Just saw this interview with Pi-Top founder Jesse Lozano. It’s a great insight into a start-up company and a little glimpse of how they see their future. Read the interview here.
Don’t forget, you can still play Pi-Top’s Christmas Competition game here!
Zach and Jake are into the last few days of their IndieGoGo campaign for the Maketronix Alarm. It is a simple add-on board for the Raspberry Pi and houses 9 buttons, an LED, a buzzer and a header for a PIR movement sensor, which comes with the board. Using the library and resources which they will write, this is an educational project that teaches you how to build your own alarm system.
Zach sent me one of the boards and I’ve taken a look at it. It’s very simple but, being pre-assembled, it’s an ideal kit for learning how things like alarm systems work. The library is a work-in-progress, as are the resources, but the stuff that’s been done so far looks good. Zach’s proven track record with the PiPiano makes me think that the campaign will be run well and that the hardware is good.
The campaign runs until the 12th December, so head over to IndieGoGo to read more and pledge.
Alex over at the Foundation has blogged a great Pi-centric shopping guide for the festive season. She’s picked a lot of good stuff here including kits, add-ons, books and accessories. I was going to do my own guide, but she’s done a very good job with this, so I probably won’t!
Nice to see things like the CamJam EduKit getting some love, along with things like the RasPiO GPIO Zero Ruler and the Ryanteck SnowPi along with more expensive things such as the Pi-Top and Pi-Top CEED.
Mark Williams, over at Australian add-on board design company Ozzmaker, has just announced that they have two new products.
The BerryGPS uses a M10478-A2 GPS module from Antenova (able to track 22 satellites) which requires no external antenna, assuming you can see the sky. It costs $48 AUD (about £28).
The BerryGPS-IMU uses the same Antenova chip but adds on several sensors: an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, a barometric/altitude reader and a temperature sensor. This one costs $73 AUD (about £43).
They are Zero-sized but will work on any Raspberry Pi. The later board is an improvement on the original BerryIMU with which Mark had a success on Kickstarter. I had great fun with the BerryIMU and it remains a critical part of my Picorder project. Definitely recommended – Mark produces great boards!
SixFab are currently running a Kickstarter campaign for a collection of IoT boards that allow your Raspberry Pi to connect to the GPRS, 3G and 4G networks (as well as a GPS board). They’ve recently added a Video Streamer Pack pledge level for $199 which includes:
To go along with this pledge level, they’ve released two videos. One shows how to add your Pi to a drone:
and the other shows you how to set-up your Pi’s SD card to live stream video from the camera:
You can find out more about these great add-on boards from the Kickstarter campaign page. Hurry, though, as the (already funded campaign) closes in 11 days. There are some great value boards on there, in addition to the video streamer package, and I recommend taking a look if you’re interested in remote IoT operations.
Here’s a nice post I discovered to get your money-spending fingers twitching. It’s a guide to 50 sensors and small peripherals that you can get that will work with the Raspberry Pi. Take a look here.
