Andrew Oakley’s daughter’s bedroom is plagued by goblins. So, they decided to use a Raspberry Pi to scare the little so-and-sos off! They’ve used a PIR sensor for detection and the Pibrella for a buzzer and general connectivity. Lovely little project – check it out here for a write-up/tutorial with all the code.
Alex Eames wanted an easy way to track multiple Kickstarter campaigns. So, he decided to write one himself… As you do. He’s started a series on his blog, RasPi.TV. Read the first part here.
Richard, aka The Average Man, is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for a camera mount with a prototyping area called ProtoCam. He has now blogged about an alternative use for the product – as a camera mount for a robot. It’s not Earth-shattering, but it is fun and shows just how flexible the ProtoCam is. I’ve got one to review and will be putting it together in the next few days. I’ll report more then. Take a look at the Kickstarter campaign – this is one that really deserves to succeed and has clearly had a lot of thought put into it.
A company, Alternative-Photonics, supported by researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Physics, has built a telescope, primarily out of 3D-printed parts, and used the Raspberry Pi camera module to take pictures through the lens. There’s been a bit of over-enthusiastic news coverage of it, most notably on the BBC. Mark Wrigley, one of the developers, has reported on the Raspberry Pi forums that the idea eventually is to put the plans for the 3D printed parts out onto the internet so others can replicate the project. There’s a little more information on PiKon’s blog and more on the Alternative Photonics site and you can follow them on Twitter.
Here’s a great tutorial, and accompanying video (see below), from “Android Eric” in which he describes how to use the Firmata sketch on an Arduino and a python library on the Raspberry Pi.
Video blogger Fraser May has done a great, very in-depth video, on analog inputs and reading them with the Pi using an ADC chip. Well worth a watch, though at over 45 minutes it’s possibly too long for many people.
