Mike Haldas has written a great, comprehensive tutorial about using the Pi and online service Twilio to take photos using the Pi camera and send them to a recipient via MMS message. Take a look here.
PiPiano – a new Raspberry Pi add-on board
The PiPiano is a new add-on board for the Raspberry Pi which plugs into the GPIO header and gives you access to 13 buttons, 3 LEDs and a buzzer. It’s been designed to be used as a piano input device for the Pi. It does this via a port expander chip which uses the I2C protocol and leaves most of the rest of the GPIO pins available.
The PiPiano is the brainchild of 14-year old Zach Igielman who has designed not only the hardware but the software as well. I know Zach well from the Cambridge Raspberry Jams where he has helped to run workshops and has co-presented a talk on PID controllers for robotics. He’s a really trustworthy guy with bags of enthusiasm for this project. I volunteered to help him by documenting the assembly of the board and commenting the code modules and it’s been a great experience. He’s very dedicated and focused on making the project a success.
So, where can you get a PiPiano? Simple, by backing it on IndieGoGo. The boards start from £16 for an unsoldered kit with a standard header. It’s excellent value for all the components you get and soldering it all together is great fun. You can, of course, get the soldered version, which starts at £22.
I’m proud to say that even though I’ve already got a PiPiano board that Zach sent to me for doing the assembly guide, I’m still backing the project to get another one!
If you need further convincing, please read the IndieGoGo page or view the video below and watch Phil Howard (@Gadgetoid) and Zach introduce the board.
Please help this project become a reality for Zach by backing it today 🙂
Raspberry Pi operating system round-up
NetworkWorld has done a nice summary of 10 operating systems you can install on your Pi. Nothing particularly ground-breaking, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a decent list like this. There are still some they’ve missed, but it’s worth a look. Go to the article.
Reduce the size of your Raspberry Pi B+
Adafruit have published a tutorial over on their Learning area that will help you hack your Raspberry Pi model B+ to get a much thinner profile. It’s not exactly “wafer-thin” as they claim, but it does give you a Pi which is much shallower. Personally, I think people should just wait for the A+ to come out, but that’s just me. You can see the tutorial over at Adafruit.
Build a Raspberry Pi-powered arcade cabinet
Instructables user diygizmo has posted a great tutorial to help you build the arcade cabinet in the picture above. Check it out here.
Transmit FM audio from your Raspberry Pi – but be careful!
Tom Herbison has blogged about a way to use the Pi as an FM radio transmitter up to 250MHz. His tutorial does come with several warnings about what kind of signal the Pi is putting out, but includes ways around the problem. Please make sure to read all the warnings and advice! Read it here.