Competitions, Events, Robotics

Pi Wars 2015 announced for Raspberry Pi robotics teams

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Following the success of last year’s event, the Pi Wars team have announced that there will, indeed, be a Pi Wars 2015! The exact date and venue have yet to be confirmed, but it is expected to be in early December in Cambridge, UK.

The announcement was made at the recent Cambridge Raspberry Jam by myself and Tim Richardson. You can see a video of the announcement here:

More details, including a list of this year’s challenges, are available on the Pi Wars website.

Here are the important dates:

  • Register your team – 1st July-1st August
  • Final teams selected – 14th August
  • Competition rules finalised – 1st September

More information, such as general rules, will be made available this week on the Pi Wars website. You might want to sign up for the mailing list to get notifications of updates.

Education, Networking, Research, Science, Software

Space-age information distribution with Outernet and the Raspberry Pi

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Outernet is an interesting service that broadcasts a large amount of internet-mined content via an orbiting satellite. Anyone can receive it, providing they have the appropriate equipment, on a Raspberry Pi. Here’s some info on the information that is being broadcast from the Raspberry Pi Foundation:

The content is the kind of thing you would find in a public library, with resources on human health, anatomy, encyclopaedias, how-to guides and news feeds. The data is broadcast cyclically so that any new receiver joining the broadcast can catch up with everyone else. The content received from the satellites is cached and served out to the users via http pages, meaning that any device with a browser can be used to read it (both Ethernet and WiFi are supported). It’s worth noting this is only one-way content, because you can’t send messages back up to the satellites.

 

So it’s kind of a satellite-powered internet for places where you can’t receive the internet. The Foundation have purchased a kit from the Outernet website and set it up on their roof. Read more here.

Networking, Software, Tutorials

Create a Raspberry Pi wi-fi hotspot with the Edimax EW-7811Un dongle

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Many people have these lovely little dongles from Edimax. They’re cheap, tiny and work very well with the Raspberry Pi. Dave Conroy has written up a method to turn your Pi into a wi-fi hotspot using one of these dongles (which uses the RTL8188CUS chipset). This is particularly ideal if you’ve created a robot and want to control it from, say, your mobile phone. Read how to do it here.

Camera module, Making, Nature, Programming, Tutorials

Raspberry Pi dog monitor – with lasers!

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Dave Young wanted to stop his dog from jumping up and taking food off the kitchen work surfaces (I can sympathise!) when he wasn’t in the room. So, he hooked up a laser detector circuit to a Raspberry Pi and programmed the Pi to play a recording of his voice to tell the dog off when the laser beam is broken. The recordings are randomised so that the dog doesn’t keep hearing the same thing and a photo is taken using a camera module. Read more here, including full instructions. You can see a video of Dave explaining his project and an example of the dog misbehaving below: