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Engineer and father build a Star Trek warp core with a little Raspberry Pi help
Chris Koolmees is an engineer and Star Trek fan and he wanted a project that he could accomplish during a week off work. With assistance from his father, Chris came up with the idea of building an almost life-sized reconstruction of the Warp Core from the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Most of the structure is made out of vacuum-formed plastic and painted MDF and is decorated with light strips which are controlled by an Arduino which is sent signals by a Raspberry Pi. Of course, it wouldn’t be complete without the famous warp core “breathing” sound, so it has speakers built in which are driven by the same Raspberry Pi. Instead of housing dilithium crystals, the warp core holds Chris’ home server. You can see it in action briefly below and read more about the build on Chris’ company website.
Raspberry Pi Robotic racing league Formula Pi – the Summer season final is this evening!
Today at 6.30pm (BST), Pi Borg will hold the final of their brilliant robotic racing competition Formula Pi. Broadcast live on YouTube, the final features two classes: MonsterBorg and GrandPi and competition is sure to be fierce. Do robots hug the inside line and risk crashing into one another, or do they go for the outside line which theoretically takes longer but is ‘cleaner’? Find out today at 6.30pm by visiting the YouTube live stream.
Control a paint program with a Wiimote on the Raspberry Pi
Giles Booth has followed on from Matt Hawkins’ work on using a Wiimote and hooked the Bluetooth remote control device up to the Pi and made it control Turtle graphics. You can change pen colour, lift and place the pen and, of course, control the direction of the turtle. A great example of mixing software. Take a look here.
Write an SD card for your Raspberry Pi with a Chromebook running ChromeOS
Like many people, I have a Chromebook. I use this machine whenever I can’t be bothered to unload my laptop, and for when I’m down in The Den (my large maker shed at the bottom of the garden, like fairies, only made of wood and bigger…). I’ve just come across this tutorial from Josh Haughton in which he uses a Chromebook in developer mode to access the dd utility and write an SD card image for the Raspberry Pi. Take a look here.
Streamed Raspberry Pi camera helps bring High School Musical to life
Spencer Organ is not only a teacher, he’s also a key part of the technical team behind his school’s musical productions. Previously, he used a Raspberry Pi and UnicornHAT to accessorise a tin man in a production of The Wizard of Oz. This time, for High School Musical, his Pi development was more technical in nature. Spencer wanted to stream live video from the band playing the music to the front of the stage (so the kids could see the musical director) and also to the control room way at the back of the auditorium. To find out how he accomplished this, read more here.