Games, GPIO boards, Programming

Raspberry Pi Sense HAT game – Sense Cave

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Albert Hickey (@winkleink) got a Sense HAT for Christmas and wanted to create a game using it. What he came up with is Sense Cave. Sense Cave is a maze with 64 rooms (8×8) containing emeralds. Some of the exits/entrances to rooms are blocked off, some aren’t. It’s up to you to navigate through the maze and collect all the emeralds before finding the white dot that indicates the level exit. To control the player pixel, you tilt the Sense HAT and the built-in gyroscope kicks in, feeding data into the Pi to affect the player’s movement. It’s a great concept and Albert has got some great ideas for how he’s going to extend the game. You can read more about how he did it over on his blog. The code itself is available over on Github.

Albert was kind enough to let me have early-access to the code as I wanted a good Sense HAT demo to take to the Bett exhibition next weekend. It works really well and I have it running automatically on boot so all I need to do is plug in a battery and away we go!

Camera module, Photography, Programming, Robotics

Self-driving remote control model car uses Raspberry Pi as brain

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Zheng Wang has taken a model Range Rover and slapped a Raspberry Pi and camera module on top, along with a portable power supply. His aims were to build a system that would

  • self-drive along a track
  • detect stop signs and traffic lights
  • avoid front collisions

Through a lot of image processing and detection, he has achieved his goals. Yhttps://zhengludwig.wordpress.com/projects/self-driving-rc-car/ou can read more about the project on his blog, including all the maths he had to do.

Art, Video

Raspberry Pi digital empathy booth ignores your every desire

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The Empathy Machine from Joanna Hopkins on Vimeo.

Artist Joanna Hopkins and programmer Alanna Kelly have teamed up to create The Empathy Machine. The machine encourages people to enter the booth and then engage in conversation with a digital person who is shown on-screen. Questions are asked, responses are given, but the digital person is intentionally glitchy and doesn’t really listen at all. It has been designed to highlight the problems with new technology that is glitchy and not able to replace real human interaction. A Raspberry Pi is at the core of the programming. Find out more about the artist and her work here.

Thanks to Pi Weekly for spotting this one

Crowdfunding, GPIO boards

Build circuits with this nifty crowdfunded Raspberry Pi HAT

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Alex Eames has just launched his latest Kickstarter. Following successful campaigns for the RasPiO GPIO Ruler and RasPiO Duino, he is now raising funds for the RasPiO Pro HAT.

Key features

This HAT’s key features are as follows:

  • protected GPIO ports to prevent damage to the Pi and components if you wire things up incorrectly
  • numerically-ordered GPIO ports
  • fully assembled – requires no soldering to use in its basic form
  • includes a 170pt mini-breadboard to build your circuits on
  • provides extra GPIO break-outs for un-protected tinkering
  • 330 ohm resistors pre-installed on each GPIO port so you can use LEDs without additional resistors

Alex is also planning some RasPi.TV-style tutorials and written examples to show you how to get the best out of the HAT.

First look

Alex let me have a hand-soldered prototype of the board to play around with. It’s a great idea to put all the GPIO pins in numerical order (it uses the BCM pin assignments) as it removes some of the confusion. Plus, because it uses the BCM pin assignments it means that it’s ready-to-use with the new GPIO Zero library. In fact, GPIO Zero is what I used with the example you can see wired up below. I’ve plugged the positive end of 4 LEDs (on the left) into GPIO pin header holes and then the negative end into the breadboard. I’ve then used a jumper to connect Ground to that breadboard row. I’ve also shown, with the yellow LED, that you can just bridge directly from Ground to a GPIO input pin if you want to. The GPIO Zero code was, of course, very straight-forward and I had an example up-and-running in no time. I think that is one of the key selling points of the HAT – it makes doing simple things even simpler, especially LEDs where, using the HAT, you don’t need additional resistors. I can imagine returning to the HAT time and again when I want to prototype circuits, or if I just want to play around with a component like a temperature sensor. I can also imagine a lot of schools using it rather than getting hold of individual breadboards – it’s compact, provides a way to keep the circuitry tidy and makes logical sense.

IMG_20160115_091428

Backing the Kickstarter

If you’re quick, you can get hold of a Pro HAT for just £10 plus delivery (just £1 if you’re in the UK) which is the Earlybird price. After that, it rises to £12 plus delivery. It’s great value for what is one of the most flexible tools out there. Go to the Kickstarter.

Crowdfunding, GPIO boards, Shopping

Last few days for this Kickstarter to produce a Raspberry Pi Zero prototyping board

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I’ve covered this before, but just thought I’d give it a final push.

Richard Saville (aka Average Man) is currently running a Kickstarter for this nifty little prototyping board for the Zero. He’s already blown past his funding goal, so it’s definitely happening. His previous Kickstarters have all been successful, and he’s recently announced that his final prototypes have come through well, so I have no doubt he’ll hit his March delivery date, or thereabouts. So, if you’d like one (or more!) of these boards, head over to Kickstarter now and make a pledge! There are just a few days left, so don’t miss out.