Minecraft for #RaspberryPi and Pocket Edition are compatible

Over on the Mcpipy blog, there is confirmation that you can connect together Minecraft for Raspberry Pi and Minecraft Pocket Edition as long as they’re on the same LAN. There are instructions on how to do this (they are very simple) and pics of it in action.

It’s still a pity that you can’t connect to mainstream servers, but it’s nice to be able to do this, even if it is only on your local network.

Minecraft Pocket Edition is available for £4.99 on Android and $6.99 on iOS (so they’re about the same price, it’s just that the Android store picks up on your location!) So, a little bit of expense to try it out, but one would imagine great fun for families.

Setting up a Bluetooth device on the #RaspberryPi

L'Antre du Tryphon » Blog Archive » A step by step guide to setup a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse on the Raspberry PI

C Theroux has done an excellent guide to installing the bluetooth stack on the Pi, then pairing with a device and setting it as trusted.

L’Antre du Tryphon » Blog Archive » A step by step guide to setup a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse on the Raspberry PI.

There are a few guides out there, including my own, but this is the first one I’ve seen that is clear, simple and does it all from the command line

Technical details for a compact, headless #RaspberryPi

News Download - Raspberry Pi Headless

This project has resulted in a Raspberry Pi with a 4-line LCD screen, a battery pack, indicator LEDs and control buttons so that a headless Pi can be monitored and controlled without any other input device.

It’s rather neat and the article gives you details on how it was done and all the (many) parts required, including costings. It does rely on Arch Linux, rather than Raspbian, but I daresay some enterprising soul can test it out on the more popular OS.

Read the article about Raspberry Pi Headless here.

OCR releases more #RaspberryPi resources for education / @Raspberry_Pi

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged that OCR had released a batch of rich, educational material for teachers to use in their ICT lessons. I’ve checked back this morning and they’ve doubled the number of documents available. The new documents are as follows:

  • A comprehensive Getting Started guide and tutorial. (This is perfect for beginners, regardless of whether they’re in education or not!)
  • Two “recipe cards” which are essentially very small, quick projects.
    • Flashing LED (done without a breadboard, which isn’t the best idea, but hell, it works!)
    • Singing Jelly Baby – play a sound when you squeeze a jelly baby. (This sounds nuts, but apparently is a party trick for the Foundation’s techies. I think there is a picture missing of how to put the paper clips in, so I’m not sure how much use it will be).
  • Classroom Challenge: Hardware Characteristics – learner/teacher worksheets taking you through various aspects of hardware. Quite tricky, this one.
  • Classroom Challenge: Hardware Hacking and Robotics – learner/teacher worksheets using the PiFace add-on board. (This is the ‘fun’ one, of course, but the PiFace isn’t exactly cheap at £20. Some of the photos on this one are a bit ‘muddy’)

I commend OCR for continuing to release these tutorial sheets. They’re well-produced (okay, some of the photos could be better) and cover a lot of the basic projects you would want to undertake. In fact, any beginner would benefit from working through the sheets, even if they’re not a teacher or a pupil.

I’ll keep an eye out for more material being released.