vace117 has taken an old remote controlled truck, ripped the innards out, replaced it with a Raspberry Pi and then strapped an Android phone to the top to provide a video feed. (Yes, he could’ve used the Pi camera, but let’s not hold that against him). He’s then used WebRTC as a web interface for controlling the car. You can see a video below and view the Instructable here.
Adafruit Raspberry Pi libraries for temperature sensors
Adafruit has now written guides for using three different types of temperature sensor: TMP006, MAX31855 and MCP9808. You can see the guides here.
Gert’s VGA GPIO adapter for the Raspberry Pi now on Kickstarter
Pi Supply has not long launched a new Kickstarter campaign that will bring Gert Van Loo’s VGA adapter to market. The adapter, which plugs into the GPIO of the Raspberry Pi Model B+ (B+ only!), will come in kit form, so lots of soldering required! There is currently plenty of the Earlybird offer available, bringing the kit in at an attractive £5. After the Earlybird, the price will rise to a still-reasonable £6. Shipping outside the UK is £3. You can back the Kickstarter campaign here.
Photo credit: Alex Eames, RasPi.TV
Monitors needed for Raspberry Pi learning at Hertfordshire college
Ryan Walmsley, creator of Rastrack and CEO of Ryanteck Ltd, is desperately trying to get hold of some monitors for North Hertfordshire College’s STEM Centre for use in the Raspberry Pi Club. The Club is open to the public as well as students from the College and the monitors will be well-used. HDMI or DVI is preferred, but VGAs would also be fine.
So, if you have any monitors spare and you’re in the rough vicinity of Hertfordshire, please contact Ryan by email, or Twitter or leave a comment on this blog post and I will get him to reply.
I really hope someone (or several someones) out there will be able to help – Ryan’s trying to do really good things with NHC and it would be a real shame if lack of equipment stopped him!
Make your doorbell ring your smartphone with the Raspberry Pi
Clive Webster has written a tutorial over on expertreviews.co.uk which uses online service Pushover to send you an alert on your smartphone when your doorbell is pressed. He’s created the doorbell switch with a nice Adafruit button, hooked it up to the Pi and then played the sound of the doorbell from the Pi. It’s an interesting project. Be aware, though, that Pushover is a paid (albeit cheap) service that only works on iOS and Android. Read the tutorial here.
Snakes and Ladders game for the Raspberry Pi
Linux guru Les Pounder has created this fantastic version of Snakes and Ladders called Pythons and Resistors, hooked up to a Raspberry Pi. You press a button to perform a dice roll and magnets and reed switches embedded in the playing pieces and the board trigger sounds to be played if you hit certain squares – the pythons (snakes) and resistors (ladders). It’s a really nice project for which he has provided a complete build-and-code tutorial. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi Foundation for blogging about this one!