Turn a #RaspberryPi into an audio spying device

Masumi Zapater over at NIGEKA has done an interesting tutorial on turning the Raspberry Pi into an audio bug! Using a USB microphone and standard Linux audio tools, he has worked out how to record and stream the audio to a client computer. Not sure exactly how small a device can be when you add the USB and a battery pack, but it’s a bit of fun anyway! Read the tutorial here. The comments section contains information on capturing to MP3 which will come in useful when storage capacity is tight.

The RaspberryPi Tricorder – the Picorder

This project has been in progress since I first received my Raspberry Pi last July. Until now, I just haven’t had the time to record video.

The Picorder is a Pi/Arduino combination taking readings from 2 temperature sensors, a hall-effect magnetism sensor and an ultrasonic distance sensor which it then displays, with the aid of a Python script, on an LCD display. The Pi also displays it’s own IP address(es) which can come in useful sometimes!

Here is a list of components:

  • Raspberry Pi Model B 512MB (although it would likely run on a 256MB)
  • Dreamer Nano v4 (Arduino Leonardo clone from dfrobot.com)
  • PiPlate prototyping board
  • Edimax wifi dongle
  • TMP102 temperature sensor
  • SR-04 Ultrasonic distance sensor
  • Light-resistant resistor
  • MCP9700 active thermistor
  • AL1302EUA-T Hall effect sensor
  • A HD44780-type LCD
  • Stripboard

The scripts for the Picorder are held on my GitHub redwing-pi repository. The main driver Python script is pipodcorder4.py.

This project is also detailed on my project page at Ryan Walmsley’s Pideas.co.uk site, which is a fantastic place to add your own Pi project.

Here’s a photograph of the Picorder:

SAMSUNG

For a walkthrough of the components watch the following video:

See the device in action below:

I will be posting more technical details of the inner workings, code and such like, in the next week, so keep an eye on the blog using the RSS feed or subscribe via email at the top of the screen.

All the articles about, or related to, the Picorder are available here.