Carl Monk’s been busy. He’s taken some components that he’s collected during his time working with the Pi and has come up with a robot that streams live video and allows you to control it over a mobile phone or tablet using a simple web interface. He’s used a 4tronix Microcon, an Adafruit Pan & Tilt and, of course, a Pi camera. Read about his project here which he’s called ToffeeBot. He’s open-sourced all his code so you can have a go at replicating it.
It’s great to see this one finally see the light of day!
Sheffield-based Pimoroni have just launched a new Kickstarter for “Flotilla“, which is a hacking platform for the Raspberry Pi. It starts off with the Flotilla dock which plugs into one of the Pi’s USB ports and then gives you a further 8 custom ports into which you can plug their modules.
You then program the dock using an easy-to-use web development kit or, if you prefer to get your hands a bit mucky, you can use their Python library.
There are a number of modules you can plug in such as an accelerometer, a light sensor, a colour detector, an LED matrix, a slider, and a whole host of others.
They’ve clearly used their imagination for this product and the attention to detail is very encouraging. I saw an alpha version of the kit at the Raspberry Pi Foundation… oh, many months ago now and it was looking promising then, even with much work to do. They’ve clearly used the time to come up with a tremendously polished product.
I’ve backed it already and I hope you will too. The Earlybird prices are currently starting at £29 delivered for the small kit and currently go up to £114 for the full “Mega Treasure Chest” which comes with what looks like all the plug-in modules. This is great value, especially when you compare it to other kits that you can get, especially in the education sector. You can read more about the product here and then back it if you so wish!
Rachel Gibbs over at Initial State has written a tutorial that takes you through the process of using Adafruit’s Ultimate GPS Breakout Board to take readings and then stream them to Initial State’s server using their API to get a nice graph. Take a look here.
Never thought I’d ever write that sentence!
The Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga (which is just an awesome place – I visited a couple of years ago) have an electric eel called Miguel Wattson. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi, some Python programming and a bunch of sensors, Miguel can now tweet to the outside world! Read more about it here and follow Miguel on Twitter here. Here’s a video of Miguel for all you nature lovers:
Big news from the Raspberry Pi Foundation this morning!
On 28th February & 1st March, there will be a massive 3rd Birthday event taking place at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Myself and Tim Richardson, who run the Cambridge Raspberry Jam, are helping to organise it. I think Clive Beale from the Foundation has summed it up quite nicely on their blog:
There will be captivating talks, animated hands-on workshops, informative show and tell sessions and chatty panel discussions. There will be a marketplace to buy the latest Raspberry Pi add-ons and other cool stuff. There will be competitions, prizes and goodies galore and a chance to chat with the Raspberry Pi team over a nice cup of tea.
There will also be a party on Saturday night which will be filled with food (we’re thinking pizza at the moment!) and drink and a chance to talk to people (for real, rather than via a screen. I know, I know, it’s a radical concept, but apparently people have been doing it for years… so I’m told 🙂 ).
It should be a fantastic event and we’re incredibly excited to be involved. We’d like to see as many people as possible from the Raspberry Pi community in attendance, whether you’re new to the Pi or an old hand. At £3.21 (including the dreaded Eventbrite fees) per day and the same again for the party, it really is fantastic value-for-money – under £10 for the weekend! And if you’re under 16, you can get into the day parts for free!
Register for The Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend tickets here. Read more on the Foundation’s blog here.
Pance Cavkovski has written a nice tutorial on programming a touchscreen interface, using the PiTFT screen, using JavaFX 8. His project involves an NFC plug-in board which scans your access card and then prompts you to enter a code, thus triggering a (virtual) door to open. Read all about it here.
