Friday 20 September 2013

RasPi and a 13 Port Hub: What Would You Do?

My recent acquisition of a 13 port hub to work with my Raspberry Pi got me to thinking, what could be done with it?

Sure, I'm intending to work with it to develop some energy and cost efficient #media_centre options, but my mind has been ticking over what other options it could be used for - with the two devices combined, that provides a total of 14 USB ports. With the combination of an #Arduino kit or two, it could be rigged up with motion sensors, then when activity is detected by the Arduino sensor nodes, it could wake up a number of web cams to record the activity. Possibly useful as security for a small office or apartment. You could have an array of 4 +Arduino sensor suites, and 7 web cams attached. The remaining two ports (remember the Pi is drawing its power from one port) could be used for an external HDD to save the footage to, and a wireless Broadband modem - so that when activity is detected it can contact you and provide footage on demand.

So, I am looking for some inventive ideas please.

I'll kick off the party with my own idea - this one is less serious and more fun.

1. The Venus Pi Trap
Requires;
3 x Arduino controlled sensor arrays - each array has motion and distance sensors
1 x Raspberry Pi
1 x 13 port hub
10 x USB missile launchers

Write a customised app for controlling the sensor arrays and the missile launchers. The app interprets the motion and distance data from the sensors to triangulate on the motion, and in turn aim the USB missile launchers, then fire. Surprise your family and friends! Slaughter your siblings in a hail of rubber missiles! Teach the cat that the corner of the room is not its litter tray! If you think a battery of 10 missile launchers is overkill, just replace one or two of the launchers with web cams - capture the carnage forever. Shock and Awe!.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Play Room Media Centre: Green Hub Option 2

Given that it's not possible to get the PiHub in Australia yet, I've been looking out for other options. Particularly option that would draw the same or less than the PiHub, yet still offer the same functional advantages.

I Was Bad
Yes I found an option to the PiHub, and I bought it. Thank you Dick Smith for the XH1237 powered USB hub. This beauty draws 108W through it's power pack. That's about the same as three of my Raspberry Pi machines. But it did cost $60 AUD. That is a fair bit more than the PiHub. Ooops!

But Wait There's More...
The real beauty of this device though is that the output of its power pack is 5VDC at 4A. That means that whilst the power pack draws the power of 3 RPi, it puts out enough to power 4 RPi. And it could power 4 RPi and have ports remaining for peripherals. Yes, you heard correct. This baby has 13 USB 2.0 ports!

13 Ports? Really?
Yep. Now you might well be thinking that this is a bad case of over-kill. It could be. But, lets think in terms of a Media Centre that has the capacity to play games. Now of course you are going to want the hub to power the RPi. You are also going to want to plug in a substantial size HDD and a WiFi dongle. That's 3 ports gone. Wireless keyboard/mouse dongle. That's 4 ports gone, with still room to spare. So let's assume you want a second HDD in there - the first was for your movie collection, then second is for your games. Sweet. Now lets throw in some neat gadgets for your gaming experience. Say a steering wheel, pedals and feedback chair. We've allocated 8 ports now. There's 5 ports spare on the hub, plus one other on the RPi itself.

What More Can We Plug In?
Now depending upon what games you have and how big your screen is, it could be feasible to have up to 4 controllers plugged in. We could also plug in a web cam. Bam! That's our 13 ports filled, but look at what we've achieved - neat!

Thursday 12 September 2013

Play Room Media Centre: Hail the PiHub!!

In my previous post regards the development of a play room media centre, I cited one of the key goals was to attempt to build a solution that was going to be more green than other games/media centres on the market - and trying to keep the power consumption as low as possible.

Now there might just be something to help gain that all needed advantage, thanks to the pirate crew at PiMoroni - all hail the PiHub.  When I saw the post pop up about this earlier tonight, I was all set to go and buy one, damn the torpedoes!  Problem; they seem to be shipping with power packs for the UK and EU market.  Any chance that they could do one for the Australian market?

The Drawing Board
Looks like this post is therefore relegated to the drawing board.  So what was all my excitement about?  Given that I am still at the research and planning phase of my media centre project, I don't need to rush out and get a PiHub right this minute.  Well the PiHub is a powered four port USB hub built with the Raspberry Pi specifically in mind.  As you may recall from my previous post, my initial plans for a media centre incorporate USB keyboard, USB mouse, USB WiFi dongle, and USB HDD.  So that's four USB devices.  Now, if we configure the +RasberryPi so that it is drawing power from the PiHub, that means that we have just enough USB ports left on the Pi itself and the hub to cater to the four peripherals.  Great - that should then be quite tidy.

Shooting from the Hip
What we do know about the PiHub is that it's power pack supplies it with 3000mA (3A) of power.  My current Raspberry Pi power pack only supplies 1A, and consumes 36 W.  What I have not been able to discover yet is, how much power does the PiHub power pack consume?  For now, I am going to shoot from the hip and assume that since it's output is 3 times the amps of the Rasberry Pi power pack, its consumption is also 3 times greater.

If this assumption holds true, that means that the media centre project project built around a PiHub, would consume approximately 108W.  Based upon my initial research of the current media centre market makes it competitive.

From Here...
From here I need two things; to confirm the power consumption of the PiHub power pack, and to seek another edge to make my idea a worthy opponent of the current market products.