Frankfurt-based Maker and Twitter user timonsku decided to create his own carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. He milled the PCB as a single copper layer with no vias or solder mask. He soldered it up, attached the CM4, provided power over USB-C and lo and behold, the screen sprang to life and displayed the OS he had loaded via a microSD card.
As he says on the Twitter thread, this wouldn’t pass any sort of certification, but the HDMI does work:
Here’s another pic showing just the carrier board:
This was just a proof-of-concept without any bells and whistles such as GPIO breakouts, but he did it just to show how relatively easy it is to do a simple carrier board for the CM4.
Kristian Tysse loves the show Stargate SG:1 (he has good taste!). On that show, teams of “off-world” explorers use a device called the Stargate to travel to other planets, some of which are similar to our own, some of which are completely different. They meet alien races, encounter strange civilisations… I’d better stop before my words switch to another sci-fi series!
The Stargate is a non-natural wormhole generator which connects between one planet and another. Teams cross the event horizon of the wormhole and whoosh! They arrive shortly at their destination.
Kristian decided to create his very own, miniature Stargate and accompanying scenic elements. The entire project took 18 months and Kristian has covered the process extensively over on his website, The Stargate Project. He replicates, in miniature, the whole Stargate, including the DHD (Dial Home Device) which is used to select the address that the gate connects to.
The address is “dialed” on the DHD then the miniature gate is activated, its inner wheel rotating and the chevrons animating as the address locks in. When the final chevron engages, the gate activates and the wormhole opens. In this case, the wormhole is an infinity mirror which gives a lovely effect. The whole thing is accompanied by sound effects from the show and is, I think, a very impressive build. He’s even created a tablet showing valid addresses!
Only using a valid address will activate the Stargate and allow you to travel!
He uses three stacked Adafruit DC and Stepper Motor HATs on top of a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (see the HAT at the Pimoroni store. Also available at other stores including, obviously, Adafruit and The Pi Hut). You can see what pins it uses over at pinout.xyz. Attached to the HATs are lots of motors to control both the inner wheel and also the chevrons and he uses lots of LEDs for the infinity mirror. The DHD is 3D-printed (as is the rest of what you can see) and inside is controller from an old keyboard, a custom circuit board and lots of tiny tactile buttons. The complete list of materials and bits and pieces are listed on the website.
You can see a video of it in action below and you can read a lot more over on the project website. He has made the design files available to buy (quite reasonable, I thought), so if you’d like to build your own, you can!
Away from the basics, it actually contains a redesigned Pi 4 board that is much larger than normal, but also much shorter than the regular board. It contains an updated Broadcom 2711 processor that will run at 1800MHz and breaks out all the ports to the back of the keyboard. You can see the insides of the keyboard here (thanks to Jeff Geerling for this photo):
I was lucky enough to get access to a Pi 4 unit a week or so ago. It’s extremely well-built – the moulding is of the highest-quality – with no creaking even when twisted. It feels very solid (thanks to the very large heatsink plate stuck to the processor) and, actually, quite “expensive”.
Don’t tear yours apart to take a look inside – let someone else do it for you! The Pi Hut has done a lovely teardown so you can see what’s under the hood! Take a look here.
Charmed Labs, the team behind the well-known Pixy camera, have launched a new Kickstarter campaign for “the Vizy”. The Vizy, which is powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 (of various memory sizes), takes photographs with a 12 megapixel camera and then internally processes the images to determine what is in them. If it detects a certain animal, or even something else, it can then be programmed to take specific actions. For example, if it spots a squirrel, it might activate an automatic feeder specifically for that animal. Another example: you might want to measure how many cars or vans pass your house every day – the Vizy will help you do that.
They have developed a software stack to handle all this and you can see a sample on this page, although full documentation on the software is yet to be completed. The Vizy will come with a suite of ready-made applications that can be used as they are, or with modifications. One of them, the Birdfeeder app, recognises 20 common bird species and then, once identified, uploads photographs to the cloud.
To go with the 12 megapixel camera, which uses the same Sony sensor as the official Raspberry Pi HQ Camera, they have improved the software to allow capture of high quality video up to 300 frames per second.
As well as the software, a special I/O interface on the side of the Vizy lets you add additional peripherals to control hardware devices.
All-in-all, it’s a very nice piece of kit, and is a step-up from something like the NatureBytes camera in terms of the software and the design of the product.
A company called Remodo based in Honk Kong have developed a flexible remote control that works over Bluetooth and IR/HID to control functions on your Raspberry Pi and has created a Kickstarter campaign to fund it. Designed for home automation, smart living and home entertainment, the Remodo X is pretty stylish and comes with an app for your mobile to configure the functions. A GitHub library to support various home automation projects has already been started and will be available soon. The Remodo X is on Kickstarter for around £30 in HK$.
Great news from the micro:bit Foundation today. There will soon be a new version of the micro:bit available to buy!
There are several exciting new features on the version 2:
An integrated speaker
An integrated MEMS-type microphone
A new capacitive touch button built into the main logo on the front
A new sleep mode to enable low power consumption when not in use
A new processor (nRF52833)
The flash memory has been doubled to 512kb
The RAM has been increased to 512kb (an 8x improvement!)
The ability for add-on boards to draw up to 200mA current
A new “notched” edge connector to allow crocodile clips to connect more securely.
There will be some minor compatiblity issues – the increase in components on the back will mean that some of the existing cases will not fit and the LED column pins on the edge have been swapped around (although very few add-ons use these).
This is a really exciting development from the Foundation – it’s great to see them investing the time and resources in a new version and it’s sure to give a boost to not only the buying market but, more importantly, the chance for creative activities.
Interestingly, they have chosen to announce the new version in advance of availability. This presents two issues that I can see: 1) No-one will want the existing stocks of version 1 and 2) The publicity they receive from announcing it early will be somewhat wasted by the delay. However, it also means that consumers will be happier as they may decide to hold off until the new version is available.
