Building of the Mac Pi

https://learn.adafruit.com/mini-mac-pi/assembly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_duo8Wogsw

Featured is the link which includes details on how to assemble the Mini Pi Mac.

Late night soldering

I followed these steps and did all the soldering and building myself.

Powerboost 500 fresh out of the box

After successful soldering, the screen came on

Powerboost 500 with everything connected and switch turned on

View of the back of the computer. HDMI panel mount screwed into the back.

Problems Faced During Construction

1. Accidentally soldered wire to access point that were not apart of the circuit board (I realized this after spending hours soldering the entire board. had to take apart the entire thing)
2. Soldering the thin copper wiring to the powerboost (you will see what I mean once you strip the wire yourself)
3. Heat Shrink tubing would not shrink
4. Neatly getting all the wires inside of the computer
5. Finding the right size magnets (need 1/4 x 1/16 inch Disc N48)
6. Did not know that a second powerboost 500 was necessary to assemble the speaker so, unfortunately I will not be installing it.

Now For the Hard Part...

So just as I said before, my had to be reset therefore, the minivmac software is no longer on my Raspberry Pi. I attempted and to reinstall the software but could not get past other issues.

1. My Pi is attempting to output the display to my touchscreen but, being as though the touchscreen does not work, this happens: 

so I had to reset my pi...again.

2. After reinstalling, my pi began having issues with the usb ports; I could not use the keyboard!

At this point, I do not know what is happening with my Pi. I will continue to update my blog with any changes.

Rough Draft

Comment below with information that will make my creation better. All feedback is welcomed!

Now we're getting somewhere...

After talking with a friend, I was informed that it is not good to download software for the touchscreen without having the screen connected to the Pi OOPS! I have tried reinstalling the screen software but the Pi is still unresponsive. Often during installation of the kernels, the Pi will cut off and the only way to use the Pi from that point is to reinstall the Raspbian operating system.

I've realized that the screen was simply using too much power so the red light indicator began to show. Once hook up this lithium battery everything should be alright!

Trouble Trouble!

So the other day I went to install the touchscreen I received from adafruit.com. They have an "easy install" guide on their site but, turns out, the install is in no way easy! First I went ahead on the page, followed the directions, typed everything in the terminal, thought life was sweet. When I went to reboot my Pi, thats when everything went downhill. So, the pi kept looping through start up and eventually did not produce an image on the screen. So when nothing showed up on my monitor I thought maybe everything is supposed to be shown on the touchscreen now. WRONG. The above image is what the touchscreen looks like connected to my Pi (with my monitor still not producing an image either). And if things weren't already looking bad, above you will also notice that there is a red light on (that is not supposed to be there). I googled what the red light meant and google told me that the red light indicates that the power cord connected to my pi is incorrect to stop using it IMMEDIATELY, but how could the cord, that came with the Pi, all of a sudden not be right for the Pi? Luckily I have spare power cords laying around that are compatible with the pi.  I am afraid that using the "wrong cord" could have caused damage to my Pi, but I remain optimistic.

Mini Pi Mac Abstract

The objective of the Mini Mac Pi project is to take my Rapsberry Pi 2 and produce a computer which emulates a 1993 Mac operating system. This is an invigorating topic for the world of computer scientists because of the merging of operating systems. Raspbian (which is similar to Linux) is the main OS on the Raspberry Pi 2. The OS necessary for this project is Minivmac; Minivmac is the name of the OS that emulates a 1993 Mac computer. My goal was to have Minivmac work successfully along side Raspbian so that my Mini Mac Pi may be a success.

There was hardware that goes along with the software as well. The outer shell of the Pi looks like an old style computer monitor. The only way to obtain the outer shell was by way of three dimensional printing. Stl files are needed to print in three dimensions. The stl files can be found on adafruit.com, the same site where the inspiration for this project was originated. There are 5 pieces that needed to be printed and each piece took about three hours to complete. The pieces were equipped with compartments for magnets and speakers so that the building of the computer was sturdy. The speaker is necessary because the pi nor screen has built in sound. I also purchased a lithium battery, 500 powerboost, and a switch so that the Mini Pi Mac may be portable. Soldering was necessary for the wiring to come together as well.

I had some problems with putting the final product together as well as downloading some of the software. Re-downloading the Raspbian operating system was necessary multiple times in order to get the desired results. In the end, the Mini Mac Pi was a success and useful for select purposes such as: playing games, taking notes, calculating, and more. In the future I hope to download a later version of a Mac operating system so that the Mini Mac Pi may be multipurposeful. Overall I enjoyed this project and look forward to many more activities with my Raspberry Pi 2.

