Steve Hickson decided he wanted to surprise his girlfriend on Valentine’s day. He adapted his own robot bartender to pour wine on command, added in some WeMo light switches and a bedroom fan with rose petals on top. The result astonished his girlfriend (see picture above) and you can read a bit more about how he did it here.
You can skip this part if you’re not interested in the reasons for this post! 🙂
I am regularly asked by people, normally as a result of either a CamJam or lately as a result of the Big Birthday Weekend, how to get started with the Pi. They’ve either just bought their Pi or are thinking about getting one and want to know what to do next. The Raspberry Pi Foundation website is good for this – lots of resources available, and of course there’s the discussion forum for asking questions. However, I feel awkward about just sending them to another website to take their chances at finding the information they want. So, I tend to respond (at some length) to their email on a personal level. I keep losing the emails I’ve sent, though, so I’ve decided to create a page on my blog specifically to answer those burning questions and to give advice as to where to go next. This is all my opinion, obviously!
You can read the page I’ve created here.
The page is not a completed product. I’m really happy for people to make suggestions or corrections – just leave a comment. This isn’t a vanity project, and I’m fully prepared to update, revise and add huge chunks as necessary!
I’m also happy for people to take what I’ve written for their own purposes and distribute it how they wish!
Late last year, a competition was launched to celebrate the release of Sonic Pi v2 on the Raspberry Pi. School children aged between 7-16 were invited to create musical compositions using the software. Dr Sam Aaron, who created Sonic Pi, and the Foundation have now picked 10 competition finalists and published them on their blog. The overall winner will be announced at the Big Birthday Weekend at the end of February!
Raspberry Pi forums user wintrmute has created a downloadable SD card image of Ubuntu with the LXDE desktop pre-installed. It has been compiled for use on the ARMv7 Raspberry Pi 2 and you can find instructions on how to install it on TechRepublic. The original thread on the forums can be found here.
Community-driven magazine The MagPi has just hit the 30th issue milestone. This issue contains the following:
Olivier LeDiouris demonstrates how the Raspberry Pi can be used to enhance navigation data, sampling sensors over a long voyage. João Matos explains how to produce an electronic tennis game with the GPIO pins, LEDs and numeric LED displays. Philip Munts discusses the basics of controlling a small hobby DC motor with his expansion board. Eric Ptak introduces a new P2P solution that allows a secure connection to Raspberry Pi projects that are not directly available on a public network connection. Finally, Ian McAlpine rounds off the hardware section by presenting the new Raspberry Pi 2.
Programming is part of any Raspberry Pi project. In this Issue, Mubarak Abdu-Aguye introduces the C# programming language with an I2C project. William Bell demonstrates how to use C++ inheritance and interface classes. William also discusses another Scratch arcade game, with a two player air hockey simulation. Finally, Martin Meier rounds off this Issue with a Python maze generator.
David Whale and Martin O’Hanlon’s “Adventures in Minecraft” is fast becoming the de-facto book for learning to program Minecraft through Python. In her ecstatic review of the book, Maryann Goldman of GeekMom.com takes us through the first few chapters which she is working on with her kids. Her response is terrific – she and her kids are clearly having a great time exploring the limits of what you can do both inside the 3D world and outside using electronics. She uses the PC version of the game, but the book is also aimed at both Mac and, most importantly for us, Raspberry Pi users. A great review of a great book. Read the review here.
