Set up the Minecraft API on the #RaspberryPi


You can never have too much Minecraft hacking on a Pi. This is a universal constant 🙂

Seriously, though, one of the main things we’ve learnt from the recent Cambridge Raspberry Jam is that Minecraft is incredibly popular. We sold out a 20-person workshop in an hour, put another one on as well, and that sold out almost as quickly. We ended up with a waiting list long enough to run another one.

So, in case you didn’t already know how to do it, Matt Hawkins has written a brief tutorial on how to set-up Minecraft for use in programming on the Pi.

If you’d like more information about Minecraft Pi Edition, visit Craig Richardson’s blog or alternatively buy Carrie Anne Philbin’s book which contains a Minecraft chapter. (If you haven’t got the book, this gives you an ideal excuse!)

Assembling the RasPiO duino for the #RaspberryPi

Alex Eames has been very busy of late. Not only has he been running the HDMIPi project but he’s also been working on a series of GPIO boards. One of the latest, the RasPiO duino, which brings the power of an Arduino chip to the Pi, has been making it’s way into the hands of beta testers. I’ve got one myself and have had a play around with it. It seems like a great way of getting into Arduino programming, and there’s a hundred and one uses for it in conjunction with the Pi. By using something like the Firmata library, which allows two-way communication between the Pi and the ATMega chip on the Duino, you can easily get it reading analog inputs and doing PWM output. It’s a really exciting development and I hope it does well when Alex eventually releases it on Kickstarter.

Edit: The Kickstarter has been launched – it runs until 3rd March 2015.