[Initial Release] RaspberryPints - Digital Taplist Solution

[2Kegger]

Anyone else have any problems with the Edimax wireless adapter? It worked at first and then it stopped working. I had to run my ethernet to do any updates and finish the installation.


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I had the same problem at first. I think it was my power supply. Anyway, it worked, but not reliably for about a week. Then, just like that, it started working flawlessly and has ever since. Other than changing to a different power supply, I can't tell you why it started working.

 

[raysmithtx]

day_trippr

And now, for something completely different: I have my 'Pi not only waking up my taplist display when the PIR sensor detects someone approaching the keezer, it plays a musical greeting!

Thanks for the info and the detailed steps to get it ready to play audio.

I modified it slightly and have mine playing random sound clips from TV shows and movies (Simpsons, Southpark, etc.) when anyone approaches the taps.

 

[JonGrafto]

I had the same problem at first. I think it was my power supply. Anyway, it worked, but not reliably for about a week. Then, just like that, it started working flawlessly and has ever since. Other than changing to a different power supply, I can't tell you why it started working.

The weird thing is that while it doesn't allow me to connect to the internet, you can obviosuly still see that there is power going to it via the flashing blue light within the adapter...

Maybe I just try to use it without the attached keyboard and mouse and see if the power is the issue??

 

[officiallybob]

The weird thing is that while it doesn't allow me to connect to the internet, you can obviosuly still see that there is power going to it via the flashing blue light within the adapter...

Maybe I just try to use it without the attached keyboard and mouse and see if the power is the issue??

If there is one thing I've learned about the RPi is that it is VERY sensitive to power. Whether it be too much, too little, or just a little noisy there tends to be weird issues.

 

[chuck78]

From RPi website
The device is powered by 5v micro USB. Exactly how much current (mA) the Raspberry Pi requires is dependent on what you hook up to it. We have found that purchasing a 1.2A (1200mA) power supply from a reputable retailer will provide you with ample power to run your Raspberry Pi.

Typically, the model B uses between 700-1000mA depending on what peripherals are connected, and the model A can use as little as 500mA with no peripherals attached. The maximum power the Raspberry Pi can use is 1 Amp. If you need to connect a USB device that will take the power requirements of the Raspberry Pi above 1 Amp then you must connect it to an externally powered USB hub.

The power requirements of the Raspberry Pi increase as you make use of the various interfaces on the Raspberry Pi. The GPIO pins can draw 50mA safely (that is 50mA distributed across all the pins! An individual GPIO pin can only safely draw 16mA), the HDMI port uses 50mA, the camera module requires 250mA, and keyboards and mice can take as little as 100mA or over 1000mA! Check the power rating of the devices you plan to connect to the Pi and purchase a power supply accordingly. If you’re not sure, buy a powered hub.

 

[JonW]

Has anyone done any customized screen layouts? I've got 8 taps and will be using a widescreen monitor. I'm thinking of re-doing the screen to give me a display with two columns that will show 4 beers in each column. I'm not a fan of the portrait monitor setup and feel that my upright kegerator will look better with the monitor mounted to it in landscape mode.

 

[calebstringer]

Has anyone done any customized screen layouts? I've got 8 taps and will be using a widescreen monitor. I'm thinking of re-doing the screen to give me a display with two columns that will show 4 beers in each column. I'm not a fan of the portrait monitor setup and feel that my upright kegerator will look better with the monitor mounted to it in landscape mode.

I think they are working on that for v2?

 

[thadius856]

With regards to power, the Pi doesn't draw a whole lot in standby. Only when you really load up the cores.

I'm running all three of mine off of 500ma ports from the hubs on my monitors without issue. I don't have a voltmeter handy, but unless Dell violated the max voltage on the USB 2.0 spec, I'd say it's safe to say the recommended 700ma supply is sufficient.

Of course, going higher never hurts. The amperage rating is the maximum that the adapter will provide, assuming the Pi attempts to draw it.

 

[thadius856]

I think they are working on that for v2?

I'd like to include some basic layouts, yes. And the ability for advanced users to download/modify/skin their own, then share with everybody else.

 

[day_trippr]

With regards to power, the Pi doesn't draw a whole lot in standby. Only when you really load up the cores.

