GPIO boards, Research, Robotics, Science, Sensors

Adorable French mini-bike drives itself with the aid of a Raspberry Pi

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The Mini Bike

© 2016 EPFL / Alain Herzog

Eric Unnervik, a master’s student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, has developed a miniature motorbike that drives itself! Onto the bike he has strapped a Raspberry Pi (3, I think), a Navio2 add-on board and some sensors. These control the balance and direction of the bike and the destination is programmed via a smartphone interface. The bike can travel at 60 km/hr (37 mph) without falling over – which is quite astonishing when you consider the weight of the Pi and add-on board.

“Our goal is that, in a race between an autonomous motorcycle and one ridden by a human, our machine wins!” said Unnervik

You can see it in action in the (French language) video below.

 

Accessories, Reviews, Shopping

Putting the pi-topCEED together – a short video

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Stewart Dunn has done a nice walk-around and install video of the pi-topCEED. You can see it below:

The pi-topCEED is the latest product from the pi-top guys and really looks like the way forward in terms of housing a Pi for easy storage whilst at the same time making the GPIO pins accessible. You do have to provide your own keyboard and mouse, but most people have those already. You can get hold of a pi-topCEED (and the original pi-top for that matter) from the pi-top website. If you’re in the UK, you might be better off going to RS Components.

Emulation, GPIO boards, Raspberry Pi Foundation

New SenseHAT emulator for the Raspberry Pi desktop

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A few weeks ago, the Foundation launched a SenseHAT emulator that worked over your web browser. Given that many Pis are used offline, and also that there are still many older Pis out there that aren’t powerful enough to use the browser version, the emulator didn’t suit everyone.

Enter Python guru Dave Jones who has developed a new lightweight, desktop version that will be useful in both of these circumstances. It’s available now as an installed package and will soon be pre-installed on the Raspbian image. You can find out more, including how to install it, on the Raspberry Pi blog.

Shopping

Special offers spring up to celebrate sale of 10 million Raspberry Pis!

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As I’ve just reported, there are now 10 million Raspberry Pis in the wild. To celebrate, two of my favourite stores are running sales, so take advantage of them now before you lose out!

Accessories, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Shopping

Raspberry Pi hits 10 million sales landmark & releases a new kit

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celebrate

Great news from Raspberry Pi today. They’ve now sold 10 million Raspberry Pis! In four and a half years! Not bad going, really! 😉 So, congratulations to everyone who is now, or has ever been, involved.

To celebrate this, they have today announced that they are releasing their own starter kit. Pictured below, the kit contains:

  • A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
  • An 8GB NOOBS SD card
  • An official case
  • An official 2.5A multi-region power supply
  • An official 1m HDMI cable
  • An optical mouse and a keyboard with high-quality scissor-switch action (please note: this may be a US-layout keyboard, still looking for clarification on that)
  • A copy of Adventures in Raspberry Pi Foundation Edition
  • A very nice box to keep it all in.

Priced at £99+VAT, you can get the kit from RS Components and element14.