Category - Guides

Easily Install Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 2 from Windows 8

Having recently purchased a couple of Raspberry Pi 2’s to play with, I was intrigued to see what the recent Windows 10 IoT version was like running on it. Being able to run a windows platform on something like a Raspberry Pi would open up a lot of opportunities to put these great little computers to work.

I faithfully downloaded the image from Microsoft (you need to be registered to download it, but you can find details on how to do this on google pretty easily). Once downloaded I set about writing the image (in this case an FFU file) to an SD card. This is a fairly simple process using the DISM tool. This is where my problems started, when running the command to write the image to the SD card I would receive the error “The /applydrive option is not recognized in this context”. It seems that you can only use the Windows 10 version of DISM and I’m running Windows 8.1. Not having a spare machine to install Windows 10 Preview on I began the usual Google search to figure out how to install Windows 10 IoT on the Pi using windows 8.

There are a few guides out there, but none of them are that simple, so I figured I’d put together this simple guide to help anyone else in my position wanting to try the Raspberry Pi Windows 10 release if they only have an earlier version of windows.

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FTDI – Serial Killer, Not quite

Many of my fellow radio amateurs will be familiar with USB to Serial adaptors, the lack of RS-232 ports on modern computers mean they see plenty of use within the radio amateur community especially for CAT control of our Radio’s.

One of the most popular (and the one offering the best compatibility) is the FT232R chip from the scottish company FTDI. They have built a reputation for producing great USB UART IC’s with excellent compatibility and more importantly drivers that are included within windows. These devices are found in thousands of other devices from aurduino’s to 3D printers. Their popularity however means that there are a whole host of clones and couterfeit devices out there, most of which are indistiguishable from the real thing and it seems that FTDI have decided to do something about it by rendering these fakes inoperable.

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Using the Hitachi LM038 LCD with the Arduino

I recently purchased a few LCD displays from ebay, these were labelled up as Hitachi LM038 LCD Modules. There didn’t seem to be much information out there on the internet about how to use these, so I thought i’d put together a quick how to guide for anyone else who may have purcased one of these. In the example i’m using an Arduino (Atmel ATMega328) for speed and ease of use, however the process would be the same for any micro (PIC or AVR).

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