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New Prototype Testing
07/22/2019 at 06:30 • 0 commentsJust have a busy weekend. We start testing a new prototype.
The power will not be interrupted when you pull out of charging cable. It's a UPS now.
We can get battery level through i2c. RTC works fine but the timed boot function is unstable. Some hardware bugs need to be fixed.
A button is connected to GPIO.7 of pi zero, for soft shutdown or custom functions. However, we just find a GPIO pin provided but powerIC chip... which is a good news. Maybe we should connect the button to the powerIC, and detect it via i2c. Save one GPIO pin!
Using special pogopins to connect the pi, the new version will be as compact as the old ones (or even thinner?). Anyway, we insist on the compatibility with all pi zeros whether it has gpio headers. Just plug and play.
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Joy Bonnet Cap
07/12/2019 at 10:53 • 0 commentsJoy Bonnet Cap!
Download printable model here: https://github.com/PiSugar/pisugar-case-pihat-cap/tree/master/jot_bonnet_cap
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new design under testing
07/02/2019 at 07:15 • 0 commentsToday we begin testing a new design of PiSugar.
There will be i2c power level detection (for soft shutdown), RTC, UPS, a gpio button.
It turns out that the power IC we use has i2C but has nothing to do with power level detection....sigh....so we are about to change another model.
Sugarpin samples also arrived. Still need some modifications. Anyway it's probably the tiniest structure we had ever made. BTW it's gold plated !
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SugarPin first look
06/23/2019 at 02:22 • 1 commentWe have designed a special pogopin to connect pi zero and pisugar. We call it "SugarPin". With this tiny little thing we can get access to the pi from the bottom of GPIO pins (or just GPIO pin holes). It's now possible to make new pisugar compatible with all models of raspberry pi.
Today we just got the first look:
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Open source mini app code
06/18/2019 at 03:41 • 0 commentsWe just open source the code of PiSugar wechat miniapp!
This is a client developed according to the server-side of sugar-wifi-conf.
You can modify the layout and make your own pi remote controller now.
Please see: https://github.com/PiSugar/sugar-wifi-conf/tree/master/sugar-wifi-miniapp
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mini digital mirror
06/01/2019 at 06:22 • 0 commentsA mini digital mirror made with pi zero, pisugar and adafuit scroll phat.
Cases: basic case + transparent cap ( with PMMA mirror ) + holder. Model files had been updated on github.
I had been waiting for this phat for so long to get this work done. Finally!
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New Circuit Under Testing
05/31/2019 at 03:06 • 0 commentsIn the last few weeks we had been testing circuits for a newer version. Problems like battery-level detection and graceful shutdown will be solved.
To achieve these goals, we still need i2C port on gpio. Therefore we are redesigning a micro pogopin to fit pi zeros with and without gpio headers.
New dual chip design will avoid voltage drop when switching from USB charge to battery power, which will cause a pi reboot.
Even they look a bit weird right now, they are our hopes of next generation product : )
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Manual Card Update
05/06/2019 at 06:44 • 0 commentsSince we start oversea shipping, I think it's nesessary to have a manual card in global language. I like ikea style instruction because it can be understanded by everyone and I have lot of fun in the design. Just can't wait to share it with you.
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Now Available on Amazon
05/04/2019 at 01:48 • 0 commentsHi everyone, PiSugar is now available on Amazon. We are now ready for oversea shipping!
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Control a Pi with Bluetooth Low Energy
04/19/2019 at 10:06 • 0 commentsSometimes connecting a pi zero to a wifi is troublesome. Since there are many ways to do it, but you just don't get a card reader, monitor, keyboard or a laptop along with you.
I think this project, PiSugar aims to make a pi easier to play with, therefore we were trying to find a efficient way to control a pi. Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is a good way you cannot miss.
Here are some features of BLE:
- supported by Raspberry Pi 3/zero w
- supported by most of the smart phones
- no need for pairing
- no conflict with traditional bluetooth
- low energy cost
- won't loss connection when switching wifi (if you config wifi through wifi with a wrong password, you are setting your pi free )
At the very beginning I was making this just to solve the wifi problem. However, I think it can be more than that. It's actually a complete channel to transport data. If you can custom the characteristics, then you can make your own wireless pi controller. For example, you can safely shutdown the pi, get cpu load, temperature, etc. If you are building a pi car, you can control it through BLE, too.
Base on these, we had developed a BLE sevice on pi. From the service you can:
- get wifi name, ip address, pi model
- config wifi
- get other custom info. e.g. CPU tempreture, CPU load, or whatever you can get by shell
- remote control the pi to execute shell script and get response, such as shutdown, reboot, running a script, etc.
I choose Wechat miniapp to make the client app since Wechat is very common used in China and it's really fast to build a miniapp. People don't have to download native apps. They open miniapp directly in Wechat. Also, miniapp can access to bluetooth. I'm not sure whether Google instant app can access bluetooth. But even if it can, maybe it's just for Android? So I'm still considering whether I should build native ios / android app.