Ville Salminen has written a nice tutorial over on his blog in which he takes a Raspberry Pi, adds a SenseHAT and then programs it to access the SenseHAT sensors to create a mini-weather station. He uses Flask to create a simple web interface, so there’s plenty to learn here. Read the tutorial here.
The folks over at Raspberry Pi have announced the immediate release of a new version of Raspbian, based on the Debian Stretch OS. There are various small software changes as well as the big update to the underlying operating system. You can read more on raspberrypi.org here and download the new image here. Please note: it is possible to upgrade from the previous version (Jessie) but the procedure is not recommended, so you may as well start with the new image!
Gus has written up a way to make a Raspberry Pi act as an AirPlay receiver. He uses a piece of open source software called Shairport Sync to do it. As he comments, it’s a quick-and-cheap way of getting some speakers wirelessly available to your Apple device as a playback facility. Take a look at the write-up here.
In 1978, a tape-driven computer known as the Sharp MZ-80K was created. The MZ has a 2 MHz CPU, a massive 20 KB of RAM, and a built-in monochrome monitor. Just a few years later, in 1981, Yasushi Enari (Panda Precision), a high-school student, created a miniature MZ. Just recently, he took his old project and upgraded it using a Raspberry Pi Zero. He replaced the screen with an Adafruit colour TFT and added the Zero with some power circuitry. You can read more about the project and see build photos here. Thanks to Adafruit for spotting this one.
The AIY Projects Kit given away free with The MagPi issue 57 went down a storm. In previous issues, The MagPi has covered various ways of extending the kit using some of the additional functionality on the HAT. This time, they’ve published online a tutorial that shows you how to connect up a DC motor to the HAT with an accompanying power supply. All the code is there too and you can read up on it here. Still no news on when more of the kits will be available, which is a shame. The nearest board to the AIY HAT is the pi-topPULSE but that doesn’t have the extra functionality for robotics etc. One can only hope someone decides to take the AIY kit on as a going concern in the near future otherwise I fear its day will pass!
Giles Booth likes to try out new hardware by seeing if it can be made into a music player. This time, he’s used a micro:bit to control a Raspberry Pi’s music playing capabilities. By pressing A and B, he can change channels and by tilting the micro:bit from side to side, he can change the volume. The magic sauce that makes this all work is David Whale‘s bitio Python library which gives users of Python on a Pi, PC or Mac access to the micro:bit’s sensors and buttons. You can read more about this project on Giles’ blog here and you can find out more about the bitio library here. Get hold of a micro:bit from The Pi Hut. Giles takes you through the operation of the system in the video below:
