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Trade Chat The PiCow & PiPatGen

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crustytv
(@crustytv)
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Now my signals rack is pretty much established and more and more TVs are being connected, I've finally got my act together and built the @doz PiCow. It's not in a snazzy box, just the original Pi case, I have just implemented the shutdown button for now it will do, until I can find a suitable project case, so it just sits on the end of the bench.

Cheers Andy, finally got as near as I'll ever get to owning a BBC COW and further extends what I can send to the TVs.

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Posted : 26/08/2023 11:49 am
Tazman1966, colourmaster, Doz and 3 people reacted
crustytv
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And the PiPatGen

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To be honest, I'll only use the PiCOW, and concentrate on hopefully getting the BATC generator fully extended with new EPROM's (if possible). However, for those of you without a pattern generator, then for about £20 or less you can build yourself Andy's PiPatEgn.

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Posted : 26/08/2023 4:54 pm
Doz and Lloyd reacted
Doz
 Doz
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Looks great in your showroom. I'm humbled

 
Posted : 26/08/2023 7:18 pm
crustytv reacted
crustytv
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I decided I don't need to buy a fancy box, to house my Pi-COW, it's already in a neat little box. All I need to do is drill a hole for the safe shutdown button, but would there be enough room? The answer is yes 😎.

Happy days, project complete.

switch
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COW

The original C.O.W.

A tad larger

originalCOW

Well, not quite finished, but almost .. ..

Yesterday another project came to a dead end however, what it did produce was a very useful and appropriate case to house the C.O.W.  Here it is, I've even managed to track down and purchase a B&W vinyl globe decal for the front, to tip the hat to the original.

 

There's even space inside for another Pi which I've bought and will be adding, that's what the second Video output will be used for. More on that another day, let's just say "the internet of the 70s/80s" but with a live feed of today's headlines.

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Posted : 27/08/2023 4:22 pm
colourmaster
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Hi Chris, your set up is looking great . I've been thinking of doing the same with my TC / pm5544 generators. The Pi  cow is a more manageable size compared to my original ex BBC 1 globe and clock which fit into a big contraption called "pepper's ghost " with a mirror and camera . I'll get round to restoring it one day .

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Posted : 29/08/2023 9:25 am
Tazman1966 reacted
Till Eulenspiegel
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Hi Gary, from Wikipedia: Pepper's Ghost.

Pepper's ghost - Wikipedia

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 29/08/2023 8:49 pm
colourmaster reacted
RichardFromMarple
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BBC 'Noddy' camera

@colourmaster The device the BBC mounted the globe model in a device called Noddy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(camera)

 
Posted : 29/08/2023 9:35 pm
Cathovisor
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Posted by: @crustytv

The original C.O.W.

A tad larger

-- attachment is not available --

I remember it well. The one that Paul Marshall now has sat at the bottom of one of the 'digital' bays in TC5 for a while 🙂 

 

 
Posted : 29/08/2023 11:00 pm
Cathovisor
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Posted by: @richardfrommarple

 

-- attachment is not available --

@colourmaster The device the BBC mounted the globe model in a device called Noddy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_(camera)

.and used a Cox multi-level colour synth to colour it.

 

 
Posted : 29/08/2023 11:00 pm
crustytv
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I bought another Raspberry Pi, so now the rack has two, one running Pi-C.O.W. the other running Pi-Pat and whatever test pattern I care to copy on to it. This has also been mounted onto a rack unit. The Pi-Pat also has a tiny wireless USB keypad connected which allows me to select a test pattern.

There was a hole for a power indicator on the rack unit, so I added a little perfboard with an LED and 330R series resistor, this was attached to GPIO header pins 2(5V) & 9(GND).

Finding good quality test cards has proved difficult, if anyone has some to share, that would be great.

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Posted : 01/09/2023 8:42 pm
Lloyd reacted
colourmaster
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Hi Chris, I have an ex BBC pm5544 generator that could supply you with a broadcast standard test pattern to program into your pi.

 
Posted : 01/09/2023 10:30 pm
crustytv reacted
crustytv
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Although my wireless remote sized keyboard/mouse (see below) was perfectly fine, it meant the receiver had to be permanently inserted into the Pi-Pat's USB. This meant it was totally tied up on the Pi-Pat, if I needed it for another project, and I will, I would have to unmount the Pi-Pat from the rack, retrieve etc.

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Therefore, I decided this morning to implement the @doz solution for selecting a test card. A hunt in the loft produced an old USB keyboard. Once dismantled, the keyboard driver PCB was removed, and I set about decoding the matrix for the X-Y coordinates for "J" & "K".

This turned out as simple as Doz suggested it would be, using a multimeter I found J's Y coordinate was edge connector 2, K's Y was edge connector 3, and they shared a common X coordinate to edge 9.

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The next bit should have been OH so simple, solder the switches to the appropriate lands and Bobs your Aunty (well he is these days 🙄 ). What I failed to take into account was that after soldering the wires from the switches, any lateral movement would result in the land being torn from the board, and boy are they small and fragile.

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What followed next turned the air blue, you see I should have used finer hook-up wires than the ones that came already attached to the switch's oops, I didn't. It looked like this was going to be game over, I'd have to stay with using the wireless keyboard. However, after a coffee and a chill, I did manage to scrape away enough resist, to get a good connection. Once all three were in place, I wrapped in Kapton tape and used a couple of cable ties. Not pretty, but once tested showed it was working OK.

