Big model smell in a funny little box that fits in your pocket.
For your personal life, home or car, wouldn't it make sense to have a local AI that is yours only to organise and store it inside your own home, with none of that content leaving it unless you want to share.
Here's how my current fave local AI device looks. Not so scary huh? I was very surprised how intelligent the Pi 5 is running a Qwen 35B MoE model while staying grounded and stable. That little power bank keeps it serving for 30+ hrs.
This one connected to my car sensor and data streams and has the manual so it can analyse car health in detail and tell me which are the right parts to buy without any internet.
Just an example - there are so many ways they can help you! Especially when your local AIs team up with each other, learning together how to do it best
SSH covers most of my Pi and Debian edge nodes, but every so often a session hangs or the task needs the actual desktop, something you have to see and click. Getting a reliable screen kept turning into a mess, mostly VNC servers stepping on each other, and Raspberry Pi Connect now parks its own wayvnc on port 5900 by default, which quietly breaks a plain browser VNC setup.
I hacked together a fix for this back in mid 2025, left it on a disk because it was buggy, and finally went back, fixed the real failures on hardware, and cleaned it up to share: https://github.com/855princekumar/OpenRemoteGUI
It is a thin pipeline of noVNC, websockify and wayvnc with the boring lifecycle glue that makes it usable. Clone it, run the installer, open the node IP on port 6080, and you get the real desktop. The parts I actually care about: it records every change so rollback undoes exactly those and nothing else, it frees the port from Raspberry Pi Connect instead of fighting it, and it fails safe on anything without a desktop rather than installing one.
Honest caveats: trusted LAN or VPN only, plain HTTP with no auth yet, so do not expose it to the internet. It only captures an existing Wayland desktop, so it is useless on Pi OS Lite. And I have only tested it end to end on a Pi 4, so I do not know how clean it is on a Pi 3, Pi 5 or Zero.
That is really why I am posting. I would like people who have done more of this than me to poke holes in it, especially anyone on a Pi 3 or 5. MIT licensed, no cloud, no account, nothing to sell.
I had a Pi 5 lying around in a custom enclosure I designed in FreeCad using a 10.4" superwide LCD. I had been wanting to do an airplane tracker on it for a while, but I didn't really want to deal with the coding. I can code, but it is tedious and I don't have a ton of time for this hobby. Anyhow, I finally got around to using claude to build this. I am amazed by how well it worked.
All API driven, it monitors my town and constantly changes the list to show me what is nearest, but also highlights what will fly directly above. I have it pulling pictures and giving me alerts. It all looks pretty active and interesting on my desk.
Last time I tried claude to build a project was about a year ago for an ESP32 tide monitor which was full of bugs. This tracker just works. I'm sure claude could also design the enclosure in Openscad. Makes you wonder if the only thing the human is needed for in this hobby is to actually buy the parts :)
Having a hard time searching for answers to your Raspberry Pi questions? Let the r/raspberry_pi community members search for answers for you!† Looking for help getting started with a project? Have a question that you need answered? Was it not answered last week? Did not get a satisfying answer? A question that you've only done basic research for? Maybe something you think everyone but you knows? Ask your question in the comments on this page, operators are standing by!
This helpdesk and idea thread is here so that the front page won't be filled with these same questions day in and day out:
Q: My Pi is behaving strangely/crashing/freezing, giving low voltage warnings, ethernet/wifi stops working, USB devices don't behave correctly, what do I do?
A: 99.999% of the time it's either a bad SD card or power problems. Use a USB power meter or measure the 5V on the GPIO pins with a multimeter while the Pi is busy (such as playing h265/x265 video) and/or get a new SD card 123. If the voltage is less than 5V your power supply and/or cabling is not adequate. When your Pi is doing lots of work it will draw more power, test with the stress and stressberry packages. Higher wattage power supplies achieve their rating by increasing voltage, but the Raspberry Pi operates strictly at 5V. Even if your power supply claims to provide sufficient amperage, it may be mislabeled or the cable you're using to connect the power supply to the Pi may have too much resistance. Phone chargers, designed primarily for charging batteries, may not maintain a constant wattage and their voltage may fluctuate, which can affect the Pi’s stability. You can use a USB load tester to test your power supply and cable. Some power supplies require negotiation to provide more than 500mA, which the Pi does not do. If you're plugging in USB devices try using a powered USB hub with its own power supply and plug your devices into the hub and plug the hub into the Pi.
Q: I'm trying to setup a Pi Zero 2W and it is extremely slow and/or keeps crashing, is there a fix?
A: Either you need to increase the swap size or check question #3 above.
Q: Where can I buy a Raspberry Pi at a fair price? And which one should I get if I’m new? Should I get an x86 PC instead of a Pi?
A: Check stock and pricing at https://rpilocator.com/ — it tracks official resellers so you don’t overpay.
Every time the x86 PC vs. Pi question comes up the answer is always if you have to ask, get a PC. If you're sure want a Raspberry Pi but not sure which model:
If you don’t know, get a Pi 5.
If you can’t afford it, get a Pi 4.
If you need tiny, get a Zero 2W.
If you need lowest power, get the original Zero.
For RAM, always get the most you can afford; you can’t upgrade it later.
That’s it. No secret chart, no hidden wisdom. Bigger number = more performance, higher cost, higher power draw.
Also please see the Annual What to Buy Megathread
Q: I just did a fresh install with the latest Raspberry Pi OS and I keep getting errors when trying to ssh in, what could be wrong?
A: There are only 4 things that could be the problem:
Q: I'm trying to install packages with pip but I keep getting error: externally-managed-environment
A: This is not a problem unique to the Raspberry Pi. The best practice is to use a Python venv, however if you're sure you know what you're doing there are two alternatives documented in this stack overflow answer:
--break-system-packages
sudo rm a specific file as detailed in the stack overflow answer
Q: The only way to troubleshoot my problem is using a multimeter but I don't have one. What can I do?
A: Get a basic multimeter, they are not expensive.
Q: I want to watch Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Vudu/Disney+ on a Pi but the tutorial I followed didn't work, does someone have a working tutorial?
A: Use a Fire Stick/AppleTV/Roku. Pi tutorials used tricks that no longer work or are fake click bait.
Q: I want to know how to do a thing, not have a blog/tutorial/video/teacher/book explain how to do a thing. Can someone explain to me how to do that thing?
A: Uh... What?
Q: Is it possible to use a single Raspberry Pi to do multiple things? Can a Raspberry Pi run Pi-hole and something else at the same time?
A: YES. Pi-hole uses almost no resources. You can run Pi-hole at the same time on a Pi running Minecraft which is one of the biggest resource hogs. The Pi is capable of multitasking and can run more than one program and service at the same time. (Also known as "workload consolidation" by Intel people.) You're not going to damage your Pi by running too many things at once, so try running all your programs before worrying about needing more processing power or multiple Pis.
Q: The red and green LEDs are solid/off/blinking or the screen is just black or blank or saying no signal, what do I do?
A: Start here
Q: I'm trying to run x86 software on my Raspberry Pi but it doesn't work, how do I fix it?
A: Get an x86 computer. A Raspberry Pi is ARM based, not x86.
Q: How can I run a script at boot/cron or why isn't the script I'm trying to run at boot/cron working?
A: You must correctly set the PATH and other environment variables directly in your script. Neither the boot system or cron sets up the environment. Making changes to environment variables in files in /etc will not help.
Q: Can I use this screen that came from ____ ?
A: No
Q: If my Raspberry Pi is headless and I can’t figure out what’s wrong, do I need to plug in a monitor and keyboard?
A: If you cannot diagnose the problem remotely, you must connect a monitor and keyboard. That is the only way to see boot output and local error messages, and without that information the problem cannot be diagnosed.
Q: I'm trying to use the built-in composite video output that is available on the Pi 2/3/4 headphone jack, do I need a special cable?
A. Make sure your cable is wired correctly and you are using the correct RCA plug. Composite video cables for mp3 players will not work, the common ground goes to the wrong pin. Camcorder cables will often work, but red and yellow will be swapped on the Raspberry Pi.
Q: I'm running my Pi with no monitor connected, how can I use VNC?
A: First, do you really need a remote GUI? Try using ssh instead. If you're sure you want to access the GUI remotely then ssh in, type vncserver -depth 24 -geometry 1920x1080 and see what port it prints such as :1, :2, etc. Now connect your client to that.
Q: I want to do something that already has lots of tutorials. Do I need a Raspberry-Pi-specific guide?
A: Usually no.
Raspberry Pi (Linux computer): Use any standard Linux tutorial. A Raspberry Pi runs a normal Linux OS, not a special cut-down version. See Question #1.
Raspberry Pi Pico (microcontroller): Use Arduino tutorials. The Pico works with the Arduino IDE and can be used the same way as other Arduino-class boards.
Q: Which Operating System (OS) should I install?
A: If you aren’t sure, install Raspberry Pi OS. It’s the officially supported OS, it has the best documentation, the widest community support, and it’s what most guides and troubleshooting help assume you’re using.
Q: How can I power my Raspberry Pi from a battery?
A: All Raspberry Pi models run at 5 V. To choose a battery, first add up the maximum current of your Pi plus everything you attach to it (USB devices, screens, HATs, etc.). Then multiply that current by the number of hours you want it to run to get the required battery capacity in mAh. If you can’t find listed current values, use a USB power meter to measure the actual draw over 12–48 hours. Every battery question comes down to this simple math: the model, brand, or special setup doesn’t change the calculation.
† See the /r/raspberry_pi rules. While /r/raspberry_pi should not be considered your personal search engine, some exceptions will be made in this help thread.
‡ If the link doesn't work it's because you're using a broken buggy mobile client. Please contact the developer of your mobile client and let them know they should fix their bug. In the meantime use a web browser in desktop mode instead.
I'm writing here to ask if anyone has experience with wiring electrodes to plants. I've tried a few things already and the readings keep dropping over night when the plant contracts. Tradescantia has a daily expansion and contraction cycle.
See the picture gallery, I started with EEG electrodes, then switched to copper fabric held in place by loofah and hair clip, then by hair clip alone, and last by loofah and alligator clamp. Before you ask, the alligator clamps are too aggressive for the delicate leaves, that's why I haven't rigged it just with clamps.
Developing directly on resource-constrained devices like the Pi Zero 2 W via VS Code Remote SSH often causes high CPU/RAM usage and lag.
I built a lightweight workflow using SSHFS to mount target device file systems directly onto a main Raspberry Pi 5. This allows VS Code to run smoothly on the Pi 5 while directly editing files on the edge nodes.
Building my first Pi project: a 2×2 wall of four Adafruit 64×64 panels (#4732, 3mm pitch, 5-address/ABCDE multiplexing) driven by a Pi 5 with the Adafruit RGB Matrix Bonnet (#3211), using the hzeller rpi-rgb-led-matrix library. My Goal is a real-time Spotify album-art display.
The problem I’m running into now is that the Panels won’t light up at all — running the library’s built-in demos produces nothing. SSH into the Pi works fine; the Pi itself is healthy. Ruled out power (measured 5V at the supply, at each panel, and the bonnet itself with a multimeter). I’ve soldered the E line bonnet jumpers, and tried the demo with the GPIO pins 4 and 18 soldered, unsoldered and connected by a wire so I don’t believe that was the issue.
This is my first post and wasn’t sure if fix this falls in the realm of [r/raspberry_pi](r/raspberry_pi) so I figured I’d try my luck here and see if anyone may have experience in this kind of thing that can help me or knows a community that may be better suited for a problem like this, thank yall :)
EDIT:
I forgot I never added the commands I ran to install the packages libraries or updates, I did use Claude for this part so bear with me. Also I was reading that because of where these LED boards come from, some may need the bonnets E line soldered to 8 and some may need the E line soldered to 16 due to panels being wired differently from the factory but im not sure how to tell which would be needed
I had some cheap 433 MHz transmitters and receivers from years ago, so I dug those out and spent way too long trying to capture and repeat the signals from the included remote. After several unsuccessful hours I realized with my newly acquired soldering skills I could just use the remote itself and a little power relay module to control at least two of the outlets.
