PubNub are fast becoming a company to keep an eye on in the Pi world. They’ve produced a few articles so far that use their online service and it’s time for another one. Kevin Gleason has written a tutorial for wiring up an RGB LED to the Pi and then how to create an Android app to control it remotely, via the PubNub service. It’s a nice proof-of-concept piece, and will also introduce you to the world of Android programming via the clear code he’s written. Read more here.
Using VGA monitors with the Raspberry Pi requires you to plug an adapter into the HDMI port. Sometimes, there are issues with screen resolution. Sometimes, there are issues with absolutely nothing appearing on the screen. To help with some of these problems, Tim Richardson has blogged over at The Pi Hut about how to diagnose issues with HDMI/VGA conversion and change your config.txt file to solve them.
Darren Steele came back after a holiday to find that a fox had eaten all his chickens. Undeterred, Darren bought more chickens and decided to come up with a way to protect them from the predators. His solution? Hook a Raspberry Pi up to a winch system via some relays and lift the entire chicken coup several feet into the air. He programmed it all with some C code and added a simple Android phone app as a remote control. You can see a BBC report on his efforts below. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi Foundation for finding this story. You can read more about Darren’s escapades by paging through his blog.
This is a nicely thought-out Kickstarter which puts the Raspberry Pi Camera Module to good use to capture pictures of wildlife.
The unit comes in a weatherproof case with holes in the front for the camera lens and a PIR module to detect movement. When movement is detected, software triggers the capture of an image which is stored to the SD card. They’re using a Raspberry Pi A+, which means much lower power-usage, and include an 8800mAh LIPO battery and Adafruit converter so that you can place the box in a location and run it without worrying about how you’re going to power it.
You can get everything you need to run your very own wildlife camera for £95 (plus a very reasonable shipping charge – other Kickstarters, take note). This includes the Pi, SD card, the excellent case, the camera, the powering equipment, the fixings and everything else you need. There are lower pledges if you already have the Pi (all models fit inside the case), and higher pledges if you’d like a keyboard and mouse, and that kind of thing. There are also pledge levels for if you just want to support the project without getting the kit itself. Other pledges are aimed at education: 10 kits and workshop material are available for £899 and a full weekend workshop with the project team is £3,000, which is quite reasonable I think. There’s also a very nice option for advanced makers who have a 3D printer – you can pledge and get the files you need to print your own case.
All in all, this is a very well thought-out Kickstarter with reasonable pledge levels for what looks like a very slick, well-made product. Now, these guys are new to the community but they seem very enthusiastic. They’ve done a cracking job on their website and they’re planning to build a community around the users of the kit. So, if you want to get into the world of nature watching with the Pi, I thoroughly recommend this kit, based on the information available on the Kickstarter. It looks well-rounded and deserves to succeed.
Take a look at the Kickstarter video below or head straight over to Kickstarter to read more. More information about the project is available on their website.
Jacob from Coventry Makerspace has taken 27 LEDs and soldered them together as a cube. He’s then hooked up each of the 9 columns of LEDs to GPIO pins and also to ground, via transistors. The transistors are also hooked up to GPIO pins in rows so that by combining the columns and rows you can ‘address’ each LED individually. A word of warning: he’s not used resistors for the LEDs, and he should have done. He’s also mixed in the use of a Pi Cobbler but not reflected that on his wiring diagram, so just use whichever method you prefer. The code has been pasted in incorrectly, losing the indents, but you should be able to work out what goes where. Read it here.
Albert Hickey has announced that the next Egham Jam will take place on Sunday 12th July at the Gartner HQ offices. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite. You can find out what happened at the January Jam here.
