Events, Making, Robotics, Silliness

Scary Halloween hi-jinks with a spring-loaded scary mask driven by a Raspberry Pi

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David Pride (he of the Pi-driven Connect 4 game along with other wonderful hacks!) has been at it again. In the hope of scaring the begeezus out of trick-or-treaters, he’s hooked up a motorised mechanism to his Pi that will launch a spring-loaded trellis. On top of the trellis is a terrifying ghoul mask. An ultrasonic sensor detects people approaching and the trellis is then activated, with accompanying scary sounds, of course. It runs off batteries making it ‘headless’ (ha-ha). You can read about the build on David’s blog and see a video of it in action below (thanks David for uploading!):

Competitions

PA consulting launches their annual Raspberry Pi-flavoured competition

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PA Consulting has announced that their annual Raspberry Pi competition is now open for entry. This year’s competition is looking for entries under the (very open) title of “Innovation for All”. Teams enter in the following categories:

  • PA’s primary school award: academic years 4-6
  • PA’s secondary school award: academic years 7-11
  • PA’s sixth form and college award: academic years 12-13

The winning team in each category will receive £1,000 prize money.

Read more about the competition and register your interest here.

Cases, Industry

Lincoln Binns announces update to their industrial enclosure for the Raspberry Pi

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The folks over at Lincoln Binns have been in touch. In 2014, they released an industrial-strength enclosure for the Pi. Since then, of course, there have been two additional Pis released – the 2 and the 3. They’ve now produced an update to the design (see above) suitable for the Pi 3. They’ve even added acrylic end-plates to the design so that the wifi/Bluetooth signal can get out. You can read more about it here.

Magazines, Robotics

New issue of The MagPi is out now – features include robotics, wizard chess and underwater camera

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The 51st issue of The MagPi is out now. It’s a great issue and features a massive robot build guide by Brian Corteil. Also covered is Bethanie Fentiman’s robotic wizard chess and how to make an underwater camera robot. It’s all very… robotic! Buy the hard copy from The Pi Hut, good newsagents or via the app or download it for free from The MagPi website.

Camera module, Making, Photography, Programming, Robotics, Sensors, Silliness

Sort your Halloween candy using the Raspberry Pi and Google Cloud Vision

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Building on their earlier success with the Google Cloud Vision platform, the good people over at Dexter Industries have come up with a great way of sorting through chocolate bars for Halloween. Using a BrickPi and LEGO pieces, they’ve created an automatic conveyor belt onto which you place your chocolate. The belt drops the individual bars into a basket which triggers the taking of a picture via the Pi camera. Google Cloud Vision is then used to identify the bar and it is then sorted into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Lovely little project using a mix of technology. Take a look here or at the video below: