Camera module, Science, Sensors

Australia launches first ISS payload and with it a Raspberry Pi

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Just picked up on this in NASA’s ISS update report for 19th December. Australia has just launched their first payload to the International Space Station. Onboard is a project called CubeRider, which appears to be a Raspberry Pi Model A+ attached to a sensor board with a non-official camera module. I daresay the actual package is more complicated than that (the ISS specifications being very strict, to say the least!) but I can’t find too much information on it. Here’s what the NASA report says about CubeRider:

CubeRider is an Australian educational module utilizing a Raspberry Pi, internal camera, sensors that monitors internal environment variables, some radiation, ISS dynamics and movement, and runs computer code written by 9th and 10th graders.

It appears, from the report, that the project isn’t entirely working at the moment.

You can read more about CubeRider on their website.

Blinkies, Games, Geeky Techiness, Programming, Retro

Table-top Tetris game from York uses a Raspberry Pi 2 for retro gaming goodness

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John Cooper from York Hackspace has created a tabletop Tetris game for their space. It uses a Raspberry Pi 2 to control strips of Neopixel-like LEDs which sit in little foam cube holes beneath the translucent tabletop surface. It’s low-resolution but it is, frankly, beautiful and it’s not limited to just playing Tetris either – a version of Snake is planned and the system is capable of two-player action too! He welcomes your pull requests on GitHub if you have any game ideas! The code is available here and you can read a little more in this blog post from York Hackspace.

Education, Programming, Robotics, Sensors, Tutorials

Great collection of Raspberry Pi project resources from Les Pounder

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Les Pounder, who writes for various Linux and Pi magazines and is an all-round top bloke :-), has just drawn my attention to a great list of Pi-related resources that he has written. There’s loads of projects and guides, including some that you just have to try over Christmas including a mashup between Sonic Pi and Minecraft, a game of physical computing (Robot Operation) and a DIY Crane that you can make using Explorer HAT Pro. So take a look at Les’ projects page here.