Over on the Stack Exchange Raspberry Pi blog, Jacob has written an excellent tutorial in which he uses Let’s Encrypt (a free certificate domain authority) to secure a website hosted on a Raspberry Pi. This means that your website(s) will be secured using https which brings a variety of security benefits. Read the tutorial here.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation and The MagPi have announced the launch of another in their Essentials series of books. This one is called Simple Electronics with GPIO Zero and focuses on teaching the reader how to use simple electronic components to affect and detect the real world, using the GPIO Zero Python library. We’re dead chuffed that they mention the CamJam EduKits several times! There are 12 chapters to the book:
and you can download it now, for free, from the MagPi website (the PDF link is on the right hand side) or buy it via the Apple App Store and Google Play. Ben Nuttall, co-developer of the Python library, said that it would soon be available in print, too, so there are multiple options for you.
Congratulations to all involved, especially the author Phil King, as this will be a great resource for everyone to use!
Albert Hickey is once again organising a Raspberry Jam in Egham. This one will take place on Sunday, 16th October from 2-5pm and is themed “Winter Fun” and attendees are encouraged to bring along their projects, especially those that are on the subject of Winter. You can pick up free tickets by visiting Eventbrite.
This Saturday, in Potton, Bedfordshire, we are holding Potton Pi & Pints. This is a small Raspberry Jam held upstairs at a family-friendly pub between 1pm and 5pm. We’ll have some Raspberry Pi workstations set-up for you to use and enthusiasts will be bringing their projects to show off. This is a great event for beginners and old hands as it gives you time to talk to people one-on-one about their projects or about any problems you may be experiencing. If you’d like to, you can stick around afterwards for a meal with more time for chat. This is a free event and you can get your tickets here. If you forget to get tickets, don’t worry, just turn up!
If you like Real Ale, by the way, this is the place in Potton to be. CAMRA accredited and everything!
Today, The Pi Hut has announced that they are selling a new product: ZeroSeg. The ZeroSeg features an 8-character 7-segment display (2 x 4-character) controlled by a MAX7219CNG chip. There are two buttons which you can custom-program to do what you want them to do. There is a code library available for easy programming with Python. It comes in kit form and costs £10, which I think is very reasonable for the number of components. Oh, yes, it’s in Raspberry Pi Zero-form factor (hence the name) but is compatible with all 40-pin variants of the Pi. You can buy the ZeroSeg from The Pi Hut. I hope to do a review of the product once I get my hands on it!
On the latest episode of Triangulation, host Leo Laporte interviews Sam Aaron, who wrote Sonic Pi, the computer programming language, based on Ruby, that allows you to create music through code. An interesting interview in which Sam teaches Leo how to code live on air. Watch the videocast here. Wear sunglasses for Leo’s shirt! Grateful thanks to @Geeky_Tim for spotting this one!
