Hosting company UKFast recently ran workshops for The Dean Trust Ashton-On-Mersey School in which the kids learned home automation concepts and used Minecraft Pi Edition to learn programming. You can hear a bit more about it from the people involved below:
Liam Jarvis, of the University of London at Royal Holloway, and his team from the Analogue Theatre Company have created an experiential art installation called Transports. Here’s what New Scientist has to say about this incredible project:
It aims to simulate the physical and psychological effects of the early stages of Parkinson’s disease by taking inspiration from body illusions, like the rubber hand trick, in which the brain accepts a fake limb as its own.
To create the sensations, you wear a glove fitted with a motorised device, while looking at a screen you hold in the other hand. The device recreates tremors running at 6 hertz, which is the upper limit of those experienced by people with Parkinson’s disease.
They researched the sensations experienced by Parkinson’s sufferers by working closely with a neuroscientist at Royal Holloway and was developed using low-cost technology. The components are all controlled by a Raspberry Pi.
You can read more by viewing this article on the New Scientist website.
In this brilliant guest post on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog, Andrew Mulholland has described the activities occurring at the Jams he runs and shared some lovely quotes from his attendees. Read the post here.
Mark Williams from Ozzmaker has just launched a Kickstarter for the BerryIMU which is an I2C sensor board which contains an accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope. Now, obviously you can get those sensors separately but rarely have I seen a package this small that contains all three. He’s planning on fully documenting the board and providing example code to enable you to take all the readings. Mark’s last KS was the PiScreen, a 3.5″ TFT, and that was incredibly successful. I wish him well with this one – the board is an incredibly useful learning tool as well as being perfect for things like wheeled robots, quadcopters etc. I’m going to back it as I want one for the new version of the Picorder (of which you’ll hear more over the following weeks and months).
You can get hold of a BerryIMU for 20 Australian dollars (which is about £10, including worldwide delivery – an absolute bargain considering how much the three sensors would cost independently) by backing the Kickstarter campaign. See the campaign video below. Let’s make this happen for Mark and get hold of this brilliant little board!
Peter Onion recently attended the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society Skills Night and showed off his Raspberry Pi Panadapter. I’ve seen it in person at Potton Pi and Pints and I have to say it’s brilliant. You set the equipment up and then you can see a graphical representation of the radio signals on the Pi’s screen. You can then identify which frequencies have stuff going on and tune accordingly. Here’s a video of it in action:
There are many power banks out there. Some have more power in them than others, some look better than others and some perform better than others. So, it was with great trepidation that I agreed to review the Lumsing 10400mAh harmonica-style portable power bank. How would it perform? Would it look as good in person as it did in the pictures? How long would it last?
Upon receiving the power bank, I was first of all met with some lovely packaging. The whole thing was wrapped in a cardboard box, inside of which was a foam box into which the power bank was pressed. What I first took to be a box lining was, in fact, a little drawstring bag to keep the power bank in. A very nice touch. It also included a good-quality (albeit short) micro-USB cable.
The power bank itself is a work of art as far as power banks are concerned. The one I have is white, although other colours (currently, black and gold) are available, and there is a brushed-steel effect strip along one edge (as you can see in the picture) which really reinforces the ‘harmonica’ effect. Along the long side are two USB ports, one 1.1A and the other 2.1A, as well as 4 LED ‘pips’ which act as a power level monitor. The power switch is also along this side. The micro-USB charging port is on one of the short sides. It really is the most gorgeous power bank I’ve ever seen. It’s smaller than any other bank with a similar power level I’ve seen and is also very light considering the amount of charge it holds.
So, enough about the looks of the thing, how did it perform? I decided to conduct a test that would really show off the bank, or uncover its shortcomings. I used the 2.1A output and hooked it up to an HDMIPi screen, with a built-in Model B Pi, and played Big Buck Bunny continuously on it until the battery died. I left headphones plugged in, just in case that made any difference.
How did it do? In my opinion, it did exceptionally well. It powered the screen and the Pi for 5.5 hours before dying. The power ‘pip’ monitor behaved as expected and reduced steadily. The battery did not warm up noticeably and I suffered no voltage-drop ‘brown-outs’ at all. I consider 5.5 hours on a single charge to be excellent. I re-charged it afterwards with a 2A power supply and it took about 3 hours to achieve full charge again. The one thing I didn’t try is to use it at the same time as charging (i.e. in ‘UPS mode’). If I remember next time I use it, I’ll try this out and update this review.
It’s currently available on Amazon for £21.99, which is amazingly good value (its usual price of £45.99 is somewhat steeper!). If I didn’t have one already from doing this review, I’d invest in one.
I wholeheartedly recommend this product. I just can’t fault it. I urge you to pick one up as soon as you can.
Rating: 10/10
