Compute Module, Environment, Making, Nature

Raspberry Pi Birdbox in Ipswich

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Keith from Ipswich decided to install a bird box on the gable end of his garden shed. Inside the bird box, he placed a camera module and an infra-red LED. He then fed the extra-long camera ribbon cable back to the Pi which was located inside the shed. A bit of wiring and some circuit building on top of a Humble Pi prototyping board finished off the set-up with temperature sensors. You can read a lot more, including full build and wiring instructions, on his blog where you can also see a live video feed of the camera!

Update: Here’s a video walk-through of the project from Keith:

Bluetooth, GPIO boards, Programming, Robotics

Controlling a MeArm with the Raspberry Pi and the Picon Zero

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I recently reviewed the Picon Zero from 4tronix. It’s a motor controller board with the ability to drive six servos and two DC motors. It’s a great little board and Robin Newman has done something with it that just appeals to my robotics brain 🙂 He’s used the Picon Zero together with the Raspberry Pi and a MeArm. He’s then hooked up a PS3 controller (I think by Bluetooth) and programmed everything to worth together. He has therefore got a very controllable, very smooth-operating robot arm. You can see it at work in the video above. Visit YouTube and give it a thumbs-up!

Arduino, Making, Robotics

Building a tower with a Raspberry Pi DeltaPicker

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Tobias Kuhn has taken a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino Mega and 3 DC motors and built what he calls the “DeltaPicker”. It is a robot which operates on multiple axis and uses the Pi to do image capturing and processing to spot black and white plastic discs (like you might get in the game Othello). It then stacks the discs automatically. Take a look at the video above or go here to read slightly more.

Geeky Techiness, Operating systems, Programming

Set-up Raspberry Pi Zero OTG without a keyboard, mouse, screen etc

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Andrew Mulholland previously posted about using the Raspberry Pi Zero over USB OTG, i.e. programming a Zero over just a USB cable from another machine such as a laptop. Thanks to some improvements to the Raspbian operating system and a bit of as-yet-undiscovered functionality, Andrew has found a way to configure OTG without needing to plug the Zero into a monitor, keyboard etc. This is a marvellous thing and gives you a lot of options such as programming the GPIO from a laptop without any other equipment, save a USB cable. Read how to do it here.

Cases, Reviews

Official Raspberry Pi touchscreen case reviews by the Average Man

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A little while back, in March, I did a round-up of the various case options available for the official Raspberry Pi touchscreen. It wasn’t quite a comprehensive list, but now along has come Richard (Average Man) Saville with his round-up of the options. Read what he has to say here.

After using the Pimoroni and OneNineDesign cases for a while now, I’ve stuck with the OneNineDesign case I bought from The Pi Hut as it offers a good amount of protection for the Pi.