Opinion

My #RaspberryPi Anniversary

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Not much to report this evening apart from a quick mention of my second Pi-versary. Two years ago on this date, I received my first Raspberry Pi (see the picture of the box above!). I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, and didn’t have time to use it straight away but soon after I booted it up and had a play. That same day, I started this blog!

I soon started to go the Milton Keynes Raspberry Jams, run by Peter Onion, and got inspired to create the Picorder, which was featured on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s blog on 6th March 2013 (the most hits my blog has ever received happened that day!).

Over the past two years, I’ve tried to get involved with the great Raspberry Pi community. Spurred on by the MK Jam, I decided to revive the Cambridge Raspberry Jam and my first one was on Saturday, 18th May 2013 at the University of Cambridge Centre for Mathematical Sciences. We had 50 people in one room, some great presentations, a bit of show-and-tell and a general geek-out along the lines of the MK Jam. The next Jam was on 20th July at Cambridge Consultants – we had 60 people, a lot more show-and-tell and some more presentations. Around that time, I was privileged to be approached by Tim Richardson who thought that together we could make much more of the Jams. With this in mind, and with massive amounts of aid from Andy Batey, we moved into new premises: the Institute of Astronomy. The first Jam there was on 21st September. We had almost twice as many people, and more facilities to play with and since then it’s grown and grown. I couldn’t do the Jams without Tim now, and we were asked to be on the Jam experts panel at the Raspberry Jamboree in Manchester this year.

I think the best moments for me have been at the CamJams during the workshops we’ve organised – seeing people, especially kids, actually do the stuff, learning, playing, working together and coming out the other side with a deeper appreciation of programming and electronics.

So, what’s happening next? For me, more blogging and Jam organising. For the Raspberry Pi? Something exciting, I reckon.

Arduino, Geeky Techiness, GPIO boards, Making, Video

Stop freezing pipes with the #RaspberryPi and a new #Arduino board

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Alex Eames at RasPi.TV has invented a new board that plugs into the Raspberry Pi. Called a RasPiO duino, it’s programmable from the Pi and will also work away from the Pi providing it’s given a power source. He has a problem at his house over in Poland – the basement gets so cold that the water in an inlet pipe can freeze (and make the pipe burst). So, he’s used a combination of his new board, some relays and some heat lamps to Macgyver a solution together. There’s more detail and a video over on his blog.

Geeky Techiness, GPIO boards, Making

Use a Wii Nunchuck on the #RaspberryPi to control a turtle

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Jason Barnett has written a tutorial over on tuts+ about using a Wii Nunchuck to control the turtle library to draw lines via Python. There’s two ways of doing it: hacking directly into the circuitry of the Nunchuck or using a tiny adapter board. This looks like a good way of controlling a robot if you don’t want to do it wirelessly. Read it here.