Events, Making, Robotics

Underwater ROV with a Raspberry Pi onboard

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This is one of my personal ‘Holy Grails’ – an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle containing a Pi. Although it’s not controlled by the Pi, I think this one counts!

Tim Jagenberg and his son are currently attending the Maker Faire in Trondheim at the moment and they have taken their ROV with them. Here’s what Tim had to say about it:

[It is] based on a plumbing tube used for the housing and submersible electric pumps as motors. A Raspberry Pi with Camera Module will deliver the live video feed via ethernet cable. The remote control is managed via a serial link to a Teensy 3.1 with sensors and motor controllers. The communication will be implemented using MAVLink, which enables the use of the QGroundControl station.

You can read more about the build on Tim’s blog here and see a video interview with him at the Faire below:

Programming, Software, Tutorials, Video

New visual programming environment for the Raspberry Pi – Wyliodrin

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For those of you who don’t like to write actual text-based code, and instead prefer a visual programming environment, there are only a few options out there, most notably Scratch and NodeRED. There is a new player in the arena called Wyliodrin. This has a similar look-and-feel to Scratch and runs through a web browser. You can check out how to install it and how to use it on the official site. You can also view an introductory video below. Although you can get a developer account for free, a video does mention that you can ‘upgrade’ it, so apparently it’s a chargeable service, but the site doesn’t contain any details on this, bizarrely.

They have also started to do some video tutorials, one of which deals with feeding data in from Facebook and outputting it to two seven-segment displays. You can see the video below or visit the channel to see more videos.

Making, Software, Tutorials

Monitor your kegs with a Raspberry Pi

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Here’s a cool project for those of you who like a drink or two. It assumes that you’ve got some kegs (or barrels) of beer (or other drink). The software (known as Kegberry) can either just list your kegs or, with the aid of some flow sensors, monitor how much you’ve poured out and how much you’ve got left. The software is all open source. You can find out how to put together a Kegberry by going to this page. Alternatively, there is an entire website devoted to the system here.

Emulation, Games, Making

Play PacMan on a Raspberry Pi while waiting for the bus

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Norwegian makers Norwegian Creations, HK-reklame and Trondheim Makers wanted to advertise the Trondheim Maker Faire. They hit upon the idea of installing a Raspberry Pi and a screen inside bus stops so that people could play PacMan while they waited. They hacked into the bus power grid to power the whole thing and installed RetroPie onto the Pi to run the games. You can read more here and see a making-of video below.

Bus Stop Pac-Man – Behind the Scenes from Norwegian Creations on Vimeo.