Camera module, Events, High altitude ballooning, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Sensors

Solar eclipse captured by multiple Raspberry Pis

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The Pi really came into it’s own as a piece of scientific equipment last Friday during the solar eclipse. Multiple people set up webcams to capture the event, perhaps the best one was at the National STEM Centre in York…

which also had the benefit of using one of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s prototype weather stations (the graphs in the picture above).

Of course the big news was that our favourite little computer made it’s way onto the BBC Stargazing programme with Dave Akerman’s balloon flight. Here’s a video of the launch:

You can see more about the launch, including a snippet from BBC Stargazing, over at the Foundation’s blog which Helen Lynn did a great job at putting together.

Really wish I’d set up a timelapse. I could kick myself!

Education, Networking

Raspi-LTSP becomes PiNet – a centralised Raspberry Pi management system

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Raspi-LTSP is an ingenious way to run a school Raspberry Pi laboratory. It allows the teacher (or IT manager) to set-up an old PC that hosts the full Raspbian operating system which then gets ‘pushed’ over the network to individual Raspberry Pis. This allows the administrator to maintain one copy of the OS rather than update dozens of SD cards. It also gives the ability for students to have individual logins to the system and to save their work to the master server rather than the individual SD card of the Pi they are working on.

Andrew Mulholland, the creator of the system, has now announced a name change. The system will now be known as PiNet, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a great improvement. With the change of name comes a new version of the software which you can download from here.

Find out more on the PiNet website.

Competitions, Education, Industry, Internet of things

Network Rail to use kids’ Raspberry Pi invention for safety

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Network Rail is to use a Raspberry Pi-powered device to monitor safety at level crossings. Currently, level crossing “black spots” are monitored 24-7 by CCTV. The Raspberry Pi solution, developed by pupils at Haberdasher’s Monmouth School for Girls (pictured above), monitors only when the safety barriers are in position. Anne Kavanagh, the head of the school’s physics department said:

“The clever part of the solution is that Network Rail will capture, and therefore be able to analyse, solely potentially unsafe behaviour that has activated the camera through breaking an invisible infrared beam when the barriers are in position.”

Read more here.

Geeky Techiness, Making, Robotics, Science

DIY oscilloscope uses a Raspberry Pi and LEGO!

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Steve Schuler wanted to build an oscilloscope. He used LEGO, an Erector set, a LittleBits motor and a Raspberry Pi which generates the PWM necessary to drive the motor. The motor is hooked up to a spinning mirror that sweeps the laser across some graph paper, creating a straight laser line. The motor control is programmed on the Pi using ScratchGPIO. You can read more about it on Steve’s blog post or watch the video below.

Events, High altitude ballooning

Raspberry Pis in the Sky for the solar eclipse

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Dave Akerman will once again be using the Raspberry Pi in a pair of balloon launches that will take place at 8am on Friday in time for the solar eclipse due to occur in the UK around 9.30am. The two launches, which will take place at Leicester race course, will use A+s together with Dave’s Pi in the Sky+ boards to send back images from above any cloud cover there happens to be. You can follow the launch in several ways:

You can read more about the launch by visiting the Raspberry Pi blog.

Education, Outreach

Tanzania secondary school gets the power of Raspberry Pi

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Masekelo secondary school in Tanzania doesn’t have many resources. The children have to collect water for the school every day and there are often not enough desks and chairs to go around. The Tanzanian government has decreed that every school should have a science lab, but yet has provided no funds for it – everything is supposed to come from donations from parents or other sources. Considering the parents of the children at this school tend to be subsistence farmers, this has proved to be something of a challenge!

Janet Chapman from Wikimedia visited the school last September and spoke to the headmaster about the issues and donated a Raspberry Pi filled with pre-loaded content from the RACHEL project (which includes Wikipedia for Schools, 2,000 maths and science videos from Khan Academy, and 800 classic books and various health resources). The Pi (which is battery-powered) runs a wifi hotspot so that the content can then be accessed from available tablets and phones which the school already has.

You can read more in Janet’s report on Wikimedia. You can also follow the progress of the Masekelo project on the school’s Facebook page.