Ken Walker has developed an Alexa skill which uses a Raspberry Pi and camera to take a picture and then use APIs and online services to determine what the camera can see. The Alexa device (say, an Echo) then reads out what the camera saw. Called SeeTalker, the Raspberry Pi side is constructed using a Touchscreen and Camera Module and encased inside a SmartiPi case.
The full instructions for the project are over on Hackster.io.
Gary Taylor from Dundee’s Abertay University found an original, but water-damaged, K9 BBC TV prop in his University’s lab and, because he is an enormous Doctor Who and robotics fan, wanted to resurrect it. This formed the basis for his final year dissertation: “Creating an Autonomous Robot Utilising Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Ultrasound Sensors for Mapping a Room”.
Though only the shell survived the water-damage, caused by a hole in the Lab’s roof, Gary decided to fill the insides with new robotics equipment and also a Raspberry Pi 3 to control it. With the aid of an Arduino Mega to control the motors and sensors, the Pi was the central brains providing a remote control interface over Bluetooth and saving the environment-sensing data to a SQLite database. You can see the block diagram for the set-up at the bottom of this post.
In the end, the project was too complex to complete and, after several test runs, he was unable to get the autonomous part of the project working (Ultrasonic sensor unreliability is the cause here, I reckon) but the mobile phone-over-Bluetooth remote worked very well.
You can read more over on the Electronic Engineering Journal.
John Proudlock has used a Raspberry Pi to control a vertically-mounted plotter that creates stunning artwork. Called InkyLines, the Raspberry Pi is used to read in a low-resolution image and then convert that data into movements of two stepper motors. The stepper motors control the length of two cords, thus moving the print head.
See it in action below and read more over on his blog. You can see some of the artwork produced over on Instagram.
During a Foreman of Signals course, three soldiers from Dorset have created an autonomous robot capable of avoiding obstacles. The end-game of the idea, called Project ROVER is to create an autonomous bomb-disposal machine. Staff Sergeant Jolley, Sergeant Rana and Sergeant Paddon were set the task of creating a machine to go from point A to point B, take a temperature reading and transmit it back to a remote computer. To do this, they used a Raspberry Pi on a tracked chassis bed and programmed it to not only carry out the challenge but also to avoid obstacles encountered along the way. You can read more and see video of the robot in action over at Forces Radio BFBS.
Sean O’Neil wanted to help the people of one of the poorest countries on Earth: Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire) by creating a modern pharmacy that would allow them to get hold of the medicines they need to stay alive. Called the Emerging Business Builder Initiative, this is what Sean had to say in an interview with Martin Cooper:
The goal is to deliver a modern pharmacy experience, one that would be familiar to anyone in the UK or the USA – a pharmacy that has supply chain management, back office, inventory management and a modern point of sale. It also has a loyalty programme – spend money to gain points that are redeemable against future products.
The entire pharmacy is run off two Raspberry Pis. One is used as a back-office ‘server’, the other is used at point-of-sale. The Pi was chosen not only for its low-cost but also because it has no moving parts – a great advantage when your environment is full of dust and small particles. The software is all open source so additional pharmacies can just buy their kit and download the relevant files to the Pis.
Sean with the back-office ‘server’ Pi
Powered through a consumer UPS unit to regulate the sometimes-iffy power from the main grid, the system synchronises data with the Cloud over the mobile network as a hard-wired Internet is just not something the country has in abundance. This has led to Sean developing a system which is very efficient in terms of data transmission – when your traffic is charged by kilobyte, there really is no other option.
The pharmacy has been of tremendous benefit to the village where it is located. No more 25 kilometre taxi rides to the next big town are needed!
You can read a full interview with Sean on the BCS website.
Thanks to Dr Emma Norling for spotting this one!
Alex Eames, over at RasPiO, discovered that his GPIO reference PCB, known as the Portsplus did not fit the new Raspberry Pi 3B+ because of the new Power-over-Ethernet header. To get round the problem, he has rejigged and redesigned the board to avoid the header and make it compatible with every 40-pin Pi. For the first week or so, he is offering the new Portsplus for free (just pay £2/£3 shipping) from his website. To take advantage of the offer, head over to RasPiO.
These are great little boards which are thin enough that they can be placed over the GPIO pins and help you to find the right pin without all the tedious counting. Great for prototyping!
