HomePi – connecting the Pi and the LED board

Posted on by Patrick

After setting up the LED board (HomePi – Starting with the LED board) and proving that it is actually working, it is now time to connect the Pi with the LED board. In this blog Post, we will talk about:

  • The Raspberry Pi GPIOs in general
  • How to connect the two devices
  • Download & use a software that allows to control the GPIOs/LEDs

First things first: The GPIOs

GPIO stands for General purpose input/output. We find them on the Raspberry Pi. A very good source of information is https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/gpio/ where we find an image explaining the PIN numbering and location on the board.

The GPIO pins are a physical interface between the Pi and the outside world. At the simplest level, you might think of them as switches that you can turn on or off (input case) or that the Pi can turn on or off (output case).

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How to install NodeJS 8 on Raspberry Pi (using the ArmV6 package)

Posted on by Patrick

The is just a little “note” on how to install NodeJS on the RaspberryPi, as I was searching for the best way to do it my self several time, I decided to put this up for you guys (and me 😉 ) here to find it more easily..

First ssh into your Pi, then follow the procedure:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ mkdir Downloads
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd Downloads/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.9.0/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
--2017-11-05 11:57:20--  https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.9.0/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
...
Length: 10272460 (9.8M) [application/x-xz]
Saving to: 'node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz'
node-v8.9.0-linux-a 100%[===================>]   9.80M  1.20MB/s    in 7.7s 
...  
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ tar -xvf node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ cd node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l $ sudo cp -R * /usr/local/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l $ cd
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ node -v
v8.9.0

You see, finally, we got no v8.9.0 on the Pi.

Stay tuned..