Please leave any comments below on how I may improve on anything in regards to my Mini Pi Mac. Thank you.

Items Needed for Mini Pi Mac

In the video above, I show you what all I order for my project from adafruit.com. I still have yet to begin any building because I am waiting on a GPIO ribbon cable and wire stripper. Today I will be submitting the STLs for 3D printing.

How To Install Mini vMac On the Raspberry Pi 2

Hi! Today I will be walking you through, step-by-step, on the proper way to install Mini vMac onto your Raspberry Pi so that you may also turn your Pi into a mini old school Macintosh computer.

Raspberry Pi inside running off of Mini vMac OS

Step 1-Download:

Download the necessary files. The links are provided below:

• Mediafire > vMac.zip (ROMs)
• Mini vMac *choose the ARM(48k) link

Step 2-Installation:

1. Unzip the files in the Terminal and rename the file vmac.rom to vMac.ROM

pi@raspberrypi ~ $  cd /home/pi/Downloads                                                     

pi@raspberrypi ~/Downloads $  tar -xzvf minivmac-3.3.3-larm.bin.tgz

 pi@raspberrypi ~/Downloads $  unzip vmac.zip

pi@raspberrypi ~/Downloads $  mv mac.rom vMac.ROM

*it helps to have a view of both the Downloads Folder and the Terminal so that you may ensure the files are unzipping

2. When the folders are complete unzipping, in the Downloads Folder, there is a file named Mini vMac. Double Click said folder and you will be prompted with this message:

Select "Execute"

Step 3-Installation of OS

You should now see this pop up on the screen. This is the window indicating thats the Mini vMac software is up and running. Now we must install the operating system.

1. Click and drag the file titled Install1.image into the emulator window(pictured above). A screen will pop up prompting you to begin in stall but do not proceed until the next step is complete.

2. Click and drag the file titled hfs20M.DS into the emulator window. This is what you should see:

Click "ok" and proceed with the installation process. An error message may occur saying Image 1 cannot install new software or something else that is dismissible. Simply click "Switch Disk" until you see this option to install:

Select "Easy Install". Now the system will install and update itself.

At some point you will  be asked to insert certain disks. Simply click and drag said files into the emulator window as such:

Demonstration of inserting the Fonts file onto Mini vMac

Step 4-Fin!

Congratulations! You have successfully downloaded the Mini vMac software for your Raspberry Pi 2! Feel free to explore the things that may be done and check out the full project at adafruit. Please leave comments, let me know if this works for you!

Mini vMac successfully running on Raspbian

Links:

• My Notes About the Pi Blog
• Mini vMac Download
• adafruit

Pi-ject Time

I've explored my options and decided that I would like to do a project involving a calendar for the Computer Science Department at Delaware State University. There is a TV in the lounge that is not being used so I had the idea to use it has a calendar so that the students may stay up to date. I may even have a slide show of announcements that are relevant to the culture of the students that hang in the lounge. I will need to download some software onto the Pi for this to happen. I will update my blog as I begin this process.

Trials and Tri-Pi-lations

Today I realized I was using the wrong resistors WOOPS so my lights in previous videos were dimmer than they're supposed to be. I was using the 220 ohm resistors when I should have been using the 300 ohm Here is a video with the correct resistors. Notice that only the yellow light is dimmer than the rest. This is my light show. I will tweak it to blink to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but I want to focus on my project for the year so here is my final LED light show. Thank you for watching!

Second Day Pi

Today we were in class and worked further more on a light show using the raspberry pi. I managed to get the lights to do some cool things. The video below is an example of my lights simply blinking on and off three times. I will later insert the code for this particular code but there are better things to come!

Slice of Pi

Today was the first day I opened my Raspberry Pi. Upon my first time opening it I was given the task of making an LED turn on via a bread board and command lines. The positive side of the LED connected to GPIO2 and the negative side connected to a 220 ohm resistor which was connected to the GND (ground) of the bread board. The command lines needed to initiate the task are as follows:

sudo su

echo 2 > /sys/class/gpio/export

cd /sys/class/gpio/gpio2

echo out > direction


Those commands told the pi where the LED was connected on the breadboard. the code needed to turn the light on is: echo 1 > value. The code needed to turn the light off is: echo 0> value. To see where the current value is: cat value


I am next going to see whether or not it is possible to control my pi via my Macbook Pro with the El Capitan OS.