RaspBerry Pi Zero

[Hellmut1956]

Hi friends, I have been looking around to purchase a Zero and none of my sources have those in stock! Can you help me why apparently the Zero is not available?

I have a bit crazy purpose to study the Zero. I am building a Panel for my electronic lab:

Its purpose is to put all the tensions I have availble from my modified PC power supply next to the surface of my lab desk and be able to control by a switch for ON/OFF which tensions I want to have active and which not. Next to each switch I will place a RGB LED, 4 pin with anode, next to it and have it light up in the color I have associated with each individual switch. Now the reason I am considering buying a Zero is that this way I could implement a remote control of this panel from the screens of my PC i. e. by having the Zero access accessible through my internal net via WiFi. I would use one mega8 per 2 tensions/switch/LED controlled by the zero via I2C and so even be able to control remotely the color of the individual LEDs. At the same time those mega8 could also sense the actual tension value and the current and have those read out by the Zero.
If the zero is a nogo I would use my raspi B+

 

[Harald Kapp]

Hellmut,
unfortunately I can't help you with a source for the little Rasbpi. It seems to be in great demand - small wonder at that price.

With respect to your project: Why would you go at length get an inexpensice Rasbpi , the add 4 additional AtMegas only to control the LEds (and possibly read the switch positions)? The Rasbpi has 40 GPIO pins which can do all this without help from AtMegas.

May I suggest you consider an alternative? USe an ESP8266 WiFi module and and Arduino or use the ESP8266 module stand-alone. The ESP8266 can be programmed via the arduino IDE, comes with 4MB Flash memory and 1 GPIOs.

For measuring and displaying the actual voltage on the port use a cheap 3 digit voltage measurement module to display the voltage directly next to the sockets.

 

[Hellmut1956]

Thx for responding so fast. I am going to use RGB LEDs which have 4 pins, one being in my case a cathode. This means that for each LED I need to have 3 PWMs to control the intensity. The combination then gives the resulting color! 8x an RGB LED results in 24 PWMs! Additionally for capturing the voltage and the current flowing through each of the tension sources I need to use 2 ADC! An mega8 has 3 PWM channels so each could control 1 RGB LED, 6 channel ADC for tension and current sensing and costs at Reichelt just 1,99 Euros! Combining this with a cheap WiFi module and a Zero, 5 USD plus shipping would implement a full blown Raspbian/Python driven unit that I could control directly from the screen of my PC! Your suggestion needs to setup an IDE for that controller,implement all stuff needed and without the comfort given by the Zero raspi.

 

[Harald Kapp]

Thanks for explaining the details, Hellmut.

Your suggestion needs to setup an IDE for that controller,implement all stuff needed and without the comfort given by the Zero raspi.

You'll have sorts of an IDe for the AtMega plus do some programming of the chips anyway. The ESP can be programmed using the Arduino IDE. But hey, I'm fine with your idea. Mine was just another line of thought.

 

[hevans1944]

Is this another fine example of German over-engineering? Love it, @Hellmut1956! Looks like the zero stock has been gobbled up by those who want to sell you a complete kit for ten to twenty times the price of the Raspi 0 alone.