Art, Games, Making, Programming

Wizard Chess with the Raspberry Pi

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Bethanie Fentiman is an 18 year old who, faced with delivering some A-level coursework, thought that she’d take inspiration from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorceror’s Stone and create a real-life version of Wizard Chess!

First of all, she used an Instructable to get her started. Then, she gathered together her materials: motors, wood, gears, an electromagnet, a chess set, a relay board and, of course, a Raspberry Pi. You can read more about the project here and you can see it in action below. Other videos are also available. It’s a tremendous achievement and Bethanie intends to carry on with it to get it to eventually play a full game!

Art, Programming

A digital cross stitch picture created with a Raspberry Pi

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smscs5

Andrew Kleindolph from San Francisco has created a piece of digital artwork using cross stitch. But this isn’t any ordinary cross stitch: it’s all digital. Surrounded by a lovely wooden frame, the screen displays a message received by SMS, converting it into the clever font and giving it an appropriately life-like texture. The SMS is received via a FONA module and the programming is done using openFrameworks. There’s not much more detail on his website but it’s a lovely project. See it in action below:

Audio, Bluetooth, Operating systems, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Software

Raspbian operating system for Raspberry Pi receives another update

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Simon Long has just posted on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog about the latest update to the Raspbian operating system. The main changes are as follows:

  • A new taskbar icon and user interface for connecting Bluetooth devices.
  • Support from Bluetooth audio (with some caveats).
  • An SD card copier utility.
  • The inclusion of the pigpio library.
  • The inclusion of the Geany IDE/editor.
  • A kernel upgrade to 4.4.
  • A new shutdown/reboot dialog box.
  • Automatic expansion of the filesystem on first boot.
  • Automatic installation of wpa_supplicant.conf (wi-fi connection settings) on boot.

The update is available via the Downloads page. If you’re running the latest version of Jessie, type the following into a terminal to install the updates:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install piclone geany usb-modeswitch

More detail about the changes and updates are available here.

Camera module, Robotics, Software, Video

Google Cardboard used as a VR viewer to this dual Raspberry Pi tank

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Freddy Kilo has built himself a tracked robot onto which he has mounted two Raspberry Pis. Each Pi is equipped with a camera module which are mounted side-by-side at the front of the vehicle. The video output is streamed via U4VL. He has then used a browser app called Floating Apps to view the two video feeds side-by-side on his Android phone mounted inside a Google Cardboard. Thus, he has a VR 3D viewer for his robot’s cameras! The whole thing is set off by using a wireless XBox controller to move the robot remotely. You can see the result of his efforts on the video above and leave him a comment on YouTube.

Events, Raspberry Jams

Truro Raspberry Jam – Saturday, 23rd July

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JamLogo

Cat Lamin‘s busy at the moment! In addition to co-organising the Wimbledon Raspberry Jam, she is also organising the very first Truro Raspberry Jam. The event will take place on Saturday, 23rd July from 12-4pm at Truro College (part of Truro and Penwith College). You can expect Show and Tell, workshops and a marketplace and it’s sure to be a great event! More information and tickets are available via Eventbrite.