I'm running all three of mine off of 500ma ports from the hubs on my monitors without issue. I don't have a voltmeter handy, but unless Dell violated the max voltage on the USB 2.0 spec, I'd say it's safe to say the recommended 700ma supply is sufficient.

Of course, going higher never hurts. The amperage rating is the maximum that the adapter will provide, assuming the Pi attempts to draw it.

The spec in question is for current - 5VDC is assumed.

And the operative part of said spec is for device unit loads - pretty much focusing on the device end, not the host side. I've designed a crap load of system boards and everyone of them over-provisioned the current available to the myriad of USB2 & 3 ports.

Anyone wishing to avoid late night phone calls from vendors would likely do the same...

Cheers!

 

[thadius856]

The spec in question is for current - 5VDC is assumed.

And the operative part of said spec is for device unit loads - pretty much focusing on the device end, not the host side. I've designed a crap load of system boards and everyone of them over-provisioned the current available to the myriad of USB2 & 3 ports.

Anyone wishing to avoid late night phone calls from vendors would likely do the same...

Cheers!

Fair enough.

I also ran them on the recommend 700ma charger previously, again with no hiccups.

But hey, maybe I just got lucky.

 

[day_trippr]

Supposedly the 'Pi community got all cranky that Rev B consumes up to a whole 2 watts At a nominal 5V input that's in the 400mA ball park. And from a few minutes looking around an R3 Uno running off its USB connector apparently draws around 50mA from the 5V rail. So a 'Pi and an Alamode and an R3 Uno and a handful of ds18b20s would likely still be content with a 700mA wall wart plugged into the 'Pi.

fwiw, I'm current running the above configuration but using a 1.5A wall wart plugged into the 'Pi...

Cheers!

 

[DanH]

Pretty dead at my favorite thread

More people need to build this!


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[day_trippr]

Seriously. More attention units must be paid!!

Cheers!

 

[ratsathome]

We waiting for V.2

 

[AgentHubcap]

I can post a pic of my setup if that makes you feel better

 

[DanH]

I can post a pic of my setup if that makes you feel better

It would


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.

 

[AgentHubcap]

Here you go

 

[2Kegger]

Perhaps what we need is some cheer leading to help motivate the team for their outstanding work and help them get the final push to V2 Obviously this is the hottest thread on HBT and the one most eagerly followed.

 

[DanH]

Perhaps what we need is some cheer leading to help motivate the team for their outstanding work and help them get the final push to V2 Obviously this is the hottest thread on HBT and the one most eagerly followed.

Well we had a sweet motion sensor derailment followed by some "oh crap mine isn't working" derailments... so it's not dead yet.

How about a this for another sidebar while we wait...

My 'Pi is running pretty freakin slow. Any good way to add a little speed? It's running the basic setup plus xscreensaver and trippr motion sensor.


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.

 

[DrunkleJon]

Well we had a sweet motion sensor derailment followed by some "oh crap mine isn't working" derailments... so it's not dead yet.

How about a this for another sidebar while we wait...

My 'Pi is running pretty freakin slow. Any good way to add a little speed? It's running the basic setup plus xscreensaver and trippr motion sensor.


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Kidding. Maybe altering the polling frequency of the motion sensor to check for motion less often? That should free up the processor for working faster.

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Here's mine, all set up and running.

 

[DanH]

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?



Kidding.

Holy crap that's funny because I that seems to be the only advice that my "help"desk can ever come up with, as if I wouldn't do that before asking for help anyway.

As for polling frequency, I'll look into that.


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.

 

[DrunkleJon]

Sorry I could not help myself. I work on one. Thats why I call it the Hell-desk. It is amazing how often a reboot works though.

 

[day_trippr]

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Kidding. Maybe altering the polling frequency of the motion sensor to check for motion less often? That should free up the processor for working faster.

There's no polling of the sensor, it uses an interrupt.

I'd fire up the LXDE Task Manager, turn on all of the thread filters, and see what's eating cycles...

Cheers!

 

[DrunkleJon]

Thank you for the correction. I am still learning the Pi. I havent set up the motion sensor yet.

 

[skemp45]

Sorry about the hiatus over the last couple months, work has been very ...... time consuming. What add ons have all of you made to Raspberry Pints?

I see someone created a motion detector function, HOW AWESOME!! what else has been done?

