3D printing, Accessories, Big Data, GPIO boards, Graphics, Programming

3D mapping on the Raspberry Pi

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Back in February, the Foundation published a blog post about Tangram ES which an open source map-rendering engine from Mapzen. Mapzen has now gone one further and developed an example app which displays a three-dimensional map and ties it into an Adafruit GPS HAT. They’ve even provided the files to 3D print a mounting case for the whole thing which includes a 5″ touch screen to control the map. It’s a lovely example of what you can do with the library and all the code is available, so give it a go! NB: You probably need a Raspberry Pi 2 to handle this. Read more here.

Medical, Research, Robotics, Science, Sensors, Video

Eye-controlled wheelchair uses Raspberry Pi 2

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wheelchair_controller

Myrijam Stoetzer (14) and Paul Foltin (15) from Duisburg, Germany wanted to create a system whereby a wheelchair could be controlled by tracking eye movements. The eye tracker is made from a webcam mounted in the frames of some safety glasses. They use IR LEDs to provide illumination in the dark and they’ve stripped the IR filter from the camera so that it works in the light and the dark. They initially tried using an old model B Raspberry Pi but got very low frames-per-second scanning. They then moved to an ODROID-U3 which improved matters remarkably. They’ve now switched to a Raspberry Pi 2 because of the low-cost even though performance isn’t quite as good as the ODROID. They’re asking for help to improve the frame rate, so if you think you can help, head over to their project page. I wonder if they could achieve a better frame rate by using the Pi camera module…

You can read more from this remarkable, young team here.

Programming, Software

FUZE BASIC v3 released for free for the Raspberry Pi

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UK-based FUZE have released their version of BASIC as a free download. This version has numerous improvements to previous versions and includes support for images and sprites. BASIC may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is still a valid first language when you’re trying to get into programming. With the ability to program GPIO pins from the language, it’s another doorway to the exciting world of coding.

You can download FUZE BASIC from the Fuze website. You need to register to get access to the downloads and then login.

Education, Environment, Events, GPIO boards, Home automation, Nature, Outreach, Programming, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Science

Robot gardening workshop sponsored by Raspberry Pi Foundation

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gardening_board

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) is the UK’s leading media arts centre, based in Liverpool. On Sunday 28th June and Saturday 11th July, they’re running a robotic gardening workshop for adult-child teams. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has donated 100 limited edition robot kits (including a Raspberry Pi computer, camera, robot circuit boards and plant to take away with you) for the lucky teams. Teams should be comprised of an adult (18+) and a child (12-18 years old). Teams should also be available on 22nd August for a follow-up visit in which data collected from the project will be analysed with the assistance of Ben Nuttall from the Foundation.

You can read much more and book tickets from the FACT website.

Silliness, Video

Raspberry Pi spotted in the new Point Break movie trailer

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point_break

Here’s a bit of silliness for you. It looks like two Raspberry Pis are destined to go BOOM in the trailer for the movie remake of Point Break. Here’s the video – it occurs around 1:28 in the trailer and you can see the Pis stuck to packs of C4. Apparently they are going to detonate the packs via the audio jack, which makes little sense but I suppose it’s just about feasible.

Art, Audio, Events, Programming, Video

Converting Twitter emotions into art with a Raspberry Pi

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A few of the Raspberry Pi Creative Technologists attended the Art Hackathon in Greenwich on 16th-17th May and got together with some others to create a lovely art project. The project takes a Twitter feed, analyses the tweets for keywords and assigns emotions to them. The amount of each emotion is then rendered on a web page. Wavy strips of clear plastic were then mounted on top of the screen (an HDMIPi) to give the rendering a 3D ‘feel’. Audio was also keyed to the emotional readings and the volume of different sound tracks altered according to how much a particular emotion was being expressed through Twitter. Yasmin Curren has written up her experience of the Hackathon on the Foundation’s blog. You can follow Yasmin on Twitter and read her blog here. You can see a video of their project, called Emoti, below. Code for the project is available on Github.