Chris Robinson from NODE has taken a Raspberry Pi 2 and adapted it to fit into a hard drive enclosure. He added a screen, a battery and a mini keyboard, together with some other parts, and created this Nintendo DS-style portable computer. Great work. You can see a gallery of images from the build (and instructions) over at Imgur.
Alex Eames owns a house in Poland with a heating problem: the furnace and the general system are like something out of the stone age and Poland, being the way it is, is often very cold. So, he’s brought a bit of Raspberry Pi and RasPiO Duino know-how to the situation to allow him to monitor the coal-fired furnace and room temperatures. He hopes to eventually have a fully-fledged heating controller system with multiple room monitoring. Read and see how he’s done all this here.
FUZEBOX working prototype
The makers of the Raspberry Pi-based FUZE computer have just launched a new Kickstarter campaign to fund the FUZEBOX.
The FUZEBOX is a peripheral designed to plug into any device via USB, whether this be a PC, Mac, or Linux box, including the Raspberry Pi.
So… what do you get in the Fuzebox?
Here’s the campaign video telling you a bit more about the FUZE and the team behind the FUZEBOX:
Sample uses for the FUZEBOX that they’ve suggested include:
The FUZEBOX is designed to be used with the team’s FUZE BASIC – an implementation of BASIC originally written for the Raspberry Pi but now branching out onto other platforms.
There are 14 (that’s fourteen!) pledge levels. The FUZEBOX itself is available in pledges starting at £60. Fulfilment of the FUZEBOX begins in December 2016 and they already have a working prototype (pictured above).
So, if you’re interested in learning some more, head over to the campaign.
A terrarium really is a beautiful thing. Tom Bennet has placed a temperature sensor inside his terrarium box and then hooked up a Raspberry Pi to it. The Pi controls an Energenie home automation switch to maintain the environment inside. Take a look at how he did it here.
Raspberry Pi Zero production
Good news from Raspberry Pi Trading – Raspberry Pi Zero production is soon to enter a new phase, bringing with it better availability… and something mysterious. Here’s what Eben Upton had to say on a recent Raspberry Pi Forum thread:
Raspberry PI Zero production is restarting in Wales next Monday after a hiatus to allow us to focus on Raspberry Pi 3 (a million units built and counting). We have placed 250ku of new orders, and are aiming to produce at least 50ku/month for the rest of this year. Distribution will continue to be via Pimoroni, Pi Hut, Adafruit and Micro Center for now.
He also added a mysterious hint of something new to be added to the Zero:
To thank you for your patience, we’ve taken advantage of the hiatus to add a (much requested) new feature. I’ll leave you all to guess what it is (it’s not WiFi).
So! What do you reckon the new feature is? Add a comment below with your best guess!
RedBear (who previously ran a Kickstarter for a wifi-enabled Arduino-type board) have just launched their latest crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. This time, it is for an IoT add-on board for the Raspberry Pi that adds 802.11n wifi and Bluetooth 4.1 (Dual Mode). As you can see from the pictures above, it is roughly the same size as a Raspberry Pi Zero and is compatible with all versions of the Pi (although would be a little superfluous on the Pi 3!). Take a look at the video below or go to the campaign now. My opinion of the board is after the video.
They sent me a beta of their board to try out and, I have to say, it works marvellously. The instructions for use are very straight-forward. (I won’t detail them here as it may work differently when the finished product is finally ready and available). After a reboot, wifi networks were findable via the Pi desktop in the same way as a dongle.
I compared the wifi speed to that of the official Raspberry Pi Foundation dongle and found them to have almost identical performance. Browsing, likewise, was very similar (obviously) and I didn’t experience any drop-outs. Bluetooth was also easy to set-up and install (though had slightly more steps, but I’m sure they’ll fix this) and I was able to pair devices very easily. As I said before, this is a beta board (v0.3) but it works very well. I’ve been assured that the final device will be very similar to what I received, so I’m confident in saying that the product is of a high quality.
If you need these wireless capabilities for your Raspberry Pi and you don’t want to (or can’t) use a wifi/Bluetooth dongle, this is a great solution, especially for the low-footprint Raspberry Pi Zero.
You can see from their campaign page that it is very light power-wise running at just 230mA on a Zero.
From a technical standpoint, it uses the same Broadcom wifi/Bluetooth chip that is on the Raspberry Pi 3 so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it works well.
The board sells for $9 plus shipping (a very reasonable $5) and there are various add-ons to choose from such as an external antenna that you can plug in to the board to extend the range and a Bluetooth gaming controller. Overall, a very well thought-out campaign and firmly in the ‘affordable’ category. Good luck with the campaign, guys!
Head over to Kickstarter to read more or to back the campaign.
P.S. I know… it’s not a ‘HAT’.
