Fred and Ernest Lotter have committed themselves to driving across Europe and Africa to reach their home country of South Africa. Along the way they are teaching two-day workshops centred around the Raspberry Pi, and in particular creating an Embedded Linux environment from the Pi to show off the capabilities of the ARM CPU. They have now (after much delay) reached Cairo in Egypt. The Foundation has the full story.
Tony Smith has reviewed the all-in-one Raspberry Pi kit The Fuze. This is the one that comes with an embedded keyboard, GPIO breakout and breadboard. It was not well-received by Linux User and Developer when they recently looked over it (the keyboard in particular came under criticism due to being uncomfortable to work with) and I really can’t get excited about it. It’s a very nice piece of kit, true, but the £180 price tag makes the Pi seem like it’s much more expensive than it really is, especially for schools who will likely have the keyboard already and probably won’t care about having it in a ‘nice case’ (which this is – it really evokes the old-style BBC Micro).
Fraser May has created his third tutorial video. This time he uses the MCP3004 analog-to-digital converter to show how you can add analog inputs to your Pi.
Dr Neil Yager of AICBT Ltd and Dr Ted Dunstone of Biometix have joined forces to create the beginnings of a facial recognition security system that can detect usage of a variety of masks. They use the Pi, the Pi camera module, an Arduino Nano and a thermal imaging sensor to make it happen. Details, including their Python code, are available here: Disguise detection using open source.
Tony Smith (a senior editor with The Register) has posted a review of two cases on his personal blog. He covers the Cyntech case and the ModMyPi case.
Photo credit: Nate Lanxon
This is a fantastic video of Amy and Clive talking at the recent Wired Next Generation conference. They talk about what the Raspberry Pi is and what you can do with it. I particularly liked the mention of Jason Barnett’s MotorPiTX as a platform for building robots.
Amy’s come on a long way in her presentation style since last year’s Jamboree. She was already great then but her confidence has grown and she’s grown into a highly compelling presenter. The double-team of her and Clive is just brilliant.
