Richard Grimmett’s book “Raspberry Pi Robotics Projects” is currently on sale for 50% off from the O’Reilly online bookshop. Usually selling for $35.99, it is available for $17.99 using discount code “DEAL”. This offer does expire tomorrow so get in quick if you want the book! Take a look here.
Peter Roca has created a piece of bedside furniture and embedded a Raspberry Pi into it. He calls it Bedbot, a Daytime Initialization Assistant. This beautifully constructed table, made out of black walnut and maple, acts as an alarm clock and music player. It sounds very small-scale, but as you can see from the pictures above and below, it’s anything but. He’s done a full write-up of construction, hardware and software on his blog. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has done a nice write-up of the project here.
Just a quick reminder for this forthcoming event.
The first ever Ipswich Raspberry Jam will be held on 8th August at The Enterprise + Innovation Hub at Ipswich County Library, Northgate Street, Ipswich. The event runs from 10-4 and is being split into two sessions. The first session (from 10-1pm) will be for newbies and beginners while the second (1-4pm) will be for more experienced users/non-newbies. More information is available from the Jam website and tickets for the two separate sessions are available here.
Spencer Organ has written up a great tutorial on creating a retro gaming machine from a Raspberry Pi and a small composite monitor. It adds a nice method for building the machine to some other tutorials and brings it all together. Read the tutorial here.
Norbert Heinz cannibalised two optical drives for their parts, then hooked them up to a Raspberry Pi via a couple of H-bridge chips before adding an arm with a pen. This gave him a drawing mechanism that could be programmatically moved on the X and Y axis. He then added a stepper motor to enable the pen to be lifted on the Z axis and voila, he has managed to create a plotter. You can read more about his build, and perhaps replicate it, on his blog.
Richard Hayler’s primary school Code Club has recently been selected as one of the winning entries in the Astro Pi competition. Their code is one of the projects that will actually run on the International Space Station! It uses the Astro Pi to detect changes in humidity near the Astro Pi board, thus detecting the presence of an astronaut. Richard has written up their experiences developing the software, including a rather impressive LEGO version of the actual case. Read all about it here.
