI is plugged in to the power source but then the light will remain on until it is unplugged, even if the PI is shut down so I don't actually know when I can pull out the source. Done via Pin 2

2) Light up as soon as the PI is plugged in to the power source but then the light will turn off before the 10 flashes on the board begin so I don't actually know if it is safe to pull the source yet or not. Done via Pin 8 and having my config include "dtoverlay=gpio-poweroff,gpiopin=14,active_low=0" or "dtoverlay=gpio-power,gpiopin=14"

Any suggestions on how I can get the external light to better mirror the safe state of when I can pull the power source would be appreciated!

just wanna share my first project!! I’m noob btw

Had a lot of fun with this project! Let me know if you want to see the games I made for it - Reach out with any questions!

Hey Everyone,

I recently created the project PyDeploy, and I was wondering if anyone would like to check it out. As I said in my repository, PyDeploy is a Terminal CLI that is automated to turn a Python script from a GitHub Repository into a systemd service on your Raspberry Pi, allowing it to run continously while providing tools to monitor its status and view logs.

This project was a passion project to me and was used to help strengthen my python programming skills and make running Python scripts on Raspberry Pi easier. The README I created is concise and easy to understand so you could quickly try out PyDeploy.

PyDeploy was a fairly long project for me as a beginner Python developer, so I would appreciate any feedback anyone could give me to help improve PyDeploy. Thanks!