Camera module, Making, Nature, Programming, Tutorials

Raspberry Pi dog monitor – with lasers!

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Dave Young wanted to stop his dog from jumping up and taking food off the kitchen work surfaces (I can sympathise!) when he wasn’t in the room. So, he hooked up a laser detector circuit to a Raspberry Pi and programmed the Pi to play a recording of his voice to tell the dog off when the laser beam is broken. The recordings are randomised so that the dog doesn’t keep hearing the same thing and a photo is taken using a camera module. Read more here, including full instructions. You can see a video of Dave explaining his project and an example of the dog misbehaving below:

Cases, Raspberry Pi Foundation

The story behind the official Raspberry Pi case

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Here’s a great post over at the Foundation written by Gordon Hollingworth. It describes in details the trials and tribulations (or possible tribble-ations, for those Trekkies amongst you) of producing an injection moulded case for the Pi. This new official case is available from the Swag Store, element14, or RS Electronics. (or MCM Electronics, Newark and Allied if you’re outside the UK) Read more here.

Accessories, Cases, Networking, Shopping

Official wifi adapter and new official case launched for the Raspberry Pi

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I was just browsing around this morning when I discovered that the official Raspberry Pi wifi adapter and the official Raspberry Pi case have both been launched!

The case

The official case, which was launched in beta form at the Big Birthday weekend, comes in several pieces and is white and red in colour. It’s a very well-fitting case and has a detachable side panel to allow you to access the GPIO pins. The top cover can be left off if needed to allow for the use of a HAT or other add-on board. It’s a handsome case and at £6 you can’t go wrong. It’s available from the Swag store.

The wifi dongle

The official wifi dongle is tiny, white and has the Raspberry Pi logo moulded into it. It’s compatible with 802.11 b/g/n networks and works with Raspbian straight out of the box. It’s currently sold out on the Swag store but you can also buy it from The Pi Hut for £6, which is the same price as The Pi Hut’s own dongle.

Programming, Sensors, Tutorials

Read temperature, pressure and altitude with the BMP180 sensor on the Raspberry Pi

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Malcolm Maclean is developing an eBook for the Raspberry Pi and it’s available for you to read online. One of the sections of the book is all about the brilliant little BMP180 sensor (pictured above). This sensor, which replaces the larger BMP085, can read temperature, pressure and altitude and then exposes these readings over the I2C bus to the Pi. Malcolm takes you through wiring the sensor up, taking readings and then storing them to a MySQL database. Read more here.

The BMP180 is a great sensor – you can buy one from The Pi Hut for only £2 here – it’s tiny and so easy to use!