Rasperarrium 2.0 or Raspberrarium: the comeback

Hello frens,

It seems like it’s been forever since I last wrote anything here.

Sometimes I get caught up in life, as most people do, and then on top of that, things happen that make it a bit more challenging like a heatwave, health stuff, or my cats taking turns howling at us right before we wake up and robbing us of that sweet, gentle morning. It happens.

But either way, I’m here, I’m giving it my best, and I’m quoting my good fren Hildegard:

“...and so that, in the shipwreck of this world and in the heavy battles against iniquity, you may be an active and powerful knight, in order that you may shine like a bright star in eternal felicity.”

So I guess everything is already alright.

In that spirit, I’m here to present my newest project. It’s not exactly new-new, as you may recall, so I think it’s safer to call it an enhanced project: RASPBERRARIUM!!!!!!!!! 🌱

This idea had been floating around ever since I built it, and I finally got around to doing it.

But there’s a little story before this big step I took :P

At first, I wanted to add an LCD 1602 to it so it could show the moon phases, time, and so on. My tests were kind of okay, but at some point I think I burned the display while I was looking for code that fit it. I tried several versions until I found one that worked, but while I was trying to connect the cables to the right GPIOs, I made a mistake several times and on two occasions, but especially one, it started to smell like... burnt.

It worked... for a while

After that, it became kind of flaky and eventually stopped working altogether. Sigh.

Then I tried using the DHT sensor for humidity and temperature that came with the Pico kit, but I’m pretty sure that one was just bad quality. I looked into it and found that those sensors are cheaply made and quite fragile, so it’s very possible it wasn’t even my fault.

So you can guess I was a bit bummed out. But as I mentioned earlier, the heatwave was whipping my soul with its relentless evilness, and I just didn’t go back to the project for a while despite the initial excitement.

But alas! I persevered eventually and returned to it, and now it’s finally here.

I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I first tested the HDC1080 on its own, and it worked on the first try, which was a huge improvement compared to the previous sensor, where I had tried several codes and still got nothing.

Then the next step was incorporating it into the existing code for my Raspberrarium. After a few tries and some vibecoding, it was possible. I also had to change the SDA and SCL pins from their original positions in the code to different GPIO pins, because the original pin assignment conflicted with the rest of the circuit.

But I wanted to take it a step further, as I had mentioned I wanted to see the humidity, temperature, and moon phase without having to connect it to my computer and since that’s not possible via SSH, I still had an option: making a webpage with the sensor values and moon phases. 🤯 

After some tweaking and making it as pinkish as I wanted, it finally turned out great.

On my phone ☎️ 

On my computer 🖥️ 

Of course, I can only visit it while I’m at home, but that’s totally fine. I was only going to be able to see the LCD at home anyway, so that’s a win in my book.

I’m very, very happy with how it turned out, and not a day goes by when I’m not in awe of this beauty.

As usual, I also had help from my amazing husband, who helped solder the HDC1080 and make a kind of bridge so the Pi’s GND could be used by the LEDs, the HDC1080, and the Pi itself.

Yay, so that’s basically it and yes, you can tell I’m quite happy about it.

As usual, wishing you all the best, stay safe and take care.

See you later alligator 🐊

https://stacker.news/items/1541799