Monday 30 June 2014

MyPiFi goods starting to be delivered.

Over the course of the weekend the jiffy envelopes have arrived, followed by the sealable kit bags.

Today however the promo t shirts arrived and here's them in the flesh.


The pcb boards are in final stages with a 10 day turn around as soon as they start production.

Let's hope the rest of the components arrive soon.

Also the competition to see what you are going to use the board for is going well #mypifiledboard 



Bear grylls backyard

Out to do a new series 3.5 miles of around 14 caches yesterday, this took us near to where bear grylls live and certainly a lovely area. Caches were of various sizes including a couple of large ones. The cache owner roobydoo never disappoints when he places a serious out including the part past a alpaca farm.



Thanks again roobydoo great series.

Board colours

Just received pictures back of board colours.


Saturday 28 June 2014

Kickstarter update

My kickstarter is down to its final week and a half. Interestingly while we have done exceptionally well we have hit the quiet spot that usually happens with most kickstarters before the bad rush in last few days.

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1059145052/mypifi-led-board/

Thursday 26 June 2014

Christmas camping geocaching event

Christmas in June? Sounds mad, geocachers camping in a field with Christmas trees, tinsil, Santa costumes and singing christmas songs, must be another Philimore clan wild Christmas event.

Flash mob carol service on the Friday in nearby village of calne to the new caches on a Saturday where I got to first to finds. I even had the pleasure of the cache owner with me to do four of his caches, three tree climbing and a water cache called wierd which made sense of the difficulty when caching with a dog.


Nice day and burnt by lunchtime many thanks to the philimores on another great event and local cache placers for placing caches.

Tuesday 24 June 2014

97% funded in less than two weeks

Today went mega crazy on pledges from about 80% funded in the morning till afternoon where it has at time of writing this gone to 97% expecting fully funded by tea time.

So many people have shared this on Facebook and retweeted on twitter along with 90+ backers who I cannot thank enough so a huge pat on the backs for you all and a huge THANK YOU!!!!



Here is a demo of the board in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGqABT37RoA

Update: as I hit send to publish this blog we hit funded at 101% let's see if we can double it.

Sunday 22 June 2014

MyPiFi LED board at Southend Raspberry Jam

From the event organisers and Zachery ( the guy who wrote the demo code) the board received much interest and lots of positive feedback.  The jam also had many of my reject/faulty boards for a soldering hands on teaching which also proved very popular.


While we gathered some pace yesterday on kickstarter, we are now 77% funded with 18 days to go.  Let's see if we can be funded in 3 days as we only need to shift 31 more kits and we are funded and that's when some stretch goals can be added.

Please help and support us a £1 donation would make a difference and a board £6 would mean getting funding quicker.  

The short link to my kickstarter is www.mypifi.net

Many thanks


Sunday 15 June 2014

My LCD kickstarter notifier

A member of the pi community boeeerb recently wrote a script for viewing kickstarter projects on a cheap 20x4 LCD screen. The coding etc can be found at these links



Many thanks Jason a project many a kickstarter will want to use


To view the kickstarter the LCD display is watching go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1059145052/mypifi-led-board

Saturday 14 June 2014

Kickstarter MyPiFi LED Board assembly guide


Firstly thank you for purchasing this excellent budget board.

We will start by placing the pcb on the table with a GPIO header, button, three LEDs and four resistors (220 ohm).


First job is to solder the GPIO header, being extended you will find it near impossible to solder last, which is why I have chosen the beginning.

Put the pins through the bottom holes so they protrude like this.


Then push it all the way.


Next solder each of the header, to do this place the hot soldering iron tip touching the pin and the gold ring on the whole after a second touch the solder to the tip of the soldering iron and pin and allow solder to flow round feeding the solder as it melts, this should take two to three seconds for each pin, as each pin is filled stop feeding the solder and then remove iron and let the solder cool which will take about a second.

You might find a bit of blue tack under the pcb board where 2014 is to keep board straight and flat so the GPIO sits flush to the board.


Next we will putthe resistors in, it doesn't matter which way round they go, but I find it looks tidy if they all face the same way.


Bend the legs like this to keep them in place.


Then solder them touching the leg where it meets the gold ring on the whole then touch with some solder to look like this.


With a pair of electrical pliers cut away the legs as close to the board possible without breaking the solder off the joins.


Next is to add the three LEDs the negative leg is the shorter and this needs to go on the GPIO side of the two holes whilst the positive furthest away.  On the picture of the LED on the board there is a flat bit by the word LED 1 LED 2 LED 3 this in the electronics world the information to tell you negative sits that side.  You will also notice looking at the LED that it's all round apart from the side the negative leg is which is flat, this again is in case you cut the legs on a different project that you can still work out the negative and positive. If you put them in wrong this WILL NOT WORK so to save on tears please double check.


Bend the legs out underneath to stop the LEDs falling out and repeat the same process you used on the resistors to solder the LEDs in, once done feel free to cut the legs off like you did with the resistors.


Lastly we have the button, this is slightly rectangular to stop it being placed into the board the wrong way. Again if it is not placed in correctly it will not work.

So by looking at the picture here we can see that we want to put the button on so the legs are showing their slightly zig zag shape this way.


 The top to pins of the button fit on the bottom to pins of the square like shape and the two pins resting on my bench here will go in top two pins to look like this.


Solder these four in and then you are done, it should look like this.


Now it's time to plug into the pi and program, enjoy.

Friday 13 June 2014

Mypifi LED demo

As the kickstarter gathers pace and now nearly a third funded I'm able to show you this teaser clip of the LEDs in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqPH1cl_5Qs


Please support this great project on kickstarter linky is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1059145052/mypifi-led-board

Many many thanks to everyone who has backed the campaign so far I really cannot express my gratitude to you.

Thursday 12 June 2014

Mypifi led board now live on Kickstarter

Launched at 4pm today my kickstarter project for the mypifi led board http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1059145052/mypifi-led-board


Please help me make this a reality and back the project and share with your friends, many many thanks in advance I will be so grateful.