Pascal version of Cavern Fighter on the Raspberry PI

After several hours making changes to my original Delphi code, I have now recompiled my Cavern Fighter PC game to run on the Raspberry PI. Using Free Pascal and the Lazarus IDE I finally got it running. At the moment the frame rate is a little slow and it has no sound. I’ll either get the Linux files for Bass or look to use the SDL library to play the background tunes and spot effects. For those who don’t know, I wrote this game back in 2004 for a Retro Game competition. It is based on a ZX Spectrum game of the same name.

 

Here is a picture of it running in the debugger via a VNC link.

 

Here is a picture of the original Spectrum version.

LED Counter in Python on the Pi

Just a quick post to show a video clip of my Raspberry Pi controlling a seven segment LED via the Pi's GPIO port. I plan to extract the code into a reusable library. One possible use will be to display status / error codes whilst controlling other devices. Must stop playing with hardware and get back to the software.

From one LED to seven

Another weekend and another hour spent with my Raspberry Pi. After a rummage about in my junk box I located a seven segment LED. Annoyingly the device was too small to span the gap on my breadboard. About ten minutes later I had fabricated a suitable socket. Once the Pi was fired up I wrote a quick bit of Python to check that I could control all the segments. As you can see from the photograph, this was a success. Next Sunday’s coding session will be to allow me to pass in a number via the command line and have the device display the correct number.

Controlling an LED from a Raspberry Pi

Whilst fleshing out ideas for my new ZX Spectrum game, I’ve also found some time to work with my Raspberry Pi. A while ago I bought a breakout board kit for the Pi. This was easily constructed so I needed to then test it. The board connects via the i2c bus and exposes several ports that can be used as inputs or outputs. The controller chip only costs about a £1 so if things went wrong it is a lot cheaper to buy a new chip than it is a new Pi. By default the Pi has the i2c support turned off. This can be enabled by commenting out the i2c line in the blacklist file. A few supporting files need to be download and then it’s ready to work. I adapted some Python code and wired up a LED and resistor to my breadboard. I could then switch the LED on and off from the command line. This isn’t exactly rocket science but it proves that everything is installed correctly and I that can still solder properly. The next step is to look at controlling my amateur radio kit remotely. Here are some pictures of the board and a screen shot of the Python program. I am still using VNC to connect to the Pi so I can program from the comfort of my lounge.

 

 

 

Virgin Atlantic Challenge on a Raspberry Pi

I can now die a happy man. After a bit of fiddling I finally managed to get the game I wrote back in 1986 to run on my Raspberry Pi. The game is “Virgin Atlantic Challenge” and you play the part of Mr B. Not a great game but good to see it running again on hardware I couldn’t have dreamt of way back then.

VNC running on a Raspberry Pi

Having a shortage of monitors around the house, I decided it would be easier to run VNC on my Raspberry Pi and connect to it remotely. I had some fun giving it a fixed IP address and amending my DHCP server to exclude this value. It took a little while to get everything to boot correctly and auto start the VNC server but I got there in the end. Here is a screenshot of the VNC client running on my Windows 8 laptop. If anyone wants some advice on how I set this all up, let me know and I’ll blog the settings etc.

My Raspberry Pi is here

At long last my Pi has arrived. I've placed a Debian image on a new SD Card and will be powering her up as soon as I can find a spare keyboard and mouse. Here is a picture of her:

Raspberry Pi

After trying for hours I managed to get onto the Farnell website and pre-order a Raspberry-Pi. It won't be shipped to me for over a month as the first batch sold out but it'll give me some time to get my head round Linux. With any luck I'll soon have some "retro" games running on them. Check out the Pi website here: Raspberry-Pi