Monthly Archives: December 2012

Getting started with Raspberry Pi

I’ve had the thing for probably half a year, just sitting there in it’s little anti-static bag. I finally bought a 16GB [micro]SD card, then I finally attained a USB card reader/writer, then I finally downloaded and loaded the Debian Raspberry Pi distro on the card. Then I finally found where the board got to to stick the card in it.

Now I just need to actually plug it in and access it. I’m slow as hell on this stuff but like with every alien incomprehensible thing, I’m building up speed. I’ve got, off the top of my head, three projects to try out, so I’ve got to quit dawdling so much. This blog and post count as work done though, so at this specific moment I’m rock-&-rolling. The starting line is so close.

Binder Clip HD Antenna

20121216150114-418Tim and Co. had made one of these so I resolved to as well. I winged it based on my recollection of theirs but when I plugged it in I didn’t get any results. I redid it following the instructions from YouTube: Binder Clip HDTV Antenna.

Haven’t tested it yet but if it doesn’t work my guess is the sole prefab part (the matching transformer) is to blame. I don’t understand the workings well enough to know if this makes sense or not.

The previous design used an inch thick piece of wood instead of a cd case. This means the binder clips were opened wider. It was also narrower than the cd case so the two rows were closer together. Lastly, I had a strip of aluminum foil under each front edge (paralleling the paperclips but inside the clip) and now I have the small paperclip setup like in the video. No idea which of these differences would make a difference, hopefully all of them since the first attempt yielded zero results.

Update: It didn’t work at my parent’s house, which is 30+ miles from the stations, so I gave it to my sister for Christmas and it does work at her house in the city.
Conclusion: success