Phil Howard (Gadgetoid) has written some code that presents a colour wheel on any device to control a Pi fitted with a PiGlow. He’s housed the whole thing in an IKEA lamp hood. His code is available on his blog at the bottom of the post!
Sam Aaron presents Sonic Pi on the #RaspberryPi
Here’s Sam Aaron talking at CPEU3 (at the O2 Arena) about his music programming environment Sonic Pi. He’s a great presenter and it’s very worthwhile listening to how this can be used in the classroom.
Cross-compiling Qt Apps for #RaspberryPi with Visual Studio
This is a bit of fringe interest so I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s for you or not!
Tutorial: Cross-compiling Qt Apps for Raspberry Pi with Visual Studio.
Baked in Britain, the millionth #RaspberryPi & discussion
Rory Cellan-Jones has published his own Pi-related article on the BBC to celebrate the millionth Pi being produced in the UK. This isn’t the interesting bit. The interesting bit comes in the comments section below the article in which a fascinating discussion is taking place about using the Pi in education.
BBC #RaspberryPi article
Mark Ward, a BBC technology correspondent, has published a nice ‘cool projects’ article up on BBC News. Nothing particularly new or groundbreaking here, but it’s still good to see some mainstream coverage.
Read the article or carry on reading here for a little diatribe from me!
The one sour note is that Rory Cellan-Jones, another technology correspondent, has commented once again that there doesn’t seem evidence that the Pi has reached the Foundation’s target market – i.e. kids. I think he needs to review his feelings on this as a) it’s not constructive and could potentially put parents/teachers off and b) isn’t particularly accurate. There are plenty of examples of kids using the Pi, especially around Code Clubs and Raspberry Jams, and the high profile of kids like Amy Mather just goes to show that the Pi is doing some good, particularly when it is used as a tool for education.
I agree that the spread of the Pi into education hasn’t been breathtaking or awe-inspiring, but there’s some great work going on out there, and kids are being inspired, and in the end isn’t that what counts? If Mr Cellan-Jones wants to see the Pi get more exposure and usage within education perhaps he should be championing the cause rather than commenting on it’s supposed failure?
More programming examples for the Pi Lite and #RaspberryPi
Matt Hawkins, aka Raspberry Pi Spy, has been playing with the Pi-Lite and has written a tutorial on displaying custom sprites and animating them. All his code is available online including a little sprite editor that gives you the string of 1s and 0s to re-create the sprite on the Pi Lite.