One of the most read articles on this blog is about the installation of a recent Java on Raspberry Pi (March 13, 2019), so it’s time for an update!

Based on multiple examples from my book “Getting started with Java on Raspberry Pi”, I created a touchscreen controller for the drum booth of my son.

While looking for a cheap and nice component to demonstrate the use of SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) I found out this 8x8 matrix LED display on a board with a MAX7219 chip is the perfect piece of hardware!

Pi4J contains helper methods to minimize the work needed to use certain hardware modules on the Pi with Java.

Trisha Gee (Coder, blogger, speaker, Developer Advocate at JetBrains, @trisha_gee), which I interviewed for “Chapter 4: Choosing an IDE”, and Josh Long (Spring Developer Advocate at Pivotal, @starbuxman) worked together on a blog series in which they showed the power of reactive data produced by a Spring application.

In my book I explain the use of bits and bytes by using a shift register SN74HC595 IC and 5101AS LED number display.

To create some timeline images for my book, I created this little JavaFX application to be able to easily update the content and recreate the image.

Using the Java library I created (see previous post), it was a piece of cake to create a JavaFX UI on top of it!

Next step in my book progress, is getting more into the details of hardware components.

The best way to understand and learn something new, is to document it yourself.