Accessories, Big Data, Music, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Silliness, Tutorials

New learning resources from the Raspberry Pi Foundation – GUIs! Theremin! Umm… Poo!

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Every now and then, I review the Raspberry Pi learning resources page to find out what they’ve been working on. Today is one of those days!

Getting Started with GUIs

One of Laura‘s pet projects is GUI Zero, a wrapper for GUI library tkinter that has been designed to make it easier for kids (and, frankly, adults) to use! She’s now written a series of worksheets for the Foundation that use GUI Zero to create simple GUI interfaces. Take a look here.

Ultrasonic Theremin

Another resource. This time using an ultrasonic sensor to create a theremin. The Python script plugs into a (running) Sonic Pi session to create the sounds. Ingenious! Take a look here.

Poo Near You!

Here’s an interesting, and slightly disgusting, resource that will likely appeal to all kids who giggle whenever poo is mentioned. Tapping into Nottingham City Council’s open data source, this resource allows you to plot on a map the locations where people have been fined for dog fouling. It’s an interesting use of external ‘big data’, certainly, and you can take a look here.

Games, GPIO boards, Programming

Play Battleships on your SenseHAT with your Raspberry Pi

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Dan Aldred has posted the code for a SenseHAT-based version of the classic game Battleships. Here’s how he describes it:

The program creates a random layout of boats, ammo and water. Use the joystick to select a location and then press Enter to fire a Torpedo.

If you miss you will here a splash of water, if you hit then you will hear the explosion. Else you may find an ammo dump. Each square is then coloured, blue for water, red for a ship and yellow for ammo. You will be updated n the number of ships left to destroy.

When you have used all your Torpedoes up or you have destroyed all the ships, then game ends and you are updated with your score. You can select to play again and a new random layout is created, or leave the game.

Great idea from Dan! You can download the Python 3 code here and see a video of it in action below:

 

Audio, Making, Raspberry Pi Zero, Tutorials, Video

Add audio to your Raspberry Pi Zero from the ground up

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I don’t often link directly to YouTube videos – I prefer it when people build content posts around the videos to flesh them out a bit. However, this one was too good to pass up. The guys over at Tinkernut have posted a great tutorial video that shows you how to give a Zero a 3.5mm audio jack by hooking up some prototyping board to the GPIO and adding some common components. Take a look below:

Environment, Home automation, Programming, Sensors

Terrarium uses Raspberry Pi and NodeRED to grow orchids

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Amsterdam-based Dendroboard forum user Corbosman has finally gotten around to having a Terrarium built and he controls the whole thing with a Raspberry Pi. His environment measures 120x60x110cm (48x24x42″) and it focuses on the growing and cultivation of orchids; eventually, it will house Panamanian dart frogs.

To control the environment, Corbosman and his brother (an electrician) have set-up two systems: one controlled by the Pi and one controlled by a series of timers. The idea being that when he needs to do something with the Pi, like change the Node-RED programming, he just switches it over to the timers.

The terrarium control systems are held underneath the the terrarium and the Pi is inside a DIN-rail case (numbered 3 in the diagram above). The Pi’s Node-RED software generates a touch-screen interface which he uses on a tablet:

All in all, a highly impressive system. You can read more technical details about the system and see more photographs here.