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.