David Whale has created these great little flash cards for Python programming. He gave them out at a recent Raspberry Jam and has now blogged about them so you can download them yourself. Great if, like me, you occasionally need some quick reference pointers! Read and download them here
Ninja-IDE on the #RaspberryPi
Craig Richardson has documented how to install the Ninja IDE development environment on the Raspberry Pi. Should be of interest to those who like developing in Python but prefer to work in an environment that provides assistance. Read more here
Debunking the #RaspberryPi power supply myths
Daniel Bull, creator of the excellent BerryIO GPIO web interface, has been doing some research on power supply requirements for the Pi and has written a great blog post on what the Pi really needs to work. Read the post and resulting discussion here
Using Java and XBee on the #RaspberryPi
Andrew Rapp has been working with Java and sorting out how to integrate it with an XBee. Read more here
New operating system: arkOS for the #RaspberryPi
Based on Arch, arkOS is an operating system I’ve only just noticed. It sounds very promising for those who want to use their Pi as a home server. Here’s what the developers say about arkOS:
arkOS is a system for securely self-hosting your online life from the comfort of your home. It allows you to easily host your own website, email, “cloud” and more, all within arm’s reach. It does this by interfacing with existing software and allowing the user to easily update and change settings with a graphical interface. No more need to depend on external cloud services, which can be insecure “walled gardens” that require you to give up control over your data.
arkOS will have several different components that come together to make a seamless self-hosting experience possible on your Raspberry Pi. Each of these components will work with each other out-of-the-box, allowing you to host your websites, email, social networking accounts, cloud services, and many other things from your arkOS node.
Read more here and download the image
I think we’d probably be more comfortable if it was based on Raspbian, but Arch is well-respected and the feature set of the OS is extremely promising.
Dyalog APL release v13.2 for the #RaspberryPi
UK-based company Dyalog have released a version of their APL software for the #RaspberryPi. APL was apparently the language used to do the computer graphics for the original TRON in 1982. Here’s some more info from their press-release:
Dyalog Limited have just released a Raspbian port of Dyalog APL for the Raspberry Pi. Dyalog APL for the Pi is a complete 32-bit Linux interpreter, with the same APL language features as Dyalog’s well-established Windows, AIX and Linux implementations.
APL is an expressive, interactive language that is ideally suited to exploratory programming. It’s been widely used to solve STEM* problems, and its concise, mathematically-oriented notation makes it great for education and exposition.
APL has a long history of success as an effective and exciting language for introducing mathematical concepts to students of all ages. We see this popular new platform as a great way for a whole new community of users to find inspiration from APL in a way that’s fully aligned with the goals of the Raspberry Pi foundation.
APL is highly effective at solving problems that involve performing complex calculations on lists or arrays of data. Its bit-manipulation capabilities make it a great tool for Embedded, Robotics and Computer Vision applications. Dyalog have been blogging about their embedded experiments at http://cto.dyalog.com/
If you want to get a flavour of the language, you can experiment on-line at http://tryapl.org. When you want to explore it further and run it on your Pi you will find installation instructions at http://packages.dyalog.com
* STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Read more information about the release here. There’s plenty of information about APL on their website.