Accessories, Games, Geeky Techiness, Programming, Robotics, Tutorials

Raspberry Pi Wifi-Controlled Cat Laser Toy

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PLEASE READ THE NOTES OF CAUTION BELOW

I wasn’t going to feature this and then I thought I would with a note of caution.

Here’s an Adafruit tutorial in which you construct a remotely-operated laser-pointer cat toy. The project provides a web interface which you can use to control the laser pointer which is attached to a couple of servos for positioning.

Here’s the note of caution: They say not to shine this in the eyes of humans or animals – indeed, you should never shine a laser in any eyes – it’s bloody dangerous! While this is relatively easy (not foolproof) to avoid if you’re holding the pointer in your hand, it’s not so easy to guarantee it if you’re relying on a web interface with a streaming camera. So, please do this in the knowledge that it could be a bit dodgy! :-/

Read the Adafruit tutorial here or view the video below.

Environment, Geeky Techiness, Graphics

Life simulator on the Raspberry Pi

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Ferran Fabregas has taken Peter Onion’s LED panel driver software and created a ‘life simulator’ in which different coloured plants evolve and spread throughout a digital ecosystem and are then rendered onto an LED panel. You can see the code here and view a video of it in action below. All the behaviour is parameterized so it’s easy to change the behaviour and experiment with it.

Crowdfunding, Geeky Techiness, GPIO boards

Raspberry Pi Debug Clip – RyanTeck launches new Kickstarter

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Ryan Walmsley from Stevenage, who produced the excellent RTK Motor Controller Board as well as a great value-for-money budget robotics kit, has just launched a new Kickstarter. It’s for a tiny board called the “Raspberry Pi Debug Clip“. The Debug Clip pushes onto the GPIO and, with the aid of a USB cable, connects to your laptop or desktop computer and allows it to communicate with the Pi over a serial terminal. This is great for when you need emergency access to a headless Pi, such as when you’ve built a robot, and is usable in conjunction with other GPIO boards – they just push in over the top of the Clip. Earlybird pledges are currently £5 (+£1 delivery in the UK and £5 delivery for international) rising to £6 after the first 30 are gone.

You never know when you’re going to need one! I’ve backed it already! 🙂

You can back the Kickstarter here. You can view the Kickstarter video below:

Art, Internet of things, Music

Public piano uses Raspberry Pi to upload recordings

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In Edmonton, Canada, a piano has been placed in their Underground train system so that anyone can play it. It’s the brainchild of David Rauch (who you can see in this video) and his OpenPianoYEG project. The special thing about this piano is that it’s connected to the internet. The piano has a Raspberry Pi embedded into it which records the public playing music, converts it to MP3 and then uploads it, tweeting to the @OpenPianoYEG twitter account. Read more about it in this Edmonton Journal article.