Games, Software, Tutorials

Using your Raspberry Pi Zero on your laptop to play Minecraft

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Albert Hickey has written a fantastic tutorial over on his WinkleInk blog. He has used a preview version of RealVNC which allows you to view and play Minecraft Pi Edition on a normal PC, in Albert’s case, a laptop.

Up to now, this has been impossible as Minecraft communicates directly with the framebuffer. RealVNC have done a top job on their software for this, so keep an eye out for when it becomes publicly available. He has combined this software with a tutorial written by Andrew Mulholland which allows you to use a USB cable to connect directly to a Zero over OTG (On-The-Go). This means that you can do this with just the one cable connecting the Zero to the laptop. Albert’s made the whole thing very accessible and it’s well worth trying it out. Read more on his blog.

I hope to try out the new RealVNC preview version this weekend and will let you know how it works!

Emulation, Games, Software, Tutorials

Play classic DOS games on the Raspberry Pi

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Gus wanted to play some retro DOS games, so he set about seeing if he could do it on his Raspberry Pi. He’s managed it by using a piece of software called DOSbox and has written up full instructions on how to configure it to be able to play your games. There are plenty of game images out there, particularly on abandonia.com. There are a number of games that could be played on this emulator, including Doom and, which gets my interest, the original QUAKE! Read more over on Pi My Life Up.

Education, High altitude ballooning, Picademy, Raspberry Pi Foundation

Skycademy 2016 announced – Raspberry Pi high altitude ballooning CPD

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James Robinson has just announced that this year’s Skycademy will take place on Monday 8th to Wednesday 10th August.

Skycademy is a FREE two-and-a-half day Continuing Professional Development (CPD) event aiming to provide experience of high altitude ballooning to educators, and demonstrate how it can be used as an engaging teaching tool.

The training includes tuition on the theory and practice of launching high altitude balloon flights and an opportunity to launch an actual flight in teams.

The aim is for each Picademy participant to eventually launch their own flight and, to this end, Skycademy attendees will receive support & equipment to help facilitate this over the following 12 months.

You can read more here and apply here. Information about last year’s Skycademy is available here.

Accessories, Nature

Scarborough farmer uses Raspberry Pi to scan sheep

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There’s a headline I never thought I’d type!

Dr Paul Buckley is a Scarborough-based farmer who wanted to tackle the problem of tracking his sheep. Sheep are required to be fitted with electronic identification chips and these have a very tight specification requiring a scanner that can cost in the 100s or 1000s of pounds. Paul realised that a USB scanner could do the job and so he hooked one up to a Raspberry Pi Zero and fashioned a ‘paddle’ that could be waived over the sheep’s chip to identify the animal. The MagPi has covered the detail and you can read it here.