Photo by Pete Lomas (I think!)
Les Pounder, a freelance writer for various Linux magazines (and all-round nice person!), recently backed Nexdock on IndieGoGo (just like I wish I had!). He received his unit a few days ago and has since been playing around with it getting the various functions to work. Read his blog to find out how he got on with using it as a Raspberry Pi display, keyboard & mouse amongst other things!
Martin Hertig took a guitar bag, hooked up an Arduino to the zips via conductive thread to make a MIDI controller and then added a Raspberry Pi into the mix to create his project, called Zippy. The Pi runs FluidSynth synthesizer software (as my Music Box does!) to play the sounds. One zip is for playing notes or chords, one controls vibrato and one changes the bar. You can see it in action below and see more photographs on Martin’s blog.
Dmitri Nusinow is organising a Raspberry Jam on Saturday 15th October at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis, MO, USA. The Jam will run from 12-4pm. Not much more detail on this one, as I think it’s in its early stages, but well worth checking out if you’re in the vicinity. Get free tickets here.
Last night, I recorded the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of podcasts. This is a new venture for me, so please be kind! 🙂 In episode 1, I cover the latest news in the world of Raspberry Pi, some new/updated products, crowdfunding campaigns, upcoming events and then feature several Pi projects.
The podcast is available to watch on YouTube (embedded below) or to listen to as an MP3. If this proves popular, I will see about getting it distributed via iTunes, Google Play (when it’s available) and other apps. If anyone knows how to do this, by all means, get in touch, because I don’t have a clue!
Here’s the video:
And here’s the MP3:
And here are the notes for this episode of the podcast:
Wrap-up
Lady Ada over at Adafruit has updated their guide for turning a Raspberry Pi into an access point. Now working with the Raspberry Pi 3, the guide works with the latest Raspbian Jessie and uses either an external wi-fi dongle or the on-board wi-fi capabilities of the 3. Read the tutorial here.
One year ago, Ben Nuttall and Dave Jones began work on GPIO Zero, a Python library which sought to simplify access to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. As of yesterday, it is now one year old and Ben has just announced that version 1.3 is now available. This release includes the following new features:
ButtonBoard classServo and AngularServo classesCPUTemperature classIt’s an exciting time for GPIO Zero and the team now consists of three people – Ben, Dave and Andrew Scheller. They recently released a book to go along with the library and it’s fast becoming the de-facto standard for GPIO programming. We’re even looking to re-write our CamJam EduKit worksheets using it. The future’s bright for the library, and I personally wish the guys Godspeed with their efforts!
Read more about the new version on Ben’s blog.
Also still in development is Dave Jones’ picamera library for the Raspberry Pi camera module which is on version 1.12. You can see the changes and read the documentation here.