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Next I needed to drill the front aluminium facia to receive the two switches, I also fitted the safe shutdown switch, labelled up and put it back in the rack. Finally, it is all finished.

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Lesson learned; if anyone goes down this switch button route don't be a plonker like me, use very thin wires. Dox didn't mention this in his video, but I guess he did not anticipate numpties like me using wrong gauge wires.

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Posted : 02/09/2023 11:21 am
Nuvistor reacted
Nuvistor
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@crustytv Looks very good, as for the print lifting , live  and learn, show me someone who has never made a mistake and I will show you someone who never did anything.

The museum is looking very smart.

Frank

 
Posted : 02/09/2023 4:33 pm
sideband
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Absolutely! All part of the (vast) learning curve!

 
Posted : 02/09/2023 5:55 pm
crustytv
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A friend fell in love with the Pi-Cow and dearly wanted one (I know the feeling), so I built him one. I took a different approach, unlike my rack version this time I used an external hard drive case, which in my opinion was perfectly suited to conversion. So here's version two of the C.O.W. Again I used the LED of the drive unit, hooking it up to the GPIO of the Pi to show when the unit is active.

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My adventures with Raspberry Pi also continue with the next project, Pi Text.

Until recently, my Teletext TV's and Teletext set-top boxes were provided pages via the IMOGen. This has been wonderful, and I'd not be without it, but my setup has just 15 static pages to view. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a live Ceefax service back ... well you can.

Today I built yet another Pi and set up Vbit2, a superb implementation of Peter Kwan. Once installed, you configure the service of your choice (I chose Ceefax Worldwide) and then tell it to run at boot time.

The Pi is connected to the internet and my analogue TV signals distribution system. Now all my teletext equipped TV's in the museum have a live teletext feed, the date and clock too, just as it used to be.

At any time, you can change the way VBIT2 behaves. You can also ‘Update services’ which will check for newer collections of pages and updates to existing ones. Some are art collections, while others are collections of popular pages from the past (such as the writings of Mr Biffo and the Bamboozle quiz games). Others are snapshots of an entire service in a moment of time. Some even dynamically update from news feeds. You just ‘Select service’ to change what is being broadcast in real time.

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So that's three Pi's, one running C.O.W. one running test cards and this final one running teletext services.

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Posted : 07/09/2023 4:48 pm
Jayceebee and Lloyd reacted
Lloyd
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Probably about time I did something with my PI, it does do some sort of ceefax when you turn it on, but not anything that auto updates.

Regards,

 Lloyd 

 
Posted : 07/09/2023 5:27 pm
crustytv
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Built the Teletext Pi into a module and installed it into the signals rack. The only thing I didn't like was the teletext service just booted into the Pi console, so all the TV's initially would see this, which is naff. So, once I was happy the Teletext service was working OK, I then installed fbi (frame buffer imageviewer), copied over a test card, added the fbi command line to the logged-in users .bashrc file, and set the system to auto login. Now when the teletext module boots, it drops into a test card so all the TV's display that, and those with text ability, can hit text to load all the pages. This has now taken over teletext services from the IMOGen as that was 15 static pages, now I have a live feed, just as though the service never went away.

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I also removed the Keyboard driver from the PiPatGen, if you remember I'd used too thick gauge wire, and it had ripped tracks from the driver PCB. I bought another scrapper keyboard, remapped the keys and did it properly this time.

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The three Pi's

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Posted : 12/09/2023 4:41 pm
Lloyd, Jayceebee, jcdaze and 1 people reacted
Jayceebee
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I’m very impressed, sadly I haven’t got to grips with the Pi yet. I did have a play with it a few days ago but I still haven’t been able to upload anything to it.

I see the GEC is now displaying text correctly, what was the cause?

John.

 
Posted : 12/09/2023 6:36 pm
crustytv
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Posted by: @jayceebee

I’m very impressed, sadly I haven’t got to grips with the Pi yet. I did have a play with it a few days ago but I still haven’t been able to upload anything to it.

I see the GEC is now displaying text correctly, what was the cause?

Hi John

Some tools you'll need Winscp, Putty, Raspberry Pi-Imager and BalenaEtcher, I used 100Mbit wired for networking. I can then terminal login (putty) to each device and work on them as and when required. Today I found some excellent Test cards, so it was just a case of logging in and copying them over. It's been years since I was a Solaris sysadmin, slowly coming back to me.

When you have some free time, pop over, and I'll show you what to do or if you like to save you all the hassle. I can image an SD card for you with whatever you want, or do all three implementations.

As for the GEC, no bloody idea, it just fixed itself. In fact, the TVs have been giving me hell today.

The SABA (Bush Z718) decided to switch off for some reason, when I powered back up there was no line lock, something's barfed! Then the T20A started to develop EW problems and an odd fault has devleoped, random bright flashes on the screen.

The Fergy 3710, decided it wanted to join in, so all I have there is a blank raster. The fergy 3713 decided no colour lock is a permanent arrangement and the HMV 2726 decoder is making colours up as it goes, and that nasty fizz/pop from the hoz timebase area accompanied by a jiggle on the test card, has come back, not happy about that one.

All in all, a pretty awful day TV-wise. 🙄 

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Posted : 12/09/2023 7:05 pm
Jayceebee reacted
sideband
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Its the heat ! Sends everything crazy!

 
Posted : 12/09/2023 8:08 pm
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