Mouse in the house!

I've been working on using a Raspberry Pi using passive power over ethernet to monitor webcams in the birdboxes at the bottom of the garden, using the software Motion to capture images or stream video. Given it has started to get cold at night (with frost) I've been testing the camera setup in doors, using it to keep an eye on some autumnal wildlife - at this time of year we get mice in the house:

We'd heard noises in this cupboard, and caught mice here last year, but I was a little surprised to get pictures of a visitor the first night I setup the cameras at this location. Now switching to the second camera positioned closer which benefited from the indirect illumination (and was actually in focus):

TomTom Bluetooth Remote & Raspberry Pi

A while back I bought a TomTom Bluetooth remote control (here's a good review) with a view to using it with a Linux home theatre computer (HTPC) running XBMC or similar. As far as the computer is concerned, it is just a Bluetooth keyboard.

TomTom Bluetooth remote control

While most of the information below should apply to any Debian/Ubuntu system, this time I was using the Debain variant Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi. Since the Raspberry Pi has an HDMI connector I may keep one connected to our TV, but this could also work out nicely for controlling a Raspberry Pi running the GPS software Navit in the car. Time to get Bluetooth on the Pi with a USB dongle!

Navit GPS on Raspberry Pi

I've got a USB GPS dongle working with my Raspberry Pi, so I started exploring mapping software that I could run on it if I were to mount the RPi in my car with a little screen - the simple low resolution screens used for reverse parking cameras sold on eBay for under £20 look perfect.

Two options came up, GpsDrive and Navit - both of which recommend map data from Open StreetMap. Of these only Navit is available in the Debian/Raspian repository, so I tried that first.

$ sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients navit

Pharos/Microsoft GPS-360 on Raspberry Pi

I bought a Microsoft GSP-360 USB dongle on eBay as an impulse purchase, toying with the idea of running a Raspberry Pi in my car for live map display or at least route tracking for contributing road traces to the Open Street-Map project. Just getting my location out of it proved harder than I'd expected.

24V passive POE for Raspberry Pi

Today my 24V power supply arrived - the final part I needed to try a 24V passive power-over-ethernet (POE) solution down a 40m cable to drive my Raspberry Pi and two webcams. Good news - it works!

Raspberry Pi and two Xbox Live Vision webcams
using 24V passive power over ethernet (POE)