The Foundation & The MagPi announced today that they have produced a new book. This one has 13 chapters focused on programming with Scratch. Although a print date has yet to be announced, you can download the PDF for free or purchase it via Android or iOS.
Hannah Mills is holding another Peterborough Coding Evening on Wednesday, 20th July from 6-9pm. The event will be held in the back room of the Brewery Tap pub in Peterborough and you can get free tickets here. I’ll be there giving a lightning talk on Pi-related add-ons and HATs. This may, or may not, put you off attending… 😉
Coding Evenings are a great opportunity for teachers/educators to get together with industry people and other interested parties and share knowledge/best practice, or just to get help with something computing-related.
Russell Grokett has taken a Raspberry Pi and fed in data from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). He has then put a box around the Pi and added an LCD screen and some motors. When an earthquake is detected, the LCD displays information about the quake and the box buzzes/rattles in relation to the magnitude of the disturbance. It’s a lovely project and he’s written the whole thing up here. All the code is available here for you to create your very own earthquake monitor.
Wermy, who created the Game Boy Zero, has been blogging a how-to guide that shows you how to create your very own device using an old Game Boy and various parts. He has now finished the guide and you can read part 6 here. This has been a mammoth task for Wermy and it’s shown quite clearly the kind of project that the Zero is brilliant for – where you absolutely need to squeeze in loads of stuff into a small place!
Ben Walters had a wish to add a dashboard read-out of his car’s OBD-II data. He took a Raspberry Pi and various other components, including a UPS HAT to provide backup power, and wired it into his car. The readout was a 16×2 LCD display that pokes out from the dashboard. You can read how he did it here and see a video of a test drive below.
Gareth over at 4tronix has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund McRoboFace: 17 bright (Neopixel-type) RGB LEDs in a “friendly face” formation. The board is controllable from a Raspberry Pi, Crumble, Arduino and other base boards. I’ve featured the board previously – Robin Newman got hold of an early version and has been using it to highlight sound effects from Sonic Pi (view the video here or below).
You can currently (super earlybird) get hold of a McRoboFace for £5 (plus shipping) from the Kickstarter campaign page. It’s a bit of fun and seems to be a very versatile little board, useful for indicator lights or just for adding emotion to your projects.
