Controlling LED strips with Java
One of the most “fancy” electronic components is definitely a LED strip.
One of the most “fancy” electronic components is definitely a LED strip.
To make it as easy as possible to get started with Java on the Raspberry Pi to interact with electronic components, I started a new section on the Pi4J website with JBang examples.
More than two years ago, I blogged about the use of the Raspberry Pi as an HDMI camera for the ATEM Mini.
Exactly one year ago, in December 2021, I published three articles of MQTT messaging with Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Pico and HiveMQ Cloud.
As I’m becoming a senior developer in terms of age, I’ve transitioned from one language to another.
TL;DR; Yes, you can build your own Raspberry Pi HQ camera to use as an HDMI source for the ATEM Mini Looking for an affordable camera with HDMI output?
In the previous two posts in this series, we used Java on the Raspberry Pi mini-computer to send sensor data to HiveMQ Cloud, and visualize it on a dashboard.
A topic which comes up from time to time in questions related to Java and the Raspberry Pi, is the support of the 4th version of this board in combination with Pi4J, “the friendly object-oriented I/O API and implementation library for Java programmers to access the full I/O capabilities of the Raspberry Pi “.
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.
In my book I explain the use of bits and bytes by using a shift register SN74HC595 IC and 5101AS LED number display.
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.
One of the example applications in my book “Getting started with Java on the Raspberry Pi” combines a JavaFX application with Mosquitto on the Raspberry Pi to control a LED strip with an Arduino.
My very first open source JavaFX library is now available in the Maven repository!
And another summer project got finished… ;-) My sons drum corps teacher triggered me to build an Arduino Midi controller so he could practice his rhythm skills.
Some time ago I ordered a “Breadboard Pi Bridge - Pi Ports to Breadboard in Numerical Order” and reworked my Pi test setup from the previous blogs.
What is Pi4J See https://www.pi4j.com/1.2/index.html This project is intended to provide a friendly object-oriented I/O API and implementation libraries for Java Programmers to access the full I/O capabilities of the Raspberry Pi platform.
As I was learning Spring Boot myself, I thought the easiest way to learn was trying to build an example and write about it.
While trying out what Pi4J can do, I found it could easily be extended with a JavaFX application to provide info about the headers on a Pi board.
As a self-study project I experimented to create a Pong game + slide shown on a Raspberry PI with Tkinter, GPIO and physical buttons.