Richard Martin has taken a Hama slide viewer, a small screen and a Raspberry Pi, together with some power and audio circuitry, and created this brilliant Aliens-style movie prop. It allows you to sweep back and forth with a corresponding movement of the display (thanks to a compass sensor) and gives out readings of movement with the dread-inducing sound effect from the film. You can see it in action below and see his code on Github. It was based on this tutorial from Virtual Frontiers.
Alec Short over at Apollo50 has created Project Arthur. Using paper/card and an embedded Raspberry Pi, Project Arthur uses APIs and IoT services to track the International Space Station and light up an LED embedded in a model of the Goonhilly Earth Satellite Station when it is overhead. Goonhilly enabled the first transatlantic broadcasts and carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s famous broadcasts from the Moon. You can read more about the project here and get the resources and code required from Github.
Moheeb Zara has taken a USB OBDII adapter, a Raspberry Pi, a GPS module and a Hologram Nova USB GSM modem and created a car fleet tracker. The project enables him to track a vehicle, or vehicles, geographically and map against it the OBD data coming out from the car’s diagnostic port. This data is transmitted by the Nova across the GSM network to an Adafruit.io dashboard. He’s written the whole thing up on Hackster.io and all the code and instructions can be found on Github.
Robin Newman has taken a 30-year old glockenspiel, some solenoids, a RasPiO ProHAT and a custom circuit and hooked it up to a Raspberry Pi. The code is in two parts: a Python part which accepts OSC signals and then communicates with the GPIO and a Sonic Pi part which deals with the actual music and sending of the OSC commands. The mechanism for hitting the glockenspiel is ingenious and starts with a solenoid and ends with a LEGO ‘stick’ which taps the underside of the instrument bars. You can see the first prototype in action below and read more over on Robin’s blog.
It’s always good to see the Raspberry Pi Foundation create new resources, and this is a particularly good one because of the size and scope of the project involved.
Those of you with good memories will remember the launch of the Foundation/Oracle Weather Station project which looked to supply schools and other groups with one of their Weather Station kits. Despite many calls for this kit to be put on sale, the Foundation were oddly reluctant. However, they’ve now come up with a way for you spin-your-own by buying the components and constructing the necessary circuits yourself.
Two methods are described: one soldered, the other solderless. The components used are very similar to the ones used in the Oracle project and the full bill of materials is listed.
Unfortunately for UK people, some of these are in the States, so expect a hefty shipping bill (the cheapest for me was $35, which is about half the price of the kit itself) for the main sensors!
It’s a great tutorial from the team and you can see the whole thing on their Projects site.
Steve Messam is an artist who has been working on a new sound installation project for the City of Newcastle. Called “Whistle”, the project involves the distribution of 16 steam engine whistles around the historic walls of the city. The whistles are triggered at 1pm every day by Raspberry Pis which are connected to the National Physical Laboratory’s atomic clock in London so that the timing is super-accurate. The equipment is powered by batteries which are charged from solar energy making each whistle a standalone project in itself. Nebula Labs were tasked with programming the Pis which use air instead of steam to make the whistles sound. You can read a little more about the project in the Teesdale Mercury.
