Programming, Sensors, Transport, Tutorials

Parking assistance from a Raspberry Pi replaces a tennis ball

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Andy Felong needs a bit of assistance when parking in his garage because there’s a ladder sticking out just in the wrong place. A typical bodge-it solution would be to hang a tennis ball from the ceiling so that it touches the car’s glass before a collision occurs. However, Andy decided he wanted a digital solution. So, he took a Raspberry Pi and hooked it up to a USB distance sensor. He then had the Pi audibly inform him the distance between the sensor and the car. He’s done some nifty programming to detect whether the car is moving, or whether it’s stationary. He’s written it all up on his blog which you can read here.

Audio, Geeky Techiness, GPIO boards, Making, Music, Tutorials

Create a jukebox out of a vintage phone with a Raspberry Pi

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Jeroen and his classmates have taken a vintage T65 phone and converted it into a jukebox. Using the dial, you select your year and which track out of the Top 40 you would like to play. The sound is handled using an Adafruit Speaker Bonnet. He’s written up the project on Instructables, although it’s not got a lot of detail, so you might have to use trial and error to get it working. Read the tutorial here.

Events, Pi Wars, Robotics

Pi Wars 2018 – all about this year’s competition

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This year’s Pi Wars competition is really hotting up with 76 teams currently preparing to take on our seven challenge courses. Tim’s hard at work making courses and I’m hard at work sending out emails and doing all the administration work that comes with an event such as this!

This family-friendly event takes place on 21st-22nd April at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. You can book tickets here. Tickets are free for volunteers and for those under 18 and just £5/£7 for adults for one day/two days.

Over on DesignSpark, I’ve written an article which tells you more about the event, how we go about organising it, the challenge courses and how to get involved with the event by judging and marshalling during the weekend. Take a look at that article here.

We’d love to see you at the event! Even more information can be found on the Pi Wars website.

Home automation, Programming, Raspberry Pi Zero

DIY electricity meter using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and some MQTT/API wizardry

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Kelly Hirano wanted to see how switching devices in his home on and off affected his electricity usage. Excited by the possibilities of reading the data from his SmartMeter, he discovered that he could buy a product (a Rainforest Eagle-200) which would expose the data via an API. Looking at their API documentation, he dug into the data using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and sent it out to a MQTT broker running Mosquito, as well as recording it locally. He added a Pimoroni Four Letter pHAT to the Zero to display the data. You can read a bit more over on his blog.

Blinkies, Science

Mimicking the behaviour of fireflies with a Raspberry Pi

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Michael Skirpan has developed a system of 400 LEDs that mimic the behaviour of fireflies. Run off a Raspberry Pi, the system is modelled on the dynamics of firefly synchronisation. The LEDs are randomly started up at a random blinking frequency and slowly they ‘learn’ from one another until they become synchronised. How this is achieved is a bit of a mystery, because there’s not much detail on the project. Pretty, though!

Thanks to Adafruit for spotting this one.

Accessories, Artificial intelligence, Audio, GPIO boards, Making, Raspberry Pi Zero, Sensors, Tutorials

Create your own Star Trek combadge with a Raspberry Pi Zero

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Michael Darby wanted to make something like a Star Trek combadge that would respond to voice commands. He took a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a Pimoroni Speaker pHAT, a momentary touch sensor breakout board, some power circuitry and a USB microphone and constructed something that could be worn on the chest. When pressed, the touch sensor would trigger the Zero to listen, through the microphone, and then respond accordingly. The Pi runs Jasper to interpret the voice commands and has to be trained to know what to do. You can read about how Michael constructed the combadge over on his blog and see a video of it in action below: