Raspberry Pi Pod and micro:bit base

Education, GPIO boards, Outreach, Raspberry Pi Foundation

Raspberry Pi Foundation weather station project enters field-test phase

by Michael Horne • 13 November 2014 • 0 Comments

According to the latest Education newsletter, a weather station project run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and funded by Oracle, is entering it’s prototype testing phase. The weather station is primarily a HAT add-on board with a few peripherals developed by Dave Honess. A few will be distributed to testers very soon and it’s expected that, if the tests are successful, 1000 kits will be distributed to schools throughout the world. The kits will be accompanied by a suite of educational material, including a scheme of work, so that schools can use them in cross-curricular projects.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the Foundation’s educational activities, don’t forget to subscribe to their newsletter!

Arduino, Programming

Connect an Arduino to the Raspberry Pi using I2C

by Michael Horne • 13 November 2014 • 0 Comments

Just a quickie. Here’s a comprehensive tutorial for connecting an Arduino to your Pi using the I2C protocol. Both sides of the communication is done using C, but it’s pretty easy to understand even if all you’ve ever used is Python. Take a look here.

Geeky Techiness, Making, Retro

Bringing a teletype back to life with the Raspberry Pi

by Michael Horne • 12 November 2014 • 0 Comments

Robert Coggeshall (Sudo Bob) has taken a 50-year old teletype unit and resurrected it, thanks to the Raspberry Pi and a few other electronic components. You can read about the build and find out more here.

Accessories, Camera module, GPIO boards, Making, Programming

Creating a Raspberry Pi video capture unit

by Michael Horne • 12 November 2014 • 0 Comments

Matt Hawkins has now reached 150 blog posts and to celebrate this, he’s written a three-part guide to creating a video capture unit using a Raspberry Pi, suitable for mounting to your dashboard or bike. You can read the first part here and find subsequent parts here.

Books, Shopping

Adventures in Minecraft book for Raspberry Pi owners launched

by Michael Horne • 12 November 2014 • 1 Comment

Martin O’Hanlon has just announced the launch and availability of the book he wrote, together with David Whale, called Adventures in Minecraft. Taking inspiration from the style and content of Carrie Anne Philbin’s book Adventures in Raspberry Pi, this book teaches programming concept using the programmable Minecraft API. You can read more about the book on Martin’s blog here and you can purchase it from Wiley or Amazon (UK, US).

I will be receiving my review copy in the next few days from Wiley and will bring you my opinion soon, probably over the weekend.

Research

Raspberry Pi Model A+, B+ and A power comparison

by Michael Horne • 12 November 2014 • 0 Comments

Alex Eames has shot a video in which he measures the power consumption of the Model A+, the Model B+ and the Model A doing various tasks (idling, starting up the desktop, watching video and shooting video with the camera). It’s an interesting watch. For those of you who don’t want to watch the entire video, he’s also provided a summary table. Read more and watch the video here. It really shows the low power consumption of the A+, which makes it ideal for battery-powered and embedded projects where power is at a premium.