Crowdfunding, Emulation, Games, Retro

New Kickstarter seeks to put Retro Gaming back in your hands via a Raspberry Pi Zero

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Recently announced on Kickstarter, the Raspi Boy is a handheld, battery-powered, Raspberry Pi-driven retro gaming console. It comes as a pre-soldered kit to assemble, with a moulded case and custom circuit board. It doesn’t come with a Raspberry Pi Zero due to the lack of availability of multiple units.

Here’s an animated gif of the assembly procedure:

And here’s the finished product:

You can find out more by watching the campaign video at the top of the page or by visiting the Kickstarter campaign page. Currently available is the 59 Euro early-bird before rising to 69 Euros. It’s been pretty popular already with 230 backers at time of writing.

Crowdfunding, GPIO boards, Sensors

Last few days for the Maketronix Alarm – build your own Raspberry Pi-powered alarm system

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Zach and Jake are into the last few days of their IndieGoGo campaign for the Maketronix Alarm. It is a simple add-on board for the Raspberry Pi and houses 9 buttons, an LED, a buzzer and a header for a PIR movement sensor, which comes with the board. Using the library and resources which they will write, this is an educational project that teaches you how to build your own alarm system.

Zach sent me one of the boards and I’ve taken a look at it. It’s very simple but, being pre-assembled, it’s an ideal kit for learning how things like alarm systems work. The library is a work-in-progress, as are the resources, but the stuff that’s been done so far looks good. Zach’s proven track record with the PiPiano makes me think that the campaign will be run well and that the hardware is good.

The campaign runs until the 12th December, so head over to IndieGoGo to read more and pledge.

Accessories, GPIO boards, Shopping

Christmas Shopping Guide from the Raspberry Pi Foundation

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Alex over at the Foundation has blogged a great Pi-centric shopping guide for the festive season. She’s picked a lot of good stuff here including kits, add-ons, books and accessories. I was going to do my own guide, but she’s done a very good job with this, so I probably won’t!

Nice to see things like the CamJam EduKit getting some love, along with things like the RasPiO GPIO Zero Ruler and the Ryanteck SnowPi along with more expensive things such as the Pi-Top and Pi-Top CEED.

Take a look at the Christmas Shopping Guide here.

GPIO boards, Shopping

New products from Ozzmaker add GPS to their Raspberry Pi range

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Mark Williams, over at Australian add-on board design company Ozzmaker, has just announced that they have two new products.

The BerryGPS uses a M10478-A2 GPS module from Antenova (able to track 22 satellites) which requires no external antenna, assuming you can see the sky. It costs $48 AUD (about £28).

The BerryGPS-IMU uses the same Antenova chip but adds on several sensors: an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, a barometric/altitude reader and a temperature sensor. This one costs $73 AUD (about £43).

They are Zero-sized but will work on any Raspberry Pi. The later board is an improvement on the original BerryIMU with which Mark had a success on Kickstarter. I had great fun with the BerryIMU and it remains a critical part of my Picorder project. Definitely recommended – Mark produces great boards!

Crowdfunding, GPIO boards, Video

Mobile network / Internet of Things add-on boards campaign for the Raspberry Pi adds a video streaming pledge level

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IOT add-on boards

SixFab are currently running a Kickstarter campaign for a collection of IoT boards that allow your Raspberry Pi to connect to the GPRS, 3G and 4G networks (as well as a GPS board). They’ve recently added a Video Streamer Pack pledge level for $199 which includes:

  • a Raspberry Pi 3
  • a 4G/LTE Shield
  • a Raspberry Pi Camera
  • a USB Cable
  • an SD Card
  • and a Pi PSU

To go along with this pledge level, they’ve released two videos. One shows how to add your Pi to a drone:

and the other shows you how to set-up your Pi’s SD card to live stream video from the camera:

You can find out more about these great add-on boards from the Kickstarter campaign page. Hurry, though, as the (already funded campaign) closes in 11 days. There are some great value boards on there, in addition to the video streamer package, and I recommend taking a look if you’re interested in remote IoT operations.