Throw in an IR receiver and now I can control my RF outlets with an IR remote.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
I'm going to get a module that can host more relays so I can use one remote to control a bunch of outlets, or tie them into programs to play around with. I'm pretty satisfied with this as a trial run.
(Also featured in the upper left picture is a temp/humidity/pressure/air-quality sensor that I use for a different project)
I trying to set up an old Pi B+ (v1) to be a print server. Printer plugged into the Pi by USB, and a USB Wifi dongle to make it available to computers and tablets around the house. I've tried to get it working about 10 times now. Every time, I wind up in the same place - no drivers. I can get the cups service running and I'm able to access the CUPS web console on my Mac at https://<Pi IP address>:631
But if I try to add the printer from the console, it says "Unable to get list of printer drivers". If I try to do it at a command line on the Pi, it tells me "lpadmin: cups-driverd failed to get PPD file - see error_log for details".
The log says "Unable to open \"/usr/share/cups/model/M3015DW\" - No such file or directory". I wasn't certain what driver name to use because the "lsinfo -m" command just runs for a few minutes and returns nothing. But seeing the folder name in the error log, I looked to see the driver names in the directory but found /usr/share/cups/model was empty.
I've made attempts to install drivers with these commands:
apt install printer-driver-all
apt install printer-driver-gutenprint
apt install openprinting-ppds
apt install hplip (I don't have an HP printer, but attempting to get any driver)
While these commands seem to be accessing the net repositories and extracting files, nothing is ever actually installed.
I've tried to set this up in Raspberry Pi OS Lite (both Trixie and Bookworm), Alpine Linux, and DietPi. Each time, I end up in the same place - no drivers. I've tried the instructions for setup from several different web sites / blogs. In the end, they all take me to the same place: a CUPS server that cannot set up a print queue.
I'm now wondering whether it is related to the 32-bit ARM11 CPU. Perhaps no one has developed an arm32 driver and the package managers just aren't finding any?
New Pi user here, I flashed the pi OS onto my board and that itself up and running but I have been struggling with getting a NVMe drive connected to my new device. It simply isn't visible to the system. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Hardware:
Pi 5
GeeekPi HAT from Amazon and the included ribbon cables.
1 TB Western Digital 2230 NVMe Model CH SN560 (secondhand from marketplace)
Steps Ive tried so far:
Multiple ribbon cables and reseats tried.
PCIe link to the NVMe HAT never comes up (link down).
No NVMe controller appears in lspci.
No NVMe block device appears in lsblk.
All required software/firmware settings are already correct:
Latest OS firmware and EEPROM installed
EDIT: Resolved
Core issue was that Western Digital SSD was incompatible with the Pi. I bought a Samsung one and it had zero issues.
Finally got around to fiddling with a pi 4b that my wife got for me a couple years ago. Just a simple pi-hole/plex setup, but having my old portable monitor showing the grafana dashboard is super neat.
So took it out from a old laptop getting mac 78mb/s on local, on local network 20-25 read, 18-22 write (limited on wifi 5) will be connecting via ethernet and hopefully will see better speeds, the case is again from pi5 and so is the fan. Thermals are looking okay at geekbench pushing till 75.
My kids play the same six games over and over: supermarket, ice cream shop, restaurant, taxi, cinema, table reservation. Every toy till on the market covers maybe one of those, and none of them actually do anything. Press any button, nothing happens.
So I built a real one. Six arcade buttons, a real thermal receipt printer, and a Raspberry Pi Zero hidden inside a plastic storage box. Press a button, and a genuine, randomly generated receipt rattles out: different items, different prices, a different name on it every time.
