Arch Linux users have the opportunity to install a MySQL drop-in replacement called Percona on their Raspberry Pi. Alledgedly, Percona is faster than MySQL
Percona Server on the Raspberry Pi: Instructions
I’m not terribly sure why you’d want to, but I daresay this comes as welcome news to some people!
I like cake. I like Raspberry Pi. This picture, of a massive cake that Element14 produced to present to Foundation member Pete Lomas, just makes me smile 🙂 And giggle a lot.
Adafruit have created this lovely little LED matrix which would be a great addition to any bits box!
Phenoptix are stocking this and you can buy one for a not-unreasonable £14.89.
It’s driven by I2C and a built-in driver chip so only needs 4 pins from your Pi, and I expect two of them are power and ground, so it’s really a very neat, efficient package.
BirdBrain Technologies‘ robot product, The Finch, has been given support on the Raspberry Pi. Here’s what they say about it on their site:
The Finch is a new robot for computer science education. Its design is the result of a four year study at Carnegie Mellon’s CREATE lab.
The Finch is designed to support an engaging introduction to the art of programming. It has support for over a dozen programming languages and environments, including several environments appropriate for students as young as eight years old.
The Finch was designed to allow students to write richly interactive programs. On-board features include:
Light, temperature, and obstacle sensors
Accelerometers
Motors
Buzzer
Full-color beak LED
Pen mount for drawing capability
Plugs into USB port – no batteries required
The Finch is manufactured under license from Carnegie Mellon University.
Here’s a video of it in action:
Robert Savage has published another of his Java/Pi4J articles. This time, he tackles the Pi-Face expansion board and provides some example code for those looking to use Java on the Raspberry Pi!
Here’s a description and video of a wearable computer built mostly out of a Raspberry Pi and a single MyVu crystal video eyepiece.
