Accessories, Making, Medical, Programming, Robotics

Haptic backpack and a Raspberry Pi brings navigation for the visually impaired

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Shashank Sharma and his team have developed a backpack to aid visually-impaired users. The backpack, called BackMap, uses an app to input the location you’re trying to get to and then Raspberry Pi-powered motors attached to the straps vibrate to tell you which direction to turn. The project came out of TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s 2017 hackathon. It is expected that the same system can be used for internal spaces using beacons, allowing users to navigate huge spaces such as conference venues. You can read more, and see a video of the project presentation, over at TechCrunch.

Accessories, Games, Making, Retro

Solderless breadboard RetroPie gaming system uses a Raspberry Pi Zero

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Here’s a great Instructable for those who are a bit put-off by soldering. It’s a full RetroPie gaming machine, with button controls, that uses a Raspberry Pi Zero. However, no soldering, 3D printing or laser-cutting is required – just some skill with breadboarding and wiring. It has a 2.8″ LCD screen and is powered by 4 rechargeable AA batteries. The controls are tactile buttons with special labelled covers and it all seems to work remarkably well. I’m not too sure, however, that unsoldered pins on the Zero will be entirely reliable. Some Pimoroni hammer headers would be ideal, but, of course, they don’t come in the extended length required by this project. It’s a great project, however, and if you’d like to take a closer look, visit the Instructables page.

AIY, Audio, Programming, Tutorials

Add shutdown and reboot commands, play BBC Radio with your Raspberry Pi AIY project

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UK-based Ktinkerer recently got hold of the AIY Project Kit that came free with MagPi issue #57. She’s already successfully added some custom actions to it, based on the instructions given by Google and The MagPi. So, here are links to her two blog posts:

With these examples, it should be fairly straight forward to make your AIY project do whatever you like on the Raspberry Pi.

Accessories, AIY, Arduino, Making, Silliness

Candy Dispenser powered by a Raspberry Pi and an AIY projects kit

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The hunt for the fabled issue #57 of The MagPi continues for many people. Rumours from the deep dark indicate that The Pi Hut had some… but then all was lost. Sold out within 20 minutes. The legend… continues…

For those of us who have managed to get hold of the Google AIY Projects kit that came with The MagPi, it’s been a fun project with a lot of possibility for expansion. Someone called “The Arduino Guy” has taken the kit and extended it with an Arduino MEGA and a Particle Photon to make a candy dispenser. A wooden case holds all the components, which also include an LCD display. You press a button (or clap your hands) and command the machine to dispense candy. A short countdown later and out pop M&M-type sweets into your waiting cup. A great use of the kit (although I’m pretty sure it could be done more simply, and just with a Raspberry Pi without using the other boards). Read how to do it yourself here and see it in action below:

AIY, Audio, Making, Music, Programming, Software, Tutorials

Play YouTube tracks from your Google AIY / Raspberry Pi box

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Those of us who were lucky enough to get hold of the new issue of The MagPi, with the AIY project give-away, have been beavering away over the weekend trying to get our cardboard boxes to understand a word we’re saying, with differing levels of success. I, myself, had great fun and reviewed the project here. The Pi Hut recently tweeted that they were ordering another pallet of the issue and kit!

Mike Redrobe has written an excellent post on the Raspberry Pi forum in which he installs some additional software on the Raspberry Pi and then extends the voice-recognizer Python script that AIY uses. Once the AIY service is restarted, you can command the AIY box to “play <track name>” and it will go and find the track on YouTube and play the audio through the speaker. Ingenious! Take a look at how to do it here.