Accessories, Crowdfunding

Light bar for Raspberry Pi, Arduino etc

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Paul Brown of MyPiFi.net has been running Kickstarters for a while now. First of all he did a simple LED-and-button board and then moved onto a plugin board to run an LCD screen. This time, he has created a generic Light Bar Board with 10 LEDs and resistors that can be switched on or off by the device that you connect to the provided headers. The earlybirds have all gone, but you can still pick the board up for £6, which is a bargain. It’s especially useful for all those projects that require LEDs when you just can’t be bothered to wire it all up on breadboard or stripboard! Take a look at the Kickstarter here.

Education, Games, Making

Beat the Buzzer with the Raspberry Pi

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Dave Patterson and his primary school class have constructed a beat-the-buzzer game for their local school Christmas fair. It uses an expansion board from ModMyPi to protect the Pi from static electricity and Dave has programmed the whole thing in Python, using PyGame to play sounds at the appropriate time. There’s only a video of it so far, but it’s so much fun that I thought I’d blog it. Here we go:

Education, Industry, Research, Retro

The Raspberry Pi – bringing programming back

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Stuart Leithes from ITV News has done a lovely report in which he interviews Gordon Hollingworth of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Jason from Cambridge’s Centre for Computing History about bringing programming back into education and how this is being accomplished with the Pi. It includes a look back at some of the great historical machines they have at the Centre as well as focusing on the launch of the Model A+. Take a look here. Thanks to the Foundation for pointing this report out!
If you haven’t visited the Centre for Computing History, I urge you to do so – lots to look at and do and plenty of space if you want to meet up with a bunch of friends!
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Geeky Techiness, Robotics, Shopping

PiBorg launch new Raspberry Pi-powered robot

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Cambridgeshire-based PiBorg have just announced a new product.

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Say hello to the Diddyborg – Doodleborg’s younger brother. Here’s a picture of Doodleborg for comparison:

Here are some of the specs of the Diddyborg from their site.

I’ve seen Diddyborg in the flesh at a recent Jam (Potton Pi & Pints) and it’s really cute. Stunningly well-made with excellent kit onboard.

The price is quite steep at £180, but once you take into account the sheer amount of kit, the quality of the motors and the included software, I think it’s about right for what is supposed to be a premium product.

Here it is in action:

You can read more about Diddyborg on the PiBorg website.

Education, GPIO boards, Outreach, Raspberry Pi Foundation

Raspberry Pi Foundation weather station project enters field-test phase

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According to the latest Education newsletter, a weather station project run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and funded by Oracle, is entering it’s prototype testing phase. The weather station is primarily a HAT add-on board with a few peripherals developed by Dave Honess. A few will be distributed to testers very soon and it’s expected that, if the tests are successful, 1000 kits will be distributed to schools throughout the world. The kits will be accompanied by a suite of educational material, including a scheme of work, so that schools can use them in cross-curricular projects.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the Foundation’s educational activities, don’t forget to subscribe to their newsletter!