The Portland State Aerospace Society launched a rocket 3 miles straight up on the 19th July from the Oregon desert. Eventually, at around Mach 1, the 3D printed housing cracked and the camera fell out, but the footage up to that point is stunning. Eventually the group hopes to place a nano-satellite into orbit. You can read more about their plans over at Popular Mechanics and you can see the video footage below:
Set up an nginx web server on the Raspberry Pi
Most of the time when you’re setting up a web server on the Pi, you’ll end up using Apache. However, sometimes you want a lighter-weight solution. This is where nginx comes in. Shane Pfaffly has written a tutorial on setting it up and creating a simple website using nginx. Read it here.
Measure remote temperatures using wireless modules and the Raspberry Pi
Software developer Patrick Drechsler is interested in the Internet of Things. So, he decided to look at some of the devices created by IoT company Wireless Things (formerly Ciseco). He purchased some items from them which gave him two coin cell-powered boxes to measure temperature. He then used a Slice of Pi board and another wireless card to receive the signals. He’s written software to record the data and to display it to the screen. Read more here.
How to build your own ‘future home’ model with the Raspberry Pi
Earlier this year, PubNub posted about their LEGO future home which had a variety of sensors, LEDs and motors attached. They have now started to write tutorials based around the project so that you can build your very own, using a Raspberry Pi to read sensors, control LEDs and servos. The first part is here in which they hook up a temperature sensor and then relay the readings to the PubNub online app.
Marine ecology monitoring using the Raspberry Pi
A team from the University of São Paulo in Brazil have developed an open-source solution for monitoring marine habitats. The device, known as a Passive Acoustic Monitoring device, is a sonic spectrometer which measures underwater audio signals and records them, thus allowing researchers to analyse the data and detect both marine wildlife and human-made sound disturbances. The device, which uses a Raspberry Pi model A to record data onto an 128GB SD card, costs an estimated $500, which is about a 1/6th of the cost of other commercial offerings. Read more about this over at the Raspberry Pi Foundation or read the original paper from the Brazillians.
3D-printable weather-proof case for the Raspberry Pi
Prajakta Bhambare has designed a weatherproof case for the Raspberry Pi that you can 3D-print. You’ll need to get things like the waterproof rubber seal yourself, but it’s a great idea if you want to set-up a security or nature camera. Take a look at the gallery here and go to pinshape.com to download the .stl files. Update: He has now written a blog post describing how he came up with the idea and tested it out in real-life conditions. Read it here.