{"id":16645,"date":"2017-03-27T18:39:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T17:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16645"},"modified":"2017-03-27T18:40:12","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T17:40:12","slug":"raspio-inspiring-a-couple-of-real-life-demos-on-the-raspberry-pi-and-my-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16645","title":{"rendered":"RasPiO Inspiring – a couple of real-life demos on the Raspberry Pi and my opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Very Star Trek-y, I’m sure!<\/p><\/div>\n

As you’ll know if you’ve read this blog recently, or seen the side-widget, Alex Eames<\/a> recently launched a new Kickstarter<\/a>. Called RasPiO Inspiring<\/a><\/strong>, it’s\u00a0a collection of geometric shapes with powerful ultra-bright APA102 LEDs that you can use to create sculptures or to bring blinkiness to an area. Alex sent me a driver board and a circle over the weekend and I’ve just now had a chance to test it out. So, I thought I’d bring you a couple of demo videos and photographs to show you what it’s actually like.<\/p>\n

First of all, what really surprised me about the circle was the size. Alex had told me the circuit board was 10cm in diameter, but I don’t think I’d twigged how big that actually was until seeing it\u00a0in the flesh, so to speak. Here’s a photo of the board connected up to a Raspberry Pi, embedded in a pi-top (click to embiggen):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, it’s almost twice the width of the Raspberry Pi and\u00a0slightly bigger than the pi-top keyboard.<\/p>\n

I downloaded some example code Alex sent me and tried it out. I found it helped enormously to plug the wires in correctly. (Ahem!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s the first demo video. It’s actually running the code for a\u00a0pyramid, but you get a nice effect anyway:<\/p>\n