woofingpi

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I was able to get the scratch program to flash the LED. The trick was to be using Scratch, not Scratch 2. Though the same control blocks were available in both cases, I would assume that the broadcast setup portion did not configure the GPIO17 pin properly.

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Scratch 3

I found out why Scratch 3 isn’t on my Raspberry Pi 3B+. It appears that Scratch 3 needs 1 GB to run well and until the Pi 4 came out 1 GB was all the Raspberry pies could have. I do have a 4B with 4GB of RAM that could do it, but I wanted to do this blog assuming a 3B+, so that will limit me to scratch 2. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/scratch-3-desktop-for-raspbian-on-raspberry-pi/

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My intent was to post here how to hook up and operate a stepper motor here using the Raspberry Pi 3B+. Then I thought that since I am trying to start this to be oriented for beginners, I would start with something simple. Light an LED. So I hooked up the few required parts. A current limiting resistor in series with an LED. So then I went to the raspberrypi.org website to follow their beginners project to light an LED. The website is difficult to navigate. When you find the project, it is simple and mostly easy to follow, however, they are using a graphical programing language called “Scratch” which I wasn’t familar with. It is a drag and drop sort of programming technique, which I can see will give a good view of the structure of programming that would be easier to remember and understand than just text. So I am having to back up further and learn the “Scratch” graphical programming environment. To complicate this effort, there are various versions of “Scratch”. There is “Scratch”, “Scratch 2” and now “Scratch 3”. Some of the Scratch lessons say that only work with “Scratch 3”. I noticed that my Pi only had Scratch and Scratch 2 on it, so I went to find out how to get 3 on it. I was pointed to a website that had Scratch 3, but it was only for other computers, like ones with Windows or macOS and the like. So I am going to try using scratch 2 to learn the programming environment. So you can see, I have had to back up a bit from my original intent to have the Pi move things with a stepper motor.

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What was all that stuff?

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How to set up wireless networking on a Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi 3B+ has WiFi buillt in, but it still needs to be set up for your local network. There is a method for doing this that can be done from the desktop and doesn’t require using the command line.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/desktop.md

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This is a link to Raspberry Pi documentation, configuration. Of particular interest to me is the part about securing your Pi an in particular the firewall to help keep hackers out of your Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/security.md

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Photos of the Raspberry Pi 3B+ in a case with Power, HDMI, ethernet (blue cable), USB keyboard and USB Microsoft Mouse connected.  

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Beginning Raspberry Pi Blog for the Neighborhood

I started this blog so that I have a place to put things to help a neighbor get started using a Raspberry Pi 3B+