For those of you that have created something, can you make a walk though and send it to me I would love to add these as sub options on our website. Please let me know by PM.

 

[DanH]

Thank you for the correction.

The help desk guy was wrong? Who saw that coming????


Sorry, but I really enjoyed writing that. It must be like being a lawyer; you probably know there will be jokes.


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.

 

[day_trippr]

Arrgh! My kingdom for another pair of friggin' DS18B20s!

That is all.

Cheers! And carry on...

 

[tdktank59]

I'd be interested in joining the project. need to find my pi that I bought a while ago.

 

[nate4g63]

Cleaned things up and got it wall mounted, definitely a fun project!

 

[ratsathome]

Mine is near completion.Build a frame for the touch screen.
Waiting for my volume control.Put in some speakers on the sides for background music.

 

[atoughram]

Maybe a stupid question... I just put one of these together - minus the pi because I didnt have a HDMI capable screen available - with Debian wheezy on an old Dell P3 I had laying around because it has a VGA port.

I figured out how to turn the screen saver off and and automatically start Chromium in kiosk mode. It all works very well!

http://www.clovercreekbrewery.us/taplist/

So my question it - is the web page supposed to reload itself on occasion? If I make a change to the list, I have to manually reload it - and this computer doesnt have a mouse or keyboard permanently connected to it.

 

[thadius856]

We didn't program auto-refresh, but it'd be a single line to add to the index.php.

We intended for refreshes to be pushed by AJAX, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

 

[day_trippr]

We didn't program auto-refresh, but it'd be a single line to add to the index.php.

Spill the beans!

We intended for refreshes to be pushed by AJAX, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

Excellent. But in the meantime...

Cheers!

 

[glacious]

I've got this running off an old netbook running Ubuntu in the closet, then used an HP Touchpad running Android to load up the web page at the kegerator. I installed Dolphin browser on the tablet with an auto-refresh plugin that keeps things up to date and it's been working great.

There is also the remnants of an old Kegbot I built attached to the kegerator, including 3x SwissFlow SF800 flow meters (food grade), so I'm certainly looking forward to the upcoming releases of Raspberry Pints. I like the simple/clean interface and ability to display the contents of all 3 taps on a single screen, and it's all web driven so you can easily modify the look/feel of it.

Any thoughts on temp sensors (ds18b20)?

Thanks again for a great project! Cheers!

 

[thadius856]

Spill the beans!

The droids you seek are HTML Meta Refresh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_refresh
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H76.html
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_http_equiv.asp
http://webdesign.about.com/od/metataglibraries/a/aa080300a.htm
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8711888/auto-refresh-code-in-html-using-meta-tags
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/getting_started/article.php/3479551

 

[atoughram]

The droids you seek are HTML Meta Refresh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_refresh
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H76.html
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_http_equiv.asp
http://webdesign.about.com/od/metataglibraries/a/aa080300a.htm
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8711888/auto-refresh-code-in-html-using-meta-tags
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/getting_started/article.php/3479551

Gracious! That works!

I've used that before but it's been awhile.. I dont program every day...

For anyone interested...

First backup your index.php

Type "sudo cp /var/www/index.php /var/www/index.php.bak

Then edit the index.php file

Type "sudo nano /var/www/index.php"

The Nano editor will open up

Arrow down until you find

<html>
<head>

and add the line

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30">

beneath the <head> tag - that will refresh every 30 seconds

press ctrl-X and then "y" to write and enter to accept the name index.php and then refresh your Raspberry Pints screen - it will self refresh every 30 seconds. You can change the 30 to whatever you want (content="30") if you think 30 seconds is too often. If you brick your install - copy the index.php file back - sudo cp /var/www/index.php.bak /var/www/index.php

 

[2Kegger]

So with the post on facebook about V2 nearing completion, is there a parts list anyone would care to share? I'd like to have as much of it on hand for the big reveal as possible Flow meters are the big thing for me.

 

[DanH]

So with the post on facebook about V2 nearing completion, is there a parts list anyone would care to share? I'd like to have as much of it on hand for the big reveal as possible Flow meters are the big thing for me.

Yeah that's a relatively large expense for me, so I'd appreciate it also.


Sent from my iPhone using the sweet Home Brew app, cuz I'm a ****** and I need everyone to know that I have an iPhone as if everyone else in the world doesn't have one.