PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Day Four

December 7, 2022 | 1 comment

And so we are a third of the way through this PiHut Makers Advent Calendar and my table now has a liberal scattering of bits and pieces strewn across it. Because of, well, life I haven’t yet been able to get to doing the project from day three but I am hoping to do that and the one from day four in the next 48 hours. I will report back again then. In the meantime here’s the unboxing video for day four.

I really wanted to say potentiometer but wasn’t confident enough and instead called it a ‘turny thing’. I … Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Day Three

December 5, 2022 | 1 comment

One of the great things about the PiHut Maker Adver Calendar is that it has been structured so that you are doing intersting things right from day two. Yesterday I ran through the day two project which flashed the three included LEDs in sequence. Very simple but immediately rewarding as you are doing something.

Here’s the unboxing video for day three.

Day three included the following:

  • 3x 11mm tactile buttons
  • 3x button caps
  • 1x Mini breadboard
  • 7x jumper wires

I assume that the next project will be to use the switches to activate the LEDs but that’s a job for … Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Day Two Project

December 4, 2022 | 2 comments

If you have been following along as I have been opening up each box from the PiHut Maker Advent Calender you will have seen that PiHut have also provided and excellent set of tutorials to show you what to do with the box contents. Now that we have something a bit more interesting (Yesterday’s box came with some leds, resistors and jumper cables) I thought we should look at the tutorials.

The second day tutorial makes use of everything that has been provided in boxes one and two to blink the three leds (one each of red, green and … Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Day Two

December 3, 2022 | 1 comment

After the excitement of the first box, which contained a power cable, breadboard and the Pico itself, I went through PiHut’s excellent tutorial to setup the development environment Thonny and run my first program to turn on the onboard LED.

Now it’s time to take a look and see what is in box number two.

Day two included the following:

  • 1x Red 5mm LED
  • 1x Green 5mm LED
  • 1x Amber 5mm LEd
  • 3x 330 ohm resistors
  • 4x jumper wires

Once I have tried out today’s project I will add a new blog with details on that too.… Read the rest

PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar – Day One

December 1, 2022 | Comment

In my previous video overview of the PiHut’s Maker Advent Calendar I explained that there were only 12 “draws” to open even though traditionally there are 24 days leading up to Christmas. I assume that this was a cost related decision. So I will be opening up one every other day and posting a short video of the contents. Here is the first video and below that is a parts list and more information. Enjoy!

Day one included the following:

  • 1x Raspberry Pi Pico H
  • 1x Half-size breadboard
  • 1x 1m Micro-USB Cable

There is also a comprehensive page on the PiHut page … Read the rest

Mastodon and verifying websites

November 24, 2022 | Comment

Mastodon is all the rage at the moment as Twitter is driven into the ground in full public view by new overlord, Elon Musk. I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of Mastodon here but looking at one specific thing that is different to Twitter – the automatic validation of websites.

Getting your verification link

In the profile section Mastodon allows you to record up to four pieces of metadata. This can be anything you want, such as location or pronouns, and you can also record your website addess here too. You can put any link … Read the rest

The failed Kickstarter that’s still a partial success

November 18, 2022 | 1 comment

There is much to like about UK plugs – for a start they never fall out of sockets under the weight of the plug as so many US chargers seem to but they are big and bulky. This was something that Mu looked to address with their innovative folding charger.

Back in February 2018 Mu launched a Kickstarter campaign to deliver the “World’s Thinnest 45W International Fast Charger” which was successfully delivered August 2019.

In October 2019 Mu were back on Kickstarter again this time to bring to market the “Next Generation 63W Dual USB Type-C Wall Charger”. What happened … Read the rest

PiHut Advent Calendar

November 11, 2022 | Comment

When I was a lad my advent calendar was a bit of carboard with a Christmas scene printed on it with numbered doors that folded back to reveal a Christmas image. There was no chocolate or other delight behind the door and this bit of cardboard religiously came out every Christmas.

How times have changed and now advent calendars are clearly big business. I don’t normally do advent calendars but when I saw this one advertised from the PiHut I thought that I would give it a go.

It arrived this morning and while I knew that it was going … Read the rest

/usr/bin/git-receive-pack: stale NFS file handle Error

August 6, 2021 | Comment

What do you do when you want to commit some work, you go to do a git push and what you get back is the following?

fatal: protocol error: unexpected 'Error running git: fork/exec /usr/bin/git-receive-pack: stale NFS file handle'

At first I spent ages doing a search and checking various Stack Overflow questions to see whether I could find a fix. All sorts of things were suggested and I looked into before I remembered that a push in my case was to a remote origin. The third party service BitBucket. When I had a look at their status page the … Read the rest