I've never built anything like this before, only ever wired a PC. I have friends who are actual engineers, and I didn't ask a single one of them for help, on purpose. This whole thing was as much a self-experiment (how far can you actually get with AI alone) as it was a project for my kids, and every part of it, from the receipt logic to debugging why the buttons stopped responding, happened working through it together with Claude.
The wiring taught me the most. I bought a crimp terminal kit sized for automotive connectors, and it turned out to be way too big for the GPIO breakout board's screw terminals. The fork terminals literally straddled two adjacent pins at once. Switched to wire ferrules in the smallest size available instead, and those matched the board's spec exactly. The terminal block also isn't keyed at all, it plugs onto the Pi's header in either rotation, so the pin labels printed on the board itself were the only thing that settled which way was actually correct.
It works better than I expected. Every receipt has a scannable QR code, some hide a joke, some hide an actual voucher (a scoop of ice cream, time with mom, that kind of thing). Two of the six buttons even double as a secret combo that quietly prints a coffee order for my wife.
It's fully open source if anyone wants to build one for their own kids, including a browser demo that needs no hardware at all, and a full write-up of everything that went sideways along the way:
I noticed that I haven't been getting my physical copy of MagPi in a while. I never got a renewal notice and figured my subscription had expired.
I logged in, and sure enough, it had expired. When I tried to renew, I was redirected to mymagazinesub.co.uk/raspberrypi. They have only 2 options (6 month and one year) and both are auto-reenroll. They call this "Annual Continuous Card Payment".
I absolutely hate this (dark) pattern of automatically taking from me. I have to ask, although I am sure I know the answers,
Is this legit? I know it's not ethical, but I have to ask if the Raspberry Pi foundation signed off on this. Looks like they farmed out the magazine subscription tasking to a (scammy) contractor.
Is there any way to subscribe and NOT be opted in? I reached out to MyMagazineSub and they assured me I could turn this off after subscribing, but they would not give details on exactly what I would need to turn this off, and I have seen enough scams to suspect that there is a limited timeframe to do this, I'll need to mail something to someone to get a number to type into a web page that is always offline, etc...
I'll assume this is a legitimate anti-consumer scam and there is no consumer friendly way to avoid it. Wanted to check here first since I have been a subscriber since year 2 and really wanted to continue.
Here is a live road test and write-up of CliOS, an open-source digital cluster and telemetry system I have been developing for a 1920x720 display running on a Raspberry Pi 5.
Project Goals
My goal was to create a modular, responsive in-cabin operating system capable of decoding live vehicle bus data, computing powertrain performance metrics in real time, and displaying it with modern UI layouts without commercial bloat.
Hardware & System Setup
- Single Board Computer: Raspberry Pi 5 running Debian / Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit.
- Display: 1920x720 ultrawide automotive bar display connected via HDMI.
- CAN Interface: SocketCAN compatible USB transceiver connected directly to the vehicle's powertrain CAN bus.
- Power Management: Controlled shutdown and startup linked to vehicle ignition.
Current State & Open Source Code
The system currently features two main QML themes (Apex for high-contrast track telemetry and Atelier Luxe for daily driving), trip statistics logging, and automated USB trip exports.
Heya, for weeks now I’ve been trying to do this and I figure it’s worth a shot asking here.
I’m making a sort of cyberdeck with a pi zero 2w, and so far trying to run 64Bit PiOS barely works with a lot of stuttering, and straight crashes the pi when running the waveshare touchscreen on top of it.
But 32bit piOS works great- the problem here is I want discord on it, and Webcord through PiApps needs a 64Bit OS.
I found a .deb file for webcord that’s 32bit (.armhf), but when installing it, it says it has a missing dependency of libgtk-3-0. So I find a 32bit (again .armhf) architecture .deb file of that, but again it says to that file there’s missing dependencies that can’t be installed. I have a feeling that would be a continuing pattern if I tried to just track down all the dependencies manually like that- and I do that because when I try ‘sudo —fix-broken install’ in terminal it just said it can’t download them, and if I try ‘sudo apt install (package)’ it says ‘(package) has no installation candidate’ or some other error saying it can’t install.
