Fabio Nelli has written an excellent tutorial on creating a cluster of Raspberry Pis (just two to start with) and using them to do some parallel programming. He uses the MPI library in Python to set-up communication between the two Pis. It’s a really interesting article which explains a lot about parallel programming and messaging protocols. Read it here.
Use your Kindle as a screen for the Raspberry Pi
This is not a new idea, but I’ve not seen the process documented as well before.
Guillaume Levrier has written up his project that bonds a Kindle Paperwhite to the Raspberry Pi, allowing it to be used as a screen. I believe (although I haven’t tried this myself) that he’s done it all wirelessly using dongles, which would make it a great solution for Pi-ing on the go. Take a look here.
Remote control Raspberry Pi GPIO with messaging queues
Messaging queues are all the rage nowadays, what with being the backbone for a lot of Internet of Things projects and concepts. In his blog post, Brian Hines explains how to use a library he wrote called pi-control-service together with RabbitMQ to send and receive messages and control the GPIO pins with them. Read more here.
Raspberry Pi networking over serial for a high altitude balloon launch
Team Near Space Circus sent 7 Raspberry Pis up into near space using a high altitude balloon. I previously covered the rough layout of their spherical shaped payload here and now the team has published another blog post about the project. This time, they cover the networking part of the payload. This was achieved by hooking up the TX/RX pins of each Pi to the others in a formation known as ‘token ring’. This is a very old way of doing networking, of course, but it is still a valid concept. Read Francois Dion’s blog post for more information.
May 2015 issue of Raspberry Pi magazine The MagPi hits the virtual news-stands
The Foundation have just published the latest issue of The MagPi, the official magazine. On the front cover this month, it highlights articles on:
- A super-test of the main desktop-type operating systems available for the Pi.
- An article on SSHing into your Pi.
- A celebration of Picademy as it hits its first anniversary.
- An article on manipulating objects in Minecraft Pi Edition
- A round-up of some of the best cases available for the Pi.
- A tutorial on creating an IoT alarm clock
- An article on using BBC iPlayer on the Pi
- And more
Head on over to the MagPi website to download the issue for free.
Vote for Raspberry Pi business FUZE to get them life-changing funding
Aylesbury-based FUZE Technologies is currently seeking £250,000 funding to take their business to the next level. They have applied to a competition run by Richard Branson called ‘Pitch to Rich’ in which companies ask the public to vote for them in order to get to the next stage.
FUZE is a great little company that now employs seven people to market, manufacture and sell their Raspberry Pi-in-a-box, the FUZE (pictured above).