Allo.com BOSS audio board for the Raspberry Pi reviewed

Allo.com is an Indian company trying to break into the Raspberry Pi audiophile market. They recently sent me a selection of the boards to try out. I’ve not quite gotten around to it yet – I’ve been too busy with Pi Wars and rehearsals for Cloud – however, I’ve just come across this review for their Boss DAC board. It’s a great review and highlights the good, and not-so-good, points about the board and compares it to some of the higher-end boards on the market. Take a look at the review here.

Raspberry Pi mini-laptop uses official 7″ screen

I’ve been waiting for this for a while: a laptop using the official 7″ screen for display. Surferboy has uploaded 3D printing files for this project which uses a Pi 3, a Rii keyboard and the official display which is a mini-laptop perfect for taking with you. All it really needs is a battery to make it fully portable! Take a look at the files on Thingiverse.

Twickenham Coding Evening – 24th March

Cat Lamin is holding another one of her wonderful Coding Evenings in Twickenham on 24th March. The event takes place at Stokes and Moncreiff on Richmond Road from 6.30-9.30pm.

Coding Evenings are aimed at both teachers and community members and seek to join the two sides of the coin up in support of teaching coding as part of the new Computing Curriculum. Food and drink will be available to purchase (the venue is a pub!) and Cat is expecting to be able to hold some micro workshops for those attending.

Please get your (free) tickets from Eventbrite to let Cat know you’re planning to come along!

Maketronix Alarm system for the Raspberry Pi gets GPIO Zero software

Recently, the Maketronix Alarm kit was fully-funded on IndieGoGo. It is an add-on board and sensor for the Raspberry Pi that allows you to put together your own movement-activated alarm system. It comes with educational material that can be used in the classroom.

Finding that the material doesn’t use the (much easier) GPIO Zero, Richard Hayler set about writing his own GPIO Zero version of the software. Take a look at Richard’s post here and his code on GitHub here.

Six-voice polyphonic synthesizer built using a Raspberry Pi

The R-MONO Lab is a ‘recreational club’ based in Hamamatsu, Japan. They’ve taken a Raspberry Pi 3 and put it inside a Roland K-25m, a tiny MIDI keyboard and called it the S³-6R. Snappily named, it has the following features:

  1. Original-Uniq Phase Control and Phase Modulation Synthesis (αα-Phase Modulation)
    Also features envelope generator and LFO dedicated for phase modulation.
  2. High-Resolution (24bit/96kHz), 6-Polyphonic
    (5-Polyphonic when using Super Oscillators)
  3. Oscillator types (including Noise)
  4. Phase Mutator
  5. Pre / Post Clipper

You can read more about it on their Tumblr blog and see a video of some of the demo sounds below (and yes, it is silent to start with). They’re not, unfortunately, planning on releasing schematics and software to the public (booo) but it is a pretty nifty project.