Element 14 have just announced that they are to offer a customization service for the Raspberry Pi. A consultancy service is available for companies to tailor the Raspberry Pi to their needs including the ability to remove connectors, add components and re-configure the board layout. The minimum quantity for your proposed new board is 3000, so it’s quite a healthy investment (around £100k). More information about the service can be found here.
Vincent Willcox has taken one of Percheron Electronics’ e-paper HATs and created an internet speed analyser. He has released all the code onto GitHub so that you can re-produce his work. Take a look here. The speed scan is triggered either by scheduled task (cron) or by pressing a button on the HAT.
Ryan Walmsley of Ryanteck has just launched a new crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo. This one is a soldering kit in the shape of a snowman! Very cute. Earlybirds (there are still some left) are £5 + shipping, with the price then rising to £6 + shipping when they’ve gone. The kit comes with everything you need including the LEDs, GPIO header and a resistor ladder. Ryan is hoping to deliver before Christmas, so get yours here now. Well worth the money and a great starter kit for soldering beginners too.
Dr. Prateek Tandon from Carnegie Mellon University has a PhD in Robotics and he is not afraid to use it. He has built two robotics projects that feature extra hands. The first (pictured above) has two large robotic arms that project from a backpack (read more here). The second (pictured below) has pincers attached to an armband to give you extra grippers (read more here).
On November 7th at 2pm, at Barnes and Noble stores across the USA, Mini Maker Faires will be popping up. As part of the Faire, at several of the stores, Raspberry Jams will also take place. Here is the current list of stores with Jams (kudos to Jim Manley for getting involved in Tennessee, my very favourite state!):
You can get involved too. If there is a B&N near you without a Jam, and you want to run one, contact your store’s Community Relations Manager to let them know you’d like to participate. To find a Jam near you, you can always consult the central Jam map!
This information originally appeared on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s blog.
Over at Makezine.com, Neil Davenport has used a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino and some other basic circuitry to build a speech interpreter that controls devices around the home. He uses the set-up with some off-the-shelf devices such as lights, and even a Roomba vacuum cleaner, and controls them by having the Pi interpret his voice commands using a piece of software called PocketSphinx. It’s a really great example of what you can do with a bit of hacking. Read how to do it yourself here.
