My First Raspberry Pi Project

View of the whole setup

View of the whole setup

Almost every year, I try to select a fun project to do while off for Christmas. This year the project I selected was based on Raspberry Pi.  Specifically I decided to build a device that would, when motion is detected, find the range to the motion using an ultrasonic rangefinder, take a picture using the camera module, and finally email me the results.

After just a few hours of work, I had separate proofs of concept working for each sensor written in Python.  A short time after, I started combining all the proofs of concept into a consolidated script which I got working.  Right now I am perfecting the classes for interfacing with the range finder and the motion detector and I am currently using picamera 0.8 for interfacing with the camera module.  I’ve included a link to the git repository I’m using for source control below.

Equipment:

  • Raspberry Pi Model B
  • Raspberry Pi 5MP Camera Board Module
  • HC-SR501 Human Sensor Module Pyroelectric Infrared
  • SainSmart HC-SR04 Ranging Detector Mod Distance Sensor
  • 5 180 ohm resistors
  • Breadboard and miscellaneous connectors

Source Code: https://github.com/chaddotson/PiPy

 

Posted by Chad Dotson

A small town Computer Scientist / Software Engineer. Chad enjoys writing Python and JavaScript as well as tinkering with his Raspberry Pi and Arduino. When not programming, he enjoys Photography (especially lightning) and Sci-Fi.

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