Using the Raspberry Pi for Fantastic Video Communications with Zoom

Moving slightly off-piste this time, not talking about tomatoes or any other garden related things. Lockdown has meant that we haven’t physically seen our children/grandchildren much this year (in fact hardly at all) so we’ve got used to talking to them via Skype and Zoom. Some games work well (Uno, UnoFlip, Bingo, Go Fish) but…… Continue reading Using the Raspberry Pi for Fantastic Video Communications with Zoom

Raspberry Pi as a Naturewatching Camera

Those of you who watch Springwatch on the BBC are probably already ahead of me. I was interested to see that there was a short article in one of the programs on a “£25 Nature Watching Camera” from MyNaturewatch. It turns out that this is an (almost) perfect application for the Raspberry Pi so I…… Continue reading Raspberry Pi as a Naturewatching Camera

Waterbutt in the Polytunnel – A final conclusion

As I’ve said more than once (here and other places) I’ve been intrigued by the question of whether putting waterbutts filled with water into the greenhouse/polytunnel can beneficially affect/improve the temperature in the polytunnel. To try and come to a conclusion, I built a Raspberry Pi temperature sensor with four sensors (see here). I put…… Continue reading Waterbutt in the Polytunnel – A final conclusion

Raspberry Pi: Moving Files in a Network

I’m gradually building a network of Raspberry Pis for different things and, I suppose, its the way that an Internet of Things (IoT) would get built. At the moment, what I’ve got is a couple of Raspberry Pi Zeros with temperature sensors connected to them in different locations (one in the house and one in…… Continue reading Raspberry Pi: Moving Files in a Network

Creating a Headless Raspberry Pi System from an Apple Mac

I’ve a few Raspberry Pis which I run Headless (without their own screen and keyboard) from my Apple Mac using a combination of Finder, VNC and SSH to run the applications. I recently decided to upgrade one of them (a Pi3) to Stretch to see if it was any better (and to play with the…… Continue reading Creating a Headless Raspberry Pi System from an Apple Mac

Can a Waterbutt of water affect the temperature in a Polytunnel?

I’ve seen a number of discussions as to whether putting a waterbutt filled with water in the polytunnel would help to avoid frosts and (possibly) encourage earlier growth by raising the average temperature in the polytunnel. Whilst there was a general opinion that it would help, I had a feeling that any improvement would be…… Continue reading Can a Waterbutt of water affect the temperature in a Polytunnel?