Following the lead of a Dean from an Ethiopean university, who could see that the high cost of textbooks was holding back developing world countries, a group has got together to build a €500 book scanner that turns the pages via a vacuum. This new method differs from the ‘normal’ method of doing it by removing the binding of the book and, potentially, destroying the volume. You can read more on their Hackaday project page or see a video of it in action below:
Chris Robinson from NODE has taken a Raspberry Pi 2 and adapted it to fit into a hard drive enclosure. He added a screen, a battery and a mini keyboard, together with some other parts, and created this Nintendo DS-style portable computer. Great work. You can see a gallery of images from the build (and instructions) over at Imgur.
Alex Eames owns a house in Poland with a heating problem: the furnace and the general system are like something out of the stone age and Poland, being the way it is, is often very cold. So, he’s brought a bit of Raspberry Pi and RasPiO Duino know-how to the situation to allow him to monitor the coal-fired furnace and room temperatures. He hopes to eventually have a fully-fledged heating controller system with multiple room monitoring. Read and see how he’s done all this here.
FUZEBOX working prototype
The makers of the Raspberry Pi-based FUZE computer have just launched a new Kickstarter campaign to fund the FUZEBOX.
The FUZEBOX is a peripheral designed to plug into any device via USB, whether this be a PC, Mac, or Linux box, including the Raspberry Pi.
So… what do you get in the Fuzebox?
Here’s the campaign video telling you a bit more about the FUZE and the team behind the FUZEBOX:
Sample uses for the FUZEBOX that they’ve suggested include:
The FUZEBOX is designed to be used with the team’s FUZE BASIC – an implementation of BASIC originally written for the Raspberry Pi but now branching out onto other platforms.
There are 14 (that’s fourteen!) pledge levels. The FUZEBOX itself is available in pledges starting at £60. Fulfilment of the FUZEBOX begins in December 2016 and they already have a working prototype (pictured above).
So, if you’re interested in learning some more, head over to the campaign.
A terrarium really is a beautiful thing. Tom Bennet has placed a temperature sensor inside his terrarium box and then hooked up a Raspberry Pi to it. The Pi controls an Energenie home automation switch to maintain the environment inside. Take a look at how he did it here.
Raspberry Pi Zero production
Good news from Raspberry Pi Trading – Raspberry Pi Zero production is soon to enter a new phase, bringing with it better availability… and something mysterious. Here’s what Eben Upton had to say on a recent Raspberry Pi Forum thread:
Raspberry PI Zero production is restarting in Wales next Monday after a hiatus to allow us to focus on Raspberry Pi 3 (a million units built and counting). We have placed 250ku of new orders, and are aiming to produce at least 50ku/month for the rest of this year. Distribution will continue to be via Pimoroni, Pi Hut, Adafruit and Micro Center for now.
He also added a mysterious hint of something new to be added to the Zero:
To thank you for your patience, we’ve taken advantage of the hiatus to add a (much requested) new feature. I’ll leave you all to guess what it is (it’s not WiFi).
So! What do you reckon the new feature is? Add a comment below with your best guess!
