Quick Thing: TARDIS Housing for Raspberry Pi modded for Raspberry Pi 4

This is just a quick note that I updated my Tardis housing for my media center to now hold a Raspberry Pi 4. The new version features:

  • An improved “POLICE public call BOX” sign
  • A hole for a 5 mm LED in the top for a shining light
  • The necessary holes for USB-C, 2x Micro-HDMI and Audio out
  • A removable top

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Replacing Fabtotum Hybrid Head v1 Hotend with E3D Lite6

I replaced the stock hotend of the Fabtotum Personal Fabricator Hybrid Head v1 by an E3D Lite6 hotend (The full metal V6 should work the same way). In this post I describe the steps to remove the old hotend, get in the new hotend and the simple modifications to the firmware that were required.

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Legal EPG Scraper for ARD TV Stations to Use With tvheadend External XMLTV Grabber

I wrote a Python EPG scraper for the EPG data of the German TV stations broadcast by ARD. It is legal for private use. Here I share the code and my thoughts behind it.

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Le Potato Media Center & German IPTV Re-Revisited

The comment by Argus Nymus on my Media Center for German IPTV post made it clear that my approach with playlist filtering via web proxy was way too overengineered. For several reasons I needed to rebuild my media center anyhow, so it was time to simplify my approch, which I describe in some detail here.

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Interfacing EasyMeter Q3M via Info-Interface

The installation of my fuel cell heating required a bi-directional power meter. Bonn Netz, my local power network provider, uses meters of type EasyMeter Q3M which have two infrared interfaces: A bidirectional D0 interface, and a read-only info interface. I use the info interface (INFO-DSS) to read out power consumption and production of the three phases. For this, I built an optical interface, a 3D printed housing for it, and use the UART of a Raspberry Pi with python to get the values.

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Media Center revisited: Libre Computer “Le Potato” plus LibreELEC

While Raspberry Pi with xbian is already a versatile media center, I’m not 100% satisfied with everything. And, with the advent of H.265/HEVC as German DVB-T2 standard, the technical requirements have outrun the current offerings of the Raspberry Foundation. So I decided to migrate my Kodi media center to brand-new Libre Computer’s Le Potato board with LibreELEC, and here are the steps to do so, starting from the xbian media center described in an earlier blog post.

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Interfacing Vitovalor 300-P with a Raspberry Pi

I want to integrate my new Viessmann Vitovalor 300-P fuel cell heating into my home automation. For this, I use the Optolink interface, vcontrold from the openv community, and create my own configuration files from several sources.

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Touch Rotation with 10″ Display from Joy-IT

I got myself a 10″ multi-touch display from Joy-IT for my Raspberry. I’m quite satified with the display, it has a relatively high resolution, very good display quality, good viewing angle, and touch works very well – the necessary driver is included in Raspbian. Two things that could be better: The backlight is not software-controllable, and the position of the HDMI and USB connectors is not optimal.

In the end I want to use the display mounted vertically in a wall, so I included the line

into /boot/config.txt. Unfortunately this only rotates the display, not the touch input, so the mouse is not following the touch. The line lcd_rotate=3, which would turn both display and touch, only works for the official Raspberry Foundation display. The methods described in my 3.2″ Touch Display Quick Guide do not work with this screen either. First, because tslib does not know how to handle the multitouch, and second: the SwapAxes line is also not recognised.

Still, /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-calibration.conf is the key to success:

That does the trick, also on brand-new Raspbian Stretch. For more details on the transformatin matrix, also for other rotations, go here.

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