Tugulab Blog

Half-formed ideas. Finished products. Everything learned along the way.

August 4, 2016

Control the Raspberry Pi 2/3 GPIO pins with Swift 3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04

Pin numbers, a breadboard LED on GPIO4, WiringPi to prove the pin responds, and then turning it on and off from Swift 3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04.

August 3, 2016

Fetching the Swift ARM team's daily build and extracting it into a Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu 16.04, ready to drive the GPIO pins from Swift.

August 1, 2016

Flashing Ubuntu 16.04 server minimal onto a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 and bringing it up over ssh only, which vanilla Ubuntu will not do on its own.

July 11, 2016

Reading the GPIO pin numbering, wiring an LED to GPIO4 on a breadboard and switching it on from Swift running on the Raspberry Pi itself.

July 11, 2016

Installing a Swift 3.0 preview build on a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 running Raspbian, from apt sources to a first script that talks to the GPIO pins.

July 11, 2016

Getting Raspbian onto a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 and configured over ssh alone — no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse — ready for Swift 3.0 afterwards.

July 11, 2016

The index of the whole series: Raspbian headless with no cables, Swift 3.0 installed, and GPIO pins driving an LED, all over ssh from one machine.

December 21, 2015

A lamp that runs on a hanging weight instead of fuel, plugs or batteries. What free, unlimited light would mean where the grid does not reach.

December 15, 2015

Is money spent on space travel worth it? What the other 99% actually got out of it: maps, vacuum cleaners and the internet, among other things.

December 10, 2015

Almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong: it is not a chemical hook. Rat parks, bonding and cages tell a different story.