Am I overthinking this? Is there a better way to access discord, or a way at all?
Any advice helps, thanks
(Also, I rule out using the web browser for it because not only is it slow and stutters- due to the low ram on the pi, after a few minutes it will overheat the pi)
I know this would probably work better on a pi with more ram to just support the 64Bit OS, but I just want music and discord on it- maybe a SIM card reader in the future. That’s all. (Not to mention the price of better pi’s lol)
Last time I ran it was a few weeks ago. no issue. it was around 55-65C of 2 hours of runtime, then i put it aside in its case. i took it out to take measurements, and i noticed the burnt smd capacitor. immediately flashed an sd card and tried to boot it, which it did so successfully without smoking or glitching. gemini says it was probably a decoupling capacitor, and i should remove it asap before it turns into a short circuit
He is so amazing. Asked me for random parts over the past few months to go with his raspberry pi 5 we got him for Christmas.
I built the scaffold of a DnD site idea I had so his friend and he could all get notified when things happen in their campaign. My idea was a code based system so any kid with a browser could join the campaign and we don’t log anyone’s personal info. He took it and RAN with it.
It has culminated in this: a cyberdeck he built that runs LoreKeeper (our software, I didn’t know about Lorekeeper.com when I named it) and does all kinds of things. It uses an onboard LLM using Ollama to generate NPCs and other things. He’s bringing it to DnD club in Friday. Did I mention he’s 14? I had zero hand in any of this other than setting up the initial site and handing it over to him on GitHub.
I did not know this standard existed before I bought a Switch 2. It seems like the perfect compromise for a future Pi - NVME speed storage, but the form factor of microSD to keep it on the same footprint as the standard Pi.
It's a plug-and-play audio-reactive VJ visualizer for Raspberry Pi 3B+
geiss4pi turns a Raspberry Pi into a plug-and-play music visualization appliance: stream music to it over Bluetooth, watch psychedelic visuals react on your TV over HDMI, and steer the effects live with a keyboard — like a game, or like a VJ instrument for venues.
The keyboard turns geiss4pi into a live visual instrument. These controls apply while the visualizer is on screen; when the settings menu is open, the same keys navigate the menu instead.
Goal
Keys
Choose a scene
1–9 presets, 0 preset 10, N/P next/previous, Space random
Shape the motion
Arrows zoom/rotate, W/S feedback (trail length), F flash
Change the look
C palette, V waveform, E effect family, K mirror/kaleidoscope, [/] density
Control the session
A auto director, R reset live overrides, Tab diagnostics HUD, Esc settings
Important: most live adjustments are sticky. Zoom, rotation, feedback, palette, waveform, effect, mirror, and density changes remain active when presets change — including changes made by the auto director. For example, after pressing Eor K, new presets keep that effect family or mirror style while their other parameters change.
Press R at any time to clear every live override and return fully to the current preset's intended look. Overrides are session-only: restarting geiss4pi also clears them.
With Auto Director enabled, the configured Preset Interval is the inactivity threshold after which it schedules a transition on the next detected beat; musical section changes can trigger one earlier. A useful VJ workflow is to let the director choose scenes, intervene temporarily with the live controls, then press R to hand the complete look back to the presets.
Anyways, here’s the project that I’ve had a ton of success with:
I’ve been growing chile seedlings (Fatalii, 7 Pot Primo Chocolate, a few Aji varieties) and ended up building a full controller and dashboard around them. Figured I’d share since a few pieces of it turned out to be genuinely hard-won.
•Dims a grow light on a schedule (hardware PWM). Three modes: solar (sunrise/sunset with offsets), fixed clock times, or “day length anchored to lights-off.” Ramps up and down over a few minutes instead of snapping.
•Measures the light’s actual output: a sweep steps brightness 0-100% while reading a lux sensor, so the dashboard forecasts daily light integral (DLI) through the fixture’s real dimming curve instead of assuming PWM is linear. It is not linear.
•Logs environment to SQLite: air temp/humidity/pressure, soil temp, lux, capacitive soil moisture per tray. Everything charted with target bands.
