Author Archives: davidms49

About davidms49

Hobbyist / designer focussing on projects using RaspberryPi and more recently Retro 8bit processors

The TEC-1D Micro Computer

Posted on February 3, 2019 by davidms49

  Over Christmas while randomly scrolling through my Twitter feed I saw some discussion about the TEC-1 computer. This is a single-board kit dating from the early80s based around the Z80. Instructions on how to build it were published in … Continue reading →

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Re-purposed PiMuxClock

Posted on October 14, 2018 by davidms49

It’s been a good while since I have posted any blog updates, no excuse just distracted by life in general. This is quick weekend project at my daughters request. Concerned that some of the plants in her student flat would … Continue reading →

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6 Years of Pi – Then and Now

Posted on March 1, 2018 by davidms49

Ok so in addition to losing about 5st (31kg) over the last 6 years RaspberyPi’s have really reignited electronics as a hobby. So for a 6th birthday post I thought I would have a dig around and see what my … Continue reading →

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TF WordClock S/W Updated

Posted on January 14, 2018 by davidms49

Just a quick post to say I have updated the TF Wordclock s/w to rev 5, the existing rev 3 s/w was not working reliably with the Nov29 2017 Raspbian update, in truth it had been on borrowed time since … Continue reading →

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Standalone Video display with a Raspberry Pi

Posted on October 14, 2017 by davidms49

A couple of weeks ago my wife arrived back from Lindengate a local mental health gardening charity she volunteers at with an old PC monitor and asked if I could set it up to continuously display a series of videos, … Continue reading →

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BBC micro:bit Scrolling display

Posted on September 16, 2017 by davidms49

Looking at my distributed BBC micro:bit clock I got to thinking, could I make a display screen using a number of micro:bits, using the radio functionality to update the screens ?To see if the basic timing would work I created some very … Continue reading →

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Distributed BBC micro:bit Clock

Posted on August 20, 2017 by davidms49

The idea for this project came from a tweet by David Whale [@whaleygeek] showing a font he had come up with for the micro:bit that managed to squeeze 2 digits on to the 5×5 led display. I have taken initial … Continue reading →

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Cheap DIY Weatherproof Pi Camera

Posted on August 11, 2017 by davidms49

Always thinking about useful things I could do with a Raspberry Pi my wife asked me about making a time-lapse camera to record some building work at Lindengate, a local mental health gardening charity she volunteers at. While there are … Continue reading →

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micro:bit Analog Inputs

Posted on August 5, 2017 by davidms49

For the last few days I have been playing with the micro:bits builtin capability to measure analog voltages on P0, P1 & P2 (you can set up some of the other IO lines as analog inputs but this is a … Continue reading →

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Meandering Pi and Friends

Posted on June 16, 2017 by davidms49

Over the last couple of months I have spent quite a lot of time experimenting with the BBC micro:bit developing various things including a model train speed controller.  This uses 2 micro:bits one acting as a remote control the other providing a … Continue reading →

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