GPIO boards, Reviews, Shopping, Telecoms

Bring mobile communications to your Raspberry Pi with SB Components’ PiTalk

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Ivan Holland from CPC has been taking a look at the new PiTalk board from SB Components. The board, which was originally a successful Kickstarter campaign is a 3G-enabled mobile tele-communications solution for your Raspberry Pi. Plugged into the GPIO pins, and with a SIM card added with an appropriate data package, you can trigger actions on your Pi from another phone. Very nifty. With the use of an extended GPIO header, you can piggyback other GPIO boards and HATs and produce versatile projects. Aside from a few issues with the accompanying software, Ivan gives the product a thumbs-up. You can read the full review here. You can find the PiTalk at SB Components website in a variety of packages and the main board also available at CPC.
EMF Camp, Events, Telecoms

EMF Camp mobile GSM network powered by Raspberry Pis

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A couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the EMF Camp badge for this year would be a fully-enabled GSM mobile phone. EMF Camp set-up their own GSM/mobile network for the badges to work on and each of the 16 base stations were run on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a LimeSDR Mini attached. As it turns out, for most of the time of the event, the system didn’t work, but you have to admire their ambition! Addendum: it apparently was working, it was just a problem with some of the badges. Take a look in the comments to read more about this. Read more about the project over at Hackaday.

Arduino, Art, Making, Programming

Stargazing tapestry created using a Raspberry Pi-enabled knitting machine

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Australian software engineer Sarah Spencer has taken a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino-compatible board and written some PHP and Python code to interface to hack a Brother KM950i knitting machine. The resultant set-up allows her to send an image to the machine over her network with more than two colours in any single row of knitting. Her latest project, Stargazing: A Knitted Tapestry, measures 4.6 metres (15 feet) wide and 2.8 metres (9 feet) high and was displayed at, and was funded by, recent geek festival EMF Camp where I was privileged to see it up-close-and-personal:

The work had been embedded with LEDs that lit up constellations. You could request a light-up from a website which was then sent over to the tapestry. I’m not sure if this involved a Pi too, but either way it was very clever, though non-functioning when we visited. You can see Spencer giving a talk about the knitting machine at EMF Camp here and you can read a bit more here, where there are links to her website.

Events, Raspberry Jams

Cotswold Raspberry Jam – Saturday, 15th September – get your free tickets

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Cotswold Raspberry Jam is back, after the summer break, on Saturday 15 September from 1-4pm in Cheltenham. Visit their website to get free tickets.

All equipment is provided, you don’t need to bring anything. The Jam is suitable for ages 7 to adult. No experience is necessary. There will be lots of games, robots and a quadcopter demonstration. Tutorials this month are:

  • 1:30pm & 2:30pm – Light Sensor Nightlight (two identical sessions)
    Program your own nightlight that automatically turns on when it gets dark. Take the components home for free so you can use it in your bedroom!
  • 1:30pm – LED Lightsabre
    Make your own mini lightsabre and program it to change colour! Again, a free electronics kit is provided.
  • 2:30pm – Minecraft Village
    Learn to build a house with code, and then run the program several times to create a whole village.

In addition, if you can bring your own computing or electronics project, that would be great, and the best one will win a prize. It doesn’t have to be a Raspberry Pi project. You can turn up early from 11am if you need time to set up your project.

Once again, if you’d like to attend, visit their website to get free tickets.