GPIO boards, Robotics, Shopping

New HAT to generate motor-control pulses for the Raspberry Pi

by  •  • 0 Comments

Sean Hegarty has been in touch about a new HAT-format board that he and his company (CNC Design Ltd) have released for the Raspberry Pi. It allows clean, fast and accurate pulses to be created using simple ASCII commands. This is especially useful for “hardware designs where a variable frequency pulse is needed, but one that is the most popular is for driving stepper/servo motors that use pulse and direction lines”. It has an on-board Arm Cortex M4 processor running at 100MHz and dedicated direct digital synthesizer (DDS) pulse generators with 0.004Hz resolution for each channel. The HAT stack is capable of up to 4 individual pulse train outputs and also has a bunch of other features that you can read about here. The full package is £55+VAT and you can get the boards from their website.

Books, Freebies, Photography, Programming, Software

Learn how to use process images with OpenCV in Python with this free e-book

by  •  • 0 Comments

Packt Publishing is always offering free e-books and today is great if you want to learn about image processing. You will use the OpenCV library with Python with today’s book. Here is the book blurb:

OpenCV is an open source computer vision and machine learning software library that provides a common infrastructure for computer vision applications. Today’s free eBook has practical, project-based tutorials for Python developers and hobbyists who want to get started with computer vision with the OpenCV library and Python. If you have always wanted to learn which version of the Python bindings for OpenCV to use, how to integrate with cross-platform Kinect drivers, and how to efficiently process image data with NumPy and SciPy, then this book is for you!

All you need to do is sign up on the Packt website. Start here to claim your free e-book.

Accessories, Camera module, Operating systems, Photography, Raspberry Pi Zero, Software

Set-up a wifi CCTV camera with a Raspberry Pi Zero W and motionEyeOS

by  •  • 0 Comments

Matt, over at Raspberry Pi Spy, has written a great tutorial that shows you how to set-up your Raspberry Pi with the motionEyeOS operating system. It lets you create yourself a CCTV camera that works over IP on your network. He’s used the ZeroView mount from The Pi Hut to stick it to a window and then installed the software. He’s even documented some of the software preferences he uses to get the best results. Take a look at the tutorial here.

Accessories, Programming, Sensors, Software

Track flights over your head with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, FlightAware and an SDR dongle

by  •  • 0 Comments

Mark Hughes has written an excellent, comprehensive tutorial for using FlightAware with a Zero W to track overhead flights. Obviously, it will work with any other Raspberry Pi, but the Zero W is a ‘cheap one’. He covers everything from getting the SD card image working to installing the software and then displaying stuff onto an LED matrix. It’s really well done and you can take a look here or view the video of it in action below:

Accessories, Robotics, Shopping

Brian Corteil and Pimoroni team up to launch Raspberry Pi robotics kit

by  •  • 0 Comments

At Pi Wars, Coretec‘s Brian Corteil showed off his new robotics kit – the Tiny 4WD – on the Obstacle Course. Here’s a video of it in action:

You can now get hold of a kit for this lovely little robot from Pimoroni’s online store. Here is the list of contents:

  • Explorer pHAT with motor drivers and IO
  • Acrylic Chassis with camera mount
  • All the needed nuts and bolts
  • 4x Micro Metal Gear Motor with easy-connect shims
  • 4x Motor Mounts
  • 4x Grippy Moon Buggy Wheels
  • Mini Breadboard
  • Jumper Jerky to hook it all up

You just need a Pi (preferably a Pi Zero W), an SD card and a power source to complete it.

The kit is available for £55 and you can get hold of it here.

See MagPi Issue #51 and #52 for construction and expansion tips.

Brian entering the Pi robotics arena is great news – he brings a “maker sensibility” to this crowded market and teaming up with Pimoroni for fulfilment is a master stroke. Brian is well-known in Pi circles for his maker projects and for bringing Micro Pi Noon to the masses so you can be sure of the quality of the kit and his expertise. And let’s not forget: he’s won his category in Pi Wars for the past two years – this man knows his robots!