Alex Eames from RasPi.tv teaches some ICT classes at his local school and decided to take in his Raspberry Pi to show the kids and get them involved. Using a light sensor, a lamp, a temperature sensor and a fan, Alex explains to them how it all works and they obviously love it. Watch the video over at RasPi.TV to see the RPi being used successfully in a classroom.
Adding an audio amplifier to your #RaspberryPi
Conor O’Neill needed to increase the volume level from the Raspberry Pi so that he could hear media being played whilst exercising. So he experimented with various circuits and eventually came up with something that worked. Read more here
USB battery pack experiments with the #RaspberryPi
With my Raspberry Pi camera project, it’s vital that the Pi is portable and untethered to mains electricity.
So, I researched various ways of powering the Pi from battery. This ranged from using LiPo batteries, through AA batteries and finally settling on a USB mobile phone battery pack. I searched for a while and finally found a 20000mah pack on eBay. This was from China and, despite waiting almost a month, never arrived. So, I then went for a UK-based supplier (which is what I should’ve done in the first place) and chose this one:
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It’s a 7800mAh pack from a company called Floureon. It has two 2A/5V USB outputs and a 1A/5V micro USB output.
After charging it yesterday, I tried it out. I set up the Pi in my typical configuration – Model B, 512 Pi with a WiFi dongle pulling max. 500mA and the official camera module. I then set up a cron (scheduled) job to take a photograph every minute and archive the images with timestamped. That way, I could tell how long the battery lasted by looking at the timestamps. I should say at this point that the micro USB output from the pack didn’t work. Not sure if I’m using it quite as it was intended. But, using the normal USB port works, so I’m happy.
The battery lasted a whopping 12.5 hours, which I reckon is quite good for something which is a similar size to the Pi (when the Pi is in a case) and was quite reasonable at £20.
Now to get my push-to-take-a-photo button working!
SqueezeBerry gives the Logitech Squeezebox a new lease of life with the #RaspberryPi
Although Logitech have now terminated the Squeezebox product, a blogger called Emmaanuel has created a Raspberry Pi-based music player out of one. Read how he did it here.
Home automation software Freedomotic now available for the #RaspberryPi
From the Freedomotic website:
Freedomotic is an open, flexible, scalable and mashups oriented software that can interact with well known standard building automation protocols as long as with “do it yourself” solutions. It treats the web, social networks and frontends just like any other sensor or actuator in your automation system. For example you can twitt your washing machine to start the washing cycle.
I know it’s not great English, but that’s what it says!
Tim Moore speaks about Robots in Schools and the #RaspberryPi
Tim Moore, at a Raspberry Jam on 8th April 2013, speaks about robots and Raspberry Pi in schools.