Bit of an old post, but it’s still a great project to do!
Richard Lynch is a Boston, MA-based software engineer who loves the Raspberry Pi. He decided to use the Pi to monitor whether his garage door had opened. To do this, he used the usual equipment plus a magnetic sensor to determine the state of the door. He then did a bit of programming that would email, tweet and SMS when the door opened. Read about it here and here.
Cory Guynn has built an entire city out of LEGO and then connected up various sensors and motors to it to sense and control aspects of the city. He has then used node.js and NodeRED on a Raspberry Pi to develop an application to send IOT messages to online service PubNub. It really is an impressive piece of work and goes to show what you can do with enough space, enough LEGO and enough imagination. Read about the development of the app here and visit the homepage for the city here.
The guys over at Pi Podcast have released their latest episode. This one, which is number 6, features an interview with OSMC’s Sam Nazarko as well as lots of other Pi-related news. Head over there to listen to it.
Ubuntu MATE 15.10 for the Raspberry Pi has been released. You can download the image from this page. The guys over at Pi Podcast have covered the release on their latest podcast and gave it a big thumbs-up. GPIO even works on it.
Last year, Los Angeles-based software engineer Michelle Leonhart brought two Roborovski hamster puppies into her home. Since then, she read on the internet that the average Roborovski hamster runs four marathons every night. She decided to put that to the test. Enter the Raspberry Pi. She connected the hamster wheel to a VCR head to reduce friction and then attached a magnet. Then, she placed a hall effect sensor near the wheel and had the Pi record how many times the wheel turned. Some more mathematics later and she finally deduced how far her hamsters were running every night. I won’t spoil the ending by giving away the results – head over to the opensource.com blog to read the full story.
Here is some hamster video action, just because they’re cute.
The organisers of the Southend Raspberry Jam are going on the road this coming weekend to Chelmsford. They are organising the first Raspberry Jam in the town at the Ideas Hub as part of the Ideas Festival. There will be talks, show-and-tell and workshops going on and it’s sure to be a great Jam with the SOSLUG guys organising it. There’s also an opportunity to see a Raspberry Pi Art installation by Victoria Button, which is just round the corner from the venue.
The Jam is taking place on Sunday (1st November) between 10am and 4pm.