•Waters two trays: fill-to-float with a time cap, daily runtime limits, one pump at a time. Two non-contact liquid level sensors stuck to the outside of the source bucket give full/ok/empty, and empty hard-refuses pump runs so nothing ever runs dry.
•Photographs the trays every 10 minutes for a timelapse, with perspective correction from four draggable grid corners.
•Tracks canopy coverage per tray with OpenCV so I get a growth curve over time.
•Sends a photo plus all the sensor data and the planting map to an LLM once a day and gets back a structured garden report: germination status, concerns, whether what’s growing in each cell matches what the map says was sown there.
•Discord alerts with a proper state machine: sustain windows, hysteresis, reminders, recovery notices. A sensor bouncing across a threshold sends nothing.
Hardware
•Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
•BME280 (air temp/RH/pressure), BH1750 (lux), DS18B20 (soil temp), all on 3.3V
•2x capacitive soil probes (HW-390 type) into an ADS1115 ADC
•2x float switches in the trays, wired so rising water OPENS the switch (a broken wire reads “full” and stops the pump, not the other way around)
•2x 5V pumps and a fan on D4184 MOSFET modules, separate 5V supply, flyback diodes, common ground
•2x XKC-Y23A-NPN non-contact level sensors on the reservoir. These sense water through my jar reservoir‘s wall.
•8MP USB webcam with a 120-degree lens on a micro-USB OTG adapter
Things I learned the hard way
•The magenta grow light breaks hue-based plant detection completely. Leaves read as magenta. The fix is the excess-green index (2G - R - B), which measures relative greenness and survives colored light.
•Per-cell visual growth tracking sounds great but it is unrealistic in practice. The moment seedlings spill over cell boundaries, per-cell numbers are noise. Tray-level totals are the honest measurement because trays are physical boundaries. Same story for estimating soil dryness from the camera: works until the canopy closes over the soil, then it’s measuring leaves.
•The Pi Zero’s CSI ribbon connector is not your friend. I abandoned the official camera module for a USB webcam after too many flaky connections.
•Autofocus ruins timelapses (flicker every frame). The controller sweeps focus once, scores each stop by Laplacian sharpness, pins the best value, and stays manual.
•A GPIO can just be dead. One pin on my board never worked. Every pin assignment is overridable by environment variable so rewiring never means editing code.
•Calibrate soil probes skeptically. If you capture the “wet” anchor when the soil is merely damp, both probes will read a flat 100% forever and your dry-tray alert is blind. The dashboard now flags a reading that sits outside its own calibration range instead of silently clamping.
Setup
An interactive installer (scripts/setup.sh) prompts for pin assignments and API keys, writes an env file, sets up the boot overlays for hardware PWM / I2C / 1-Wire, and installs a systemd service. Every sensor is optional: anything not wired is probed once, disabled gracefully, and its UI hides. Runs fine on the Zero 2 W’s 512MB; the OpenCV analysis runs as a subprocess so its memory is released between captures.
I feel like there has to be something simple I'm doing wrong because this can't be as hard as I'm finding it. Please let me know if this is the wrong place to ask this. I have a handful of Samsung 30Q batteries that I've been using to try and power 2 different Pis.
The first is a Pi 5 with a Geekworm X1200 UPS hat using 2 of my 30Qs. When the hat is disconnected from usb power, the Pi shuts down before it seemingly restores power without turning it back on. This obviously defeats the purpose of a UPS. Checking the journal logs, it simply shuts down. No message, just normal logs until they stop.
The second is a Pi 3 B+ with a "diymore 1865O Battery Holder" on amazon. Same deal; The Pi loses power and then it's returned. This one doesn't have an OS yet, this is just going off the power led. which turns off every time the power bank is unplugged from power before going on a second or 2 later.
This happening with 2 separate products and devices makes me think somehow what I'm doing is fundamentally wrong. To my knowledge, the batteries should be able to handle the required power but I'm increasingly less sure.
Does anyone know why this is happening or what I should be doing differently?
