Big thanks to Matt Hawkins for this one – I needed to use it this morning!
Matt Hawkins has documented the new way of getting boot-time scripts to run. On the Jessie version of Raspbian, instead of using /etc/rc.local like you used to on Wheezy, you now have to use something called ‘systemd’. Read how to do it here.
Tom Murray, who launched the LEGO-compatible SmartiPi case in October 2014, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a case for the official touch screen for the Raspberry Pi. The new case, which will be injection moulded, includes an adjustable stand and looks to be a very well put-together design. So, if you’ve got a touch screen, take a look at the Kickstarter. The case starts at $20 USD (shipping is free in the USA and a very competitive $7 for the UK) and includes a case and mount for the official Pi camera.
Nice to see projects being built with the Zero now.
David Saul set himself a project over Christmas: a ‘word clock’. For this, he used a Raspberry Pi Zero and a MAX7219 chip. A ‘word clock’ is a clock made up out of a ‘crossword’ of words under which lights are placed to illuminate the correct columns and rows necessary to give a readout of the time. You can see the results of his work, including some detail of how he did it here.
Giles Booth has written a small app using PyGame that allows you to ‘paint’ a virtual grid on screen and then have the same picture re-produced on the SenseHAT’s 8×8 matrix. Read how he did it and get the script here.
Jiří Zemánek and Martin Gurtner were asked by journalists from technological on-line magazine Technet to place a remote-controlled Christmas tree on-board a tram that lubricates the tracks around Prague. To control the lights, they used a Raspberry Pi to run a string of addressable WS2811 LEDs. The algorithm to produce the light pattern (which is very complicated) was open to modification by website users who could send their own ‘wave’ to interact with the programmed ‘wave’. You can read more here.
Dylan Pierce has created a ‘magic mirror’ for his girlfriend. As well as showing a reflection, it also displays various widgets such as the time, weather etc. The whole thing is powered by a Raspberry Pi which is projected through ‘two way glass’ using a standard monitor. Read all about it here. He uses Chromium in kiosk mode and has uploaded all his code to Github so, if you wanted to, you can reproduce this rather nifty hack.
