A free Raspberry Jam is to take place at Knox Academy in Haddington (near Edinburgh), East Lothian on Saturday 30th May. It is being run as part of a two-day Jam Packed event run by Alan O’Donohoe. It runs from 10.30am-3.30pm and will include hands-on workshops, drop-in activities, talks & demonstrations. Book your tickets here.
Instructables user hackbp has written a tutorial which shows you how to transmit an image over radio waves. He uses a method known as SSTV Martin 2 to convert an image into ‘lines’ which are then sent in binary form over the airwaves. It’s the same method used by high altitude balloons to transmit their images back to Earth. I do note, however, that he hasn’t dealt with receiving the data and reconstituting the images at the other end, which is a shame, but the tutorial might be useful to get you started. Read more here.
Lisiparoi creator Jason Barnett was kind enough to send me one to review, so here goes…
The Lisiparoi is, simply, a light for your Raspberry Pi camera module. It comes in two flavours: the white Lisiparoi is for the normal camera module and has 12 bright, white LEDs; the black Lisiparoi is for the PiNoIR camera module and has 12 infra-red LEDs. It comes with a 4-pin header which you will need to solder on yourself. These pins provide power, 2 grounds and a pin for GPIO control.
First of all, I soldered the header pins onto the board. This was very simple and shouldn’t be any bother for someone familiar with using a soldering iron. I then attached the camera to the board using the included plastic screws/nuts. One thing I noticed at this stage is that, because the camera module’s lens connector stands out from the board, the lens of the camera doesn’t lay parallel to the Lisiparoi. This isn’t a huge issue, as you can handle the slightly off angle by mounting the board differently, but it is something to bear in mind. I connected the camera ribbon cable to my Pi, then connected the 5V, GND and GPIO pins via jumper cables to my Pi. At this stage, the GPIO pin was connected directly to the 3V3 pin. I switched the Pi on and, lo and behold, the Lisiparoi lit up.
After I’d taken a few photos just to prove the camera still worked, I moved the GPIO cable to pin 4 and replicated a short Python program given in Jason’s instructions (which you can find here). This worked well. The lights come on, you’re presented with an on-screen preview of what the camera sees, then the image is captured and the lights are turned off. It uses the picamera library to do the capture and it’s a nice example of how to create a piece of camera software without much bother.
Here are some example photographs taken by Jason using the two Lisiparois with the subjects 1.2 meters away. The top one is the regular board and the bottom one is the infra-red board.
As you can see, the results aren’t great at 1.2m away and the Lisiparoi is perhaps more useful if the subject is closer to the camera.
As I said above, assembly is very easy. The provided instructions are very good and the example script is easy enough to understand that you’ll be able to tailor it to your needs. I do have some reservations about the brightness of the LEDs and I wonder whether they give enough illumination to be useful if the subject is more than about a metre away. For an ideal distance of around half a metre, though, you may need to look at refocussing the lens, which is tricky.
The board is likely to be useful, for example, when used as part of a home security system. Set the camera and Lisiparoi up at your front door and, because the subject will be fairly close, you should get a decent photograph. The infra-red board is, in a way, the more intriguing of the two. It will be particularly useful when used, for example, in a bird house or other nature project for capturing images at night.
You can get hold of a Lisiparoi for around £12 from Cyntech.
The Lisiparoi is well-designed, but on the pricey side, but is good if you need some illumination for your project. Be aware of it’s limitations, however – it’s not a professional photographer’s tool, but it could be just what you’re looking for as long as your expectations aren’t too high.
Rating: 6/10
Two years ago, Matthew Achariam decided he wanted to create a “tangible” electronics project. He came up with the idea of showing notifications via a cube of LEDs. He hooked the LEDs up to a Raspberry Pi, added a wi-fi dongle and then surrounded the whole thing in a diffusion cube of plexiglass. He finished up with something which is part-functional, part-artwork. Read about the build here and see it in action below:
A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the RyanTeck TrafficHAT and gave it a solid 9/10. I’m pleased to say that it is now available to purchase. You can get hold of the HAT for under £10 delivered direct from RyanTeck or from The Pi Hut. If you’re interested in getting to know about electronics and controlling the real world from your Pi B+, A+ or Pi 2, this is an excellent introduction. It comes in kit form so you get to learn how to solder as well. It’s a great learning tool and I thoroughly recommend it.
Simon Long from the Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced a big update for the standard desktop GUI. Improvements include:
More details and instructions on how to update your Pi can be found here.
