Hello to everyone, sorry for the delay of my 6th blog post, I had my mid semester exams..
It has been about 2 weeks since my last post, I have worked on many things after my exams and I will be discussing about them in this post..
First of all lets discuss about PiFace CAD :
PiFace CAD is a very useful yet compact add-on for the Raspberry Pi. I worked with it this weekend and found it really simple to use. All of its documentations and examples can be found HERE.. I got lot of help from its documentations, its simple and fun to experiment with, I found the LCD commands easy but was stuck in the IR receiver part for few hours, As I said before that I am not really a software guy, my interest lies in the hardware part of electronics and robotics, and I had no knowledge of python prior to working on this project, but as I worked on it for the last week I can say that its really easy and after a few days of working on it I was able to make a small program with it..
LIRC also worked well.. All the libraries are very useful, over all it was a nice experience..
Below are some commands which you will find useful for setting up PiFace CAD and LIRC..
1 ). " sudo apt-get install python{,3}-pifacecad ", this will install piface cad on your RPi..
2 ). " python3 /usr/share/doc/python3-pifacecad/examples/sysinfo.py ", this is command for exicuting a example program which will display your IP address and temperature of RPi on the PiFace's LCD.
3 ). " sudo apt-get install lirc ", this will install LIRC on your RPi.
4 ). "sudo modprobe lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=23 ", this will assign the 23rd pin as input form IR reciever..
If you need need more info on setting up LIRC, Sumit Rai explains it well in his blog post, Read it HERE..
Now lets talk about RaspBMC :
RaspBMC is a flavuor of XBMC media center for Raspberry Pi, its very easy to use and has a very good audio and video playback capabilities, the interface is intuitive and fun to use, it over all increases the user experience.. RaspBMC will be perfect for this karaoke machine, as I likes its audio/video play back faster and easier than Raspbian, and also it streams videos form YouTube really smoothly, which I am going to use for playing the Karaoke songs..
I also succeeded to get it working with a IR remote control, which took me 2-3 hours, it works fine and provide all features, but you cannot search YouTube videos because IR remotes don't have a keypads, so no search, Which makes it useless because it is not a all in one solution or replacement for a keyboard...
But if you want to get The IR remote Working with RaspBMC, bharatrai888 has explained it very well in his blog post, Read it HERE..
Some conclusions that I came up with made this week :
1 ). RaspBMC will be a better OS than Raspbian for this project, its audio/video capabilities are good, and the overall look and feel of UI is far more superior than Raspbian for this project ..
2 ). I think that I will not include IR remote function in the final build, there are two reasons for that. one is that it wont completely replace the keyboard, so why use extra hardware and make it difficult. and second if do this I can eliminate PiFace from the final karaoke machine, because It was only used for IR input, and will reduce reduce the overall complexity and cut down price of the final product.. I want that every one interested in making this can afford to make it, and removing some unused hardware can do this.. PiFace is good for the projects which do not require a big screen like the Raspberry Pi Internet Radio, but for this it can only provide us with input capabilities and some basic display..
OK this is about it for this post, I am still thinking over what features to add or remove, should I completely remove piface or not..
This will take some more time the project is 70% complete and the rest 30% I am thinking over it. Keep following, and until my next post good bye everyone..
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