I have started a new leisure time project with my Raspberry Pi.
Target: control the outside lighting around my house (yes, magic words these days: HOME AUTOMATION).

But let’s see how far I will get ;-).

Until now I created a very simple JavaFX UI to control and test the 8 GPIO-out pin states:

But first lets have a look at the setup:

Used Hardware

• Raspberry Pi: get one here
• Adafruit Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi: get it here
• Arduino Sidekick Basic Kit: get it here

System setup

• Wheezy Image: http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
• Very good reference to setup the SD-Card: http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup
• Install JDK 8 (with JavaFX) for ARM Early Access: http://jdk8.java.net/fxarmpreview/javafx-arm-developer-preview.html

Construction

So I armed myself with a soldering gun, brazed the Adafruit Pi Cobbler and sticked together the electical parts on the bread board according to the pin numbering:

WiringPi pin number scheme

(Source: pi4j.com)

And: Action!

Part2