Screenly – Digital signage for #RaspberryPi

Developer Viktor Petersson has created a piece of software called Screenly. Screenly allows you to administer a ‘digital sign’ over a web browser, letting you add images, videos and web-pages to be shown on a loop on a screen connected to the Raspberry Pi. Possible usages, according to Viktor are as follows:

  • Display business information or server dashboards
  • Advertisements (in-store or in store-front)
  • Internal information boards
  • Fancy photo-frame

More information is available in various places:

Minecraft: Pi Edition – Imminent

I just got a quick flash from an RSS feed about the release of the Pi edition of Minecraft, the World-building game. The post has since been unpublished, but details of the download were briefly available (even if the download itself was not accessible on the URL they gave).

If you’ve been following the thread over at the Foundation,  you’ll know this isn’t ‘new’ news – a leaked version has been available for a few weeks. Admittedly, this is only a version 0.1 Alpha version, so there are some bugs, but this is exciting news!

If you want more information about the leaked version and some experimentation with the API, head on over to Stuff About Code.

I will report the official release of the game as soon as it comes up!

In the meantime, here’s a link to the official Pi edition website if you want to find out more, or even subscribe to their RSS feed:

Minecraft: Pi Edition | Minecraft: Pi Edition updates and downloads.

PiWorks #RaspberryPi case – review

adafruit-pi-box-enclosureSupplier: PiWorks (via eBay. Other batches are released at this price from their eBay merchant page)
Price: £3
Purchased on: 8th January 2012

Rating: 4/10

This case was part of a batch of 1000 sold at a low price by PiWorks. It is based on the Adafruit PiBox design but is not engraved in any way (the picture above is one I found as I didn’t have my camera available).

It came disassembled inside a bag (that I had to rip to get all the pieces out) and covered in sticky blue plastic, presumably to protect the pieces from rubbing together and scratching. The first thing I noticed was that, because there was no engraving it was a bit difficult to tell which piece went which way around and which way up. This was solved in a trial-and-error way by holding them against the Pi and playing around until I found the correct way. Then came assembly. Now, I’m not the World’s expert on flat pack furniture and I didn’t expect this to make any difference assembling a Pi case. But, alas, it was a very similar process.

First of all, the instructions supplied by PiWorks are near useless as they don’t tell you which way up to hold the Pi when assembling. In fact, the instructions tell you to assemble the case without the Pi first to get used to how it goes together. The trouble is, once assembled you can’t get the Pi inside so you then have to disassemble it and re-assemble it around the Pi. That aside, the instructions then give you very little help. It’s not that difficult to work out, having said that, but you really need three hands. You sort-of hold ‘this’ bit, press ‘this’ bit up and then snap this other bit on while the whole thing moves and creaks in your hands.

Thus assembled around the Pi, it feels fairly solid. However, it does flex and creak about 1mm around the Pi and I wonder how sturdy it really is. There are numerous warnings in the instructions about treating it carefully and not flexing it too much otherwise bits will start snapping. Not very reassuring. The other major quibble I have is that the instructions say that if you want to plug things into the DSI/CSI sockets, for example, you just take the top off. Wrong. You have to virtually disassemble the case, remove the top and then re-assemble it again. Fortunately, there is a slot for a GPIO cable so most people will be happy.

Having said that, it’s actually quite attractive to look at, being completely clear and it shows off the Pi beautifully.

In conclusion, for £3 it’s not a bad case, but it does have major issues during assembly and is not nearly as flexible in use (in terms of the CSI/DSI connectors) as it is physically (creak creak creak). One more thing, if you use a micro SD card adapter then it’s possible that the adapter will lift the Pi up enough that the HDMI socket goes outside it’s slot.

I wouldn’t recommend it for the kind of price Adafruit charges ($14.95) but as a cheap case, it ain’t bad.