Part woodworking project, part geeky techniness, “paqmanbiker’s” project was done as a Mother’s Day present for his wife. He used a Raspberry Pi 3 and an old 17″ Dell display and then surrounded it with a highly-polished frame. A bit of software work was required to do some web-scraping. See a build log and details here.
Dr Mark Smith has developed a system that allows him to control and program the lights on his lawn. In this very site-specific project, Smith uses a Raspberry Pi to give him a web interface to program timings and settings into the lighting system. The most impressive aspect is that the system will text him, via Twillo, when one of the lights burns out! You can read more and see things like a schematic here.
James Bellafaire wanted something that would play jazz music “all day and all night” and give him an authentic experience at the same time. So, he found an old 1930s radio on eBay, won the auction and refurbished the case. He then placed a Raspberry Pi and a hard drive on the inside, added additional components such as an ATtiny and amplifier and then set about finding a music source. He came upon David Niven’s jazz archive, copied lots of it to the hard drive and then wrote software to play the music. He’s done a super job, which he’s rightly very proud of. You can read more, and see the build log, here.
Ipswich Makerspace is holding a full-day Raspberry Jam on 8th October at the University of Suffolk on Neptune Quay. There will be talks, workshops and a marketplace at this Jam which will be their third and runs from 10am-4pm. Free tickets are available here!
In many San Francisco neighbourhoods, you are required to move your car every two hours to satisfy a parking restriction. However, in reality, you only need to move your car every two hours after it has been seen by an enforcement officer. John Naulty decided to use a Pi to detect when an enforcement officer was present. He uses the camera module and OpenCV to detect motion. The Pi then uploads the photograph to a website running Tensorflow which determines whether the movement is an enforcement vehicle or not and sends him a text if it is 75% sure. Naulty then has two hours to move his car from that point. Sneaky, eh? You can read a few quotes from Naulty and watch a video of him over at TechCrunch.
© 2016 EPFL / Alain Herzog
Eric Unnervik, a master’s student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, has developed a miniature motorbike that drives itself! Onto the bike he has strapped a Raspberry Pi (3, I think), a Navio2 add-on board and some sensors. These control the balance and direction of the bike and the destination is programmed via a smartphone interface. The bike can travel at 60 km/hr (37 mph) without falling over – which is quite astonishing when you consider the weight of the Pi and add-on board.
“Our goal is that, in a race between an autonomous motorcycle and one ridden by a human, our machine wins!” said Unnervik
You can see it in action in the (French language) video below.
