Colorado-based hacker Dox has written some Python and teamed it up with a webcam to monitor his pet remotely. The script listens to a specific email account and when a specific email is received it takes a snapshot and emails it back to the sender. Fantastic way of doing on-demand snapshots, I tip my hat to him.
Glenn Walsh has been experimenting with a PIC 18F4620 chip logging data from analog inputs. Read more here
Some nice little snippets of command line courtesy of A Slice of Raspberry Pi.
To find out the clock speed of the ARM processor type “vcgencmd measure_clock arm” at the command line prompt and press Enter:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ vcgencmd measure_clock arm_
This should return a result similar to the following, which in my case shows that the ARM processor is running at 700 MHz (700,000,000 Hz):
frequency(45)=700000000
You can also measure your system’s core frequency by typing “vcgencmd measure_clock core” at the command line prompt and press Enter:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ vcgencmd measure_clock core_
This should return a result similar to the following, which in my case shows that the system core is running at 250 MHz (250,000,000 Hz):
frequency(1)=250000000
To measure the voltage your system is running at type “vcgencmd measure_volts” at the command line prompt and press Enter:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ vcgencmd measure_volts_
This should return a result similar to the following, which in my case shows that the system is running at 1.20 volts:
volt=1.20V
Finally you can measure your system’s core temperature by typing “vcgencmd measure_temp” at the command line prompt and press Enter:
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ vcgencmd measure_temp_
This should return a result similar to the following, which in my case shows that the system is running at at temperature of 48.2 deg C:
temp=48.2’C
Tiburcio de la Carcova has been busy. He built a full-sized Space Invaders game a little while ago which was a bit big for his daughter, the intended user.
So, he’s made a scaled-down version with a Raspberry Pi!
The Linux User & Developer magazine website has just published their test of all the main Linux distros for the Raspberry Pi. They cover Raspbian, Arch, Fedora, SliTaz, Gentoo and RiscOS and give (very) honest opinions about all of them.
The article, written by Rob Zwetsloot, can be read on their website.
John Newbigin has been experimenting with a pre-assembled I2C analog to digital board with built-in sensors. Very interesting for such a small package and a very low price. It’s only £2.90 on DealExtreme.
