Operating systems, Software

Firefox OS for the Raspberry Pi gains momentum

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Thanks to The Register for the meat of this one, and to Tim Richardson who spotted it!

During a Mozilla Festival held over this last weekend, developers showed more of the Firefox OS port for the Pi. They also listed some of the objectives of the project:

  • Be at parity with Raspbian/RPi as a hobbyist environment. Users will be able to read from sensors and control motors, LEDs, solenoids, slave boards, etc. A modified Fx OS for Raspberry Pi will be able to fly a drone;
  • Be competitive with other media player OSes available for Rpi;
  • Be competitive with other IDEs for FxOS on Raspberry Pi targeted at beginning programmers, like IDLE and Scratch;
  • Enable programmers (via DOM/CSS) to develop robotics etc. by building a declarative model of a reactive system. With one type of output device, the actual electronics could be interfaced with. With another type of output device, the model could be simulated on a client computer.

Read more at The Register.

Events, Raspberry Jams

Croydon Raspberry Jam – a couple of write-ups

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On Saturday, Jarle Teigland (@JarJarGeek) welcomed people to the first every Croydon Raspberry Jam at the Lives Not Knives space. By all accounts it was a really good Jam, with lots of projects being showed off and lots of learning by kids happening throughout the day. Here’s a couple of write-ups. The first is from Richard, the Average Man, and the second is from Paul (who creates expansion boards under the MyPiFi banner).

Magazines

Build a Raspberry Pi supercomputer with Linux User and Developer

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Linux User and Developer have published their latest issue (pictured). In it, they describe how to create a Raspberry Pi supercomputer out of multiple Pis. It’s an interesting article, although they could go a lot more into depth about how to get the Pis working collaboratively, but it’s a start. There’s plenty more (28 pages worth!) Pi-related content in the magazine too, and it’s available from all good newsagents.

Robotics

Raspberry Pi under a volcano

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In order to understand how volcanic eruptions occur, Dr Carolyn Parcheta has developed a wall-climbing robot to map volcanic vents. Powered with a Raspberry Pi, the robot is attached with an umbilical for data and power and is then lowered into the vent. It then uses some kind of 3D mapping technology to build up a 3D picture of the vent. Thanks to the the Raspberry Pi Foundation for this story which it covered on their blog.

Art, Geeky Techiness, Making

Your document will self destruct with a Raspberry Pi

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Supported by the Mexican government, Newcastle, England-based artist Diego Trujillo Pisanty has created a device that prints out documents and then immediately destroys them in a flash of flame and smoke. It was inspired by what happened with Edward Snowden and the NSA and also takes it’s cue from James Bond and Mission Impossible. You find out more at vice.com.