Great news for my German readers today. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced that The MagPi is now available in German. In collaboration with CHIP, the magazine will be published bi-monthly and will be available in outlets that stock technology magazines. The magazine is available now for €9.95 in print or €6.50 on digital devices, and you can pick up a subscription for €54.80. If you subscribe, you get a free Zero with all the cables! Read more here.
The MagPi have published their review of Pimoroni’s Enviro pHAT. The add-on board, which features a barometer/temperature sensor, a light/colour sensor and an accelerometer as well as several analog inputs, is given a very positive review. Read it here. The pHAT is available from Pimoroni and The Pi Hut for £16.
Things you thought you’d never type!
Chris Hoey and Daniel Benamy’s office has restroom (toilet) facilities spread out across the premises. As a result, it seems to be possible to spend much of the day hunting for a free cubicle. So, they used several Raspberry Pis to monitor sensors attached to the door locks of the cubicles which then report back to a central service which can be queried in a variety of ways, and specifically via a DataDog dashboard. Read more about this project here.
The General Instrument AY-3-8910 is a sound chip that appeared in old home computers and game consoles. Vince Weaver has taken the chip and hooked it up to a Raspberry Pi and then added bar graphs and a matrix display for graphic feedback. He has worked out how to make the chip do most of the work, just as in days of olde and the result is chiptune heaven. Read how he did it here and see an example of playback below.
DusteD had a relative who became unable to use their CD player due to old age. So, he came up with a Raspberry Pi solution. He set the Pi up to be ‘always on’ and then ripped music to it. He then programmed RFID cards to activate particular music depending on which card you used. He even made proper labels and stuck them to the cards. It’s pretty low-tech, but the aim was ease-of-use and he’s certainly accomplished that! Read how he did it over on his website and see it in action below.
It looks like Saturday 17th September is going to be very busy, with multiple events happening on the same day!
After their summer break, Huddersfield Raspberry Jam is back. They are running a Jam on the 17th from 12pm-3pm at the Huddersfield Library. You can get free tickets here.
