Raspberry Pi Pod and micro:bit base

Arduino, Geeky Techiness, Making, Silliness, Video

Mission Control desk is powered by a #RaspberryPi and an #Arduino

by Michael Horne • 21 February 2014 • 1 Comment

Jeff Highsmith has solved the problem of needing to obtain a desk on which his son can do his homework – and with some style.

By using a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino together, he has created a Mission Control desk that lives underneath the main work top which lifts up to reveal a vast array of buttons and controls. Sound effects are created by the Raspberry Pi upon instructions from the Arduino.

Just a lovely, lovely project to brighten up your Friday! Certainly puts Mr Highsmith in the running for the Best Dad Ever award!

Read all about it here or watch the video below

Events, Raspberry Jamborees

Come and meet lots of the #RaspberryPi crowd at the #RJamboree party!

by Michael Horne • 20 February 2014 • 1 Comment

The brilliant Lisa Mather has been organising the Friday night party at the Raspberry Jamboree, which is next week. She’s got together a whole load of swag (some of which is pictured below) and is organising swag bags and party games to let you get hold of it!

The swag bag is shown below and features a wearable electronic circuit for you to make:

Party games will include a Raspberry Ripple reaction game, Werewolf with a Pi theme, a Pi baking competition, a Tin Can Alley and more. There will be 4 complete Pi kits to win, keyboards, chassis, Babbage bears, MagPi magazines and lots more to win and receive. People have been so generous, sending stickers and other stuff for the Swag bag, and prizes for the competitions.

Above all, the party is all about having fun and chatting to people who you’ve previously only met on Twitter and Facebook! In short, be there or be… somewhere else having a really boring time!

The party doesn’t run that late – it’s 4-7pm – so there’s plenty of time to head home afterwards without making it an excessively late night (although there’s an After-After Party as well if you fancy a few drinks after the fun and games!)

Tickets are only £3.50 and are available from this EventBrite page!

So, if you’re going to the Jamboree, don’t forget to get your party ticket!!! And if you need further convincing: I’m going! (Actually, that could be enough to put you off!)

Making, Programming, Shopping, Tutorials

New series on Python and the GPIO from #RaspberryPi IV Beginners

by Michael Horne • 20 February 2014 • 1 Comment

Matt Manning is busy writing a series on using the GPIO pins from Python. This exciting series will use a variety of different components wired up on a breadboard to do projects including the following:

Turning on LEDs
Blinking LEDs
Reading in input from a push button
Taking other user inputs
Making a buzzer sound
Reading a temperature sensor
Reading a light sensor
Reading an IR movement detection sensor

He has teamed up with ModMyPi to produce and sell the kit that you’ll need to do the tutorials in the series. This is great value at £11.99 for everything you’ll need including:

1 x Transparent Half-Size Breadboard
15 x Male to Female Jumper Wires
5 x Male to Male Jumper Wires
1 x Ultra Bright 5mm Red LED
1 x Ultra Bright 5mm Blue LED
2 x 330Ω Resistor
2 x 4.7kΩ Resistor
1 x 1µF Capacitor
1 x PCB Mount Push Button
1 x PCB Mount Buzzer
1 x DS18B20+ Programmable Resolution 1-Wire Digital Thermometer
1 x Light Dependant Resistor
1 x HC-SR501 PIR Motion Sensor

All you need to provide yourself is the Pi, a screen and a keyboard.

He’s done an introductory video:

… and the rest of the tutorials will follow over the next few weeks.

This really is a great way to get into programming physical stuff and I think it’s brilliant that he’s teamed up with ModMyPi to create the kit. It certainly takes the pain out of making sure you get the right parts!

I recommend following him on YouTube so that you don’t miss any of the tutorials.

You can buy the kit from ModMyPi by following this link.

Software, Tutorials

Installing Hadoop on a #RaspberryPi

by Michael Horne • 20 February 2014 • 2 Comments

Hadoop is a framework, written in Java, for handling large datasets. According to the Apache website:

The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-available service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.

Aniket Maithani has worked out how to install this powerful data processing software on the Pi. Now, he’s from India so his English isn’t perfect, but the guide he has written is comprehensive enough that you should be able to get Hadoop running without much of an issue. He’ll be blogging fairly soon about creating a distributed data processing architecture using multiple Pis.

Read about installing it here or visit the Apache website for more info about Hadoop itself.

Books, Shopping

Adventures in #RaspberryPi – get the book for cheap-as-chips price!

by Michael Horne • 19 February 2014 • 1 Comment

Photo from the Raspberry Pi Foundation (I hope no-one minds me hot-linking to it!)

Fantastic news from the Raspberry Pi Foundation today. They’ve purchased a pallet full of Carrie Anne Philbin’s book “Adventures in Raspberry Pi”. They’ve made it available in their Pi Swag store for £6 + P&P. This makes it cheaper than Amazon (even including postage) and by buying it from there, you support the Foundation.

This is the book to get for new Pi owners, in my opinion. In fact, new owner or not, you should get a copy of this book! It contains loads of examples of ways to use your Pi and is written in a quite brilliant, easy-to-follow style.

For those who attended Carrie Anne’s workshop at CamJam, SonicPi is covered in the book so you’ll be able to try out things at home that you tried in the workshop.

The brilliant thing about the low price is that if you buy several copies (for instance to use in a classroom), the deal gets better as they’ve kept the postage costs to a minimum.

If you haven’t got it yet, for £10 (including postage) you can’t go wrong. Makes a great present too!

Software, Tutorials

Cloud data logger with the #RaspberryPi

by Michael Horne • 19 February 2014 • 1 Comment

The guys over at Fluentd have written a short tutorial post showing how you can use the fluentd software to send statistical data to the Treasure Data cloud storage/analysis api. It doesn’t give very much help in terms of integrating it with your code – for that you’ll need to figure out how to construct HTTP calls in something like Python.