Richard Hayler’s primary school Code Club has recently been selected as one of the winning entries in the Astro Pi competition. Their code is one of the projects that will actually run on the International Space Station! It uses the Astro Pi to detect changes in humidity near the Astro Pi board, thus detecting the presence of an astronaut. Richard has written up their experiences developing the software, including a rather impressive LEGO version of the actual case. Read all about it here.
Alex Eames has announced a stretch goal for the Raspberry Pi GPIO ruler he launched on Kickstarter last week.
The target for the goal is 1000 backers or £6000 and, if either of these are hit, Alex will donate 100 rulers to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It’s as simple as that.
He has ruled out doing things like adding LEDs to the board (which I totally understand!) and making it longer (because it would wreck the budget the project is based on).
The ruler, which is just over 15cm long, is primarily a reference guide for the Pi’s GPIO pins and how to program them in Python. It is double-sided and now (after a recent revision) shows BCM pin numbers on one side and alternate functions on the other.
Alex is determined to make the ruler the best product he can, within the limitations of the current size, and has been taking suggestions from the community about things they would like to see on the product.
I got hold of a prototype version last week and did a mini-review, which you can read here.
You can ‘pledge’ to get one on the Kickstarter campaign page. There are 25 days left to go on the campaign as of today, 20th July. The price for the ruler is £4 (plus a nominal postage charge) although if you buy multiples you can get it slightly cheaper. So, if you ever need to do any GPIO programming, grab one of these great little rulers while you can! If you want to find out more, take a look at Alex’s Kickstarter campaign video below:
James Singleton from BlinkinLabs has written a nice script that accesses data from Lancaster University’s Aurora Watch and then, if an Aurora Borealis is happening, displays an Aurora-like light show on a BlinkyTape, which is a strip of NeoPixels with a USB controller built in. Take a look at the script and the associated libraries here. Here it is in action (Blinky alert!):
Philip Colligan is the new CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation (the charitable bit) and is looking forward to seeing in what direction he can take the Foundation forward. In the latest blog post on the Foundation’s website, Philip tells us about some of the highlights from his first few weeks at work (including CamJam and Picademy) and how excited he is about his new job. Great to hear such enthusiasm from Philip and terrific to hear that he’s looking forward to engaging with community. Read the blog post here.
Prashant Mohta is making a Python game based around a 16×2 LCD screen. To do this, he’s using a simulated LCD on the desktop and then he’ll add in the real thing later. He’s currently on part 3 and it’s well worth reading this, and the other parts. Take a look here.
The Raspberry Pi has won the Judges’ Award at this year’s Tech4Good awards ceremony. The ceremony took place at the BT Centre on Tuesday. Speaking during the ceremony, Philip Colligan, CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, said:
“We’re delighted and very honoured to have been chosen for the Judges’ Special Award this year. We’ve got great plans for the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s charitable work in 2015 and going forward; there’s a great deal of work to do in making computing accessible, approachable and exciting, and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
