Update!: You can now buy AlaMode at Seeedstudios
Here’s an example of using the AlaMode with the Raspberry Pi.
We had a great time demoing the AlaMode at MakerFaire. We got invited to demo in the MakerShed, because …. Surprise! MakerShed is going to carry AlaMode!
For this demo, I took an adafruit motorshield and used it to modulate the power to a 9V Lego train track.
![](http://baldwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/0h0c8993-12.jpg)
The Arduino code is pretty simple, using Serial.read to interpret single characters as commands for controlling the motor shield. “f” means forward, “b” means back, “s” means stop. 1-9 sets the speed. You’ll also need to install the AFMotor library.
Program the aalegotrain.ino sketch from here: https://github.com/wyolum/alamode/tree/master/examples/train_demo
You can either do this with an FTDI cable on another computer, or directly with the Arduino IDE on the Raspberry Pi.
The ala-modey part of this is to use the AlaMode to do the controlling motor bit. The Raspberry Pi will control the train through a web interface.
Install lighttpd on the Pi (sudo apt-get install lighttpd) and put the web files from the example into /var/www.
![Screen shot of the web browser interface](http://www.element14.com/community/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-9349-98174/20120930_133517.jpg)
It’s a little slow because it’s a simple CGI script (spins up a whole process with each request.) A python script interprets button presses on the web page, and uses pyserial to send the characters to AlaMode.
Drew Fustini of Element 14 did a great blog post on our demo.
Here’s a video he posted:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?fv=y-9g_mfdFhc[/youtube]
If you have any questions, join the conversation at the Wyolum forums.