We previously covered Dave Hunt’s work on the PiPhone – the first mobile phone powered by a Raspberry Pi. Now, Linux User has tracked him down and Rob Zwetsloot has interviewed him. Read the interview here.
Kickstarter robot hits stretch goal, gets Raspberry Pi support
Edison is a tiny robot that runs an 8-bit Freescale processor and is currently being funded via a Kickstarter. It’s just hit the $50k stretch goal which means the software to program it will be supported on the Raspberry Pi. Looks like an interesting little robot (though not suitable for Pi Wars!) and it’s good to see projects like this tying up with the Pi. See the Kickstarter here.
PiKISS makes installing software on the Raspberry Pi easy
Jose Cerrejon contacted me to tell me about his project, PiKISS. PiKISS is a “bunch of scripts” with a menu system designed to make life easier when setting up your Pi. It’s downloadable from GitHub and looks like a very user-friendly way of installing software and other bits and pieces your Pi needs. Take a look here.
Hacking a 15″ R2-D2 with the Raspberry Pi
Oakland, California-based Andrew Langley has written a tutorial based on his experience hacking the 15″ Hasbro Interactive R2D2. He’s even included a mini-projector in the build to give R2 that realistic feel. Read about it here or watch the video below.
Raspberry Pi B+ HATs start to emerge
Ever since the Raspberry Pi HATs (Hardware Attached to Top) were announced, there has been an unspoken ‘race’ to see who would get theirs out first. The Raspberry Pi Foundation are already working on their own one, although we don’t know what it is, and now both Adafruit and Dtronixs have thrown their hat into the ring (sorry, couldn’t resist).
HATs announced from Adafruit so far are:
- A perma-proto board for prototyping
- A GPS-enabled board
- A board with an embedded 2.2″ TFT (a bit like the PiTFT, but as a GPIO board)
- An Arcade HAT, which one would imagine is a rudimentary games controller
You can follow Adafruit’s HAT-a-Day blog by visiting this page.
Also in contention for first HAT release is Newcastle-based Dtronixs. They’ve announced the following:
- UserPort – a mimic of the BBC’s micros digital User Port and Analogue Port. Digital I/O is provided by a I2C MCP23017 16-channel Port Expander and Analogue Inputs by a 4-channel SPI MCP3004 10-bit ADC.
- Breadboard – allowing the use of a 170-ping breadboard plus embedded LEDs and switches, as well as 4 x analogue inputs.
- DIO32 – a 32-channel Digital I/O board with two MCP23017 I2C Port Expanders.
- Breakout!+ allows easy access to the I2C, SPI and UART interfaces and includes a small prototyping area for building circuits on.
My money for first release is Dtronixs – they seem like a very small, agile company with a great number of existing boards for the Model B out already. They are small but this could be their ticket to big recognition. They currently sell on Tindie.
Upcoming Picademy dates for Raspberry Pi educators
The Raspberry Pi Foundation have just announced the next two sets of dates for their free training course for teachers, Picademy. The dates are:
- 29th & 30th September 2014
- 27th & 28th October 2014