Ben Nuttall over at the Raspberry Pi Foundation is running an Hour of Code event on Wednesday, 7th December as part of the Hour of Code initiative. The event, which runs from 4pm-7pm, will feature a series of 20-minute coding activities. Completing three or more activities earns you an Hour of Code certificate. It takes place at Pi Towers on Station Road, Cambridge and you can get free tickets here.
The MagPi have just made a surprise announcement that volume 2 of the Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book is now available to download, buy via their app or buy in print (for £12.99) from good newsagents and The Pi Hut. With an emphasis on Raspberry Pi Zero projects, this is 200 pages of great content, so head over to the MagPi now to take a look.
A Mexican team of Paloma López, Leslie García, and Emmanuel Anguiano (together, they are known as Interspecifics) have created a nature-driven musical instrument. Micro-ritmos is an art installation in which ‘music’ is generated by patterns formed by bacterial cells. The material is called Geobacter, which is an anaerobic bacteria found in sediment. All the code for the experiment can be found here. The comments are in Spanish, but careful use of Google Translate can help there.
The hardware is based around a Raspberry Pi B+ and camera module with an Arduino. The music synthesis is done by SuperCollider. The bacteria triggers lights to be activated and variations in the cells produce patterns. The Python program ‘learns’ as the patterns are watched and that information is sent into the synthesizer. It’s live coding created by a biological process.
You can see a video of it in action above. The subtitles are in Spanish.
James Poole has taken a string of Neopixels (UK/USA) and hooked it up to an Arduino. He’s then taken a Raspberry Pi and used it to control the Arduino via a web interface. James then mounted the whole lot on a block of wood and a metal strip to turn it into a rough piece of furniture. Much blinkiness, and he’s uploaded all the code so you can try it out yourself. Read more over at his blog and checkout the code here.
Andy Baker and Andrew Oakley are running the next installment of the Cotswold Raspberry Jam on Saturday, 26th November. The event runs from 1-4pm at University of Gloucester Park Campus in Cheltenham and will feature talks, show and tell and workshops/tutorials. There are even still some tickets left for the workshops, so snap them up quick. Well worth attending if you’re in the area (or even if you’re not!) – it’s been going a while and they do a great event by all accounts. Free tickets are available from the Cotswold Jam website.
Andrew Oakley, from the Cotswold Raspberry Jam has written an excellent buyers’ guide for the coming season. He’s covered buying the Raspberry Pi initially as well as other accessories that you need to get going with your programming and hacking. Well worth a look if you’re just starting out, or even if you’re not! Take a look here.
