Are you going to BETT this year? BETT (Jan 30—Feb 2) is the UK’s annual educational technology conference, and this year we’ve teamed up with the exam board OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examinations) for the show. We’ll be with them at stand B240.
We know that a lot of the teachers who read this blog will be there, and we’d love it if you could drop by the stand to meet us: Rob Bishop will be doing whizz-bang demonstrations there and showing you how easy incorporating the Pi into your computing classes can be; he’ll also have some fun physical computing projects to talk about (he’s been muttering about making machines that interface with Twitter, and making dark hints about robots). You can find out about some exciting new resources from OCR, and we’ll also be introducing you to our new Director of Educational Development, whose identity we’re keeping secret until the end of the month; he and Dr Rob Mullins will be presenting at the weekend. We’ll have more details about that closer to the event.
OCR are helping us to run a special prize draw for UK teachers, who can win ten Raspberry Pis for use in their classroom. (Sorry, non-teachers – this one’s for educators only.) We’re running on-stand demos throughout the event plus a ‘Learn Live’ session on Friday 01 February 2013 at 1.15pm. Don’t miss it!
This is one for you retro gamers: a Raspbian remix from Carles Oriol that turns your Pi into a whole suitcase-full of emulated hardware, from the Spectrum to a MAME cabinet, via the Oric-1, Atari 2600, Apple II and lots of other stuff besides.
Carles Oriol popped up briefly on Twitter earlier in the week to post this video, then vanished before I was able to get him to point me at a disk image. Happily, I was able to track him down on our forums, and from there to the Chameleon web site. You’ll find a torrent of the image, instructions for adding more emulators to the menu, more video, some words on each of the emulators and a little readme. We absolutely love it: there’s an SD card on my desk with this remix on it, and it’s not getting overwritten any time soon. Thanks Carles!
Dave Hunt is on a bit of a roll at the moment. Not content with having engineered the water droplet photography setup behind the prettiest post we’ve featured here, he’s also been working with the Pi and an home-made macro rail for sharper macro photographs without all that woolly depth of field. Bokeh – the fuzzy blur from the out-of-focus parts of a picture – is an effect that can be really beautiful, but sometimes you want a sharper picture, which can be nigh-on impossible in macro photography without special equipment.
Dougal, this cow is small. Those ones are far away.
There’s a way professional photographers deal with this, but, of course, it’s expensive. You can buy a rig which allows you to take many images, each taken a little closer to the object, so different parts of it are in focus with each picture. You can then combine or stack all those images in software, as in the cow picture on the right. There’s an open software solution to the matching and stacking problem called CombineZ (somebody port this thing to the Pi; that GPU is built for just this sort of application), but if you want to buy a rail that automates the moving of your camera, things suddenly start to look expensive. Dave says commercial solutions come in at around $600.
Enter the $35 Raspberry Pi and an old flat-bed scanner from the loft.
If you want to build your own focus-stacking rail, Dave has full build instructions, including circuit diagrams, code and tips on where to get parts at his website; even if you’re not a seasoned electronics hacker, you should be able to follow his very clear instructions if you want to make your own. Thank you Dave, for another great money-saving photography project and a fantastic writeup. We like your cow.
We’ve been looking forward to the publication of this interview. Nick Heath, a journalist we really enjoy talking to (largely because he’s not shy about asking awkward questions, which keeps us on our toes) spent a couple of hours with Eben at the factory last year. Figures here are a bit out of date because it’s about two months since the interview took place, and things move fast at Pi Towers. But it’s a great read, and even if you’re steeped in the Raspberry Pi project, it’s worth a look; you might learn something you didn’t know! Read more at ZDNet.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to everybody who participated in our charity auctions over Christmas. Some of you have requested a run-down of the results, so Gert put together this little table (thank you Gert!). Date Final ($) Final (£) Charity Jan 08, 2013 829.03 514.13 Samaritans Jan 07, 2013 395.06 245.00 The Humanitarian Centre Jan 06, 2013 330.56 205.00 Refuge Jan 05, 2013 669.19 415.00 Open Rights Group Jan 04, 2013 451.50 280.00 Claire House Children’s… More
Coffee and computing go hand in hand. The world’s first live streaming webcam was pointed at a coffee pot in the Cambridge University Computer Lab’s Trojan Room (yes, Americans, I know you think that sounds funny), back in the days when it was on a shared site in the centre of Cambridge and none of us had even heard of the internet. It was 1991. A young Quentin Stafford-Fraser was researching ATM networks in the Trojan Room, and drinking too… More
Francois Dion is someone I exchange emails with every now and then. He’s the guy behind the excellent (and multilingual: check the site for posts and tutorials in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish) Raspberry Pi Python Adventures blog. He’s a hackspace member from North Carolina, and he’s been giving lecture-demonstrations of the Raspberry Pi (and lasers) to interested groups, and promoting it in schools locally. Our community would be nothing like as large and colourful as it is without people like… More
Networked scanners are another one of those things that are simply incomprehensibly pricey; a quick search just turned up tens of devices which are selling for more than £900. And you don’t buy ease of use with that money: if you’re working in an office with people who aren’t very comfortable around computers, these machines can be intimidating and difficult to get to grips with. So Eduardo Luis has come up with a cheap, and incredibly simple (single-button-simple) alternative to… More
Adafruit Web IDE First up, Adafruit’s Raspberry Pi Web IDE is now in Alpha, and they’ve made some improvements which I think you’ll find very helpful. The package now includes: Python step debugger Node.js update to 0.8 from 0.6 for faster navigation, and page loads. Package node binaries with the WebIDE for faster, and easier installs You’ll need to reinstall to take advantage of the new features. Web IDE debugger in action – click to visit… More
Just before the New Year, we saw a lot of links in the tech press to a very neat hack using a Raspberry Pi as an Apple AirPlay receiver. The project had so many news stories written about it before I’d spotted it that I didn’t put it on this blog at the time because I thought most of you would have seen it – but do go and have a look if you’re a iTunes person (and have managed… More
Update, Jan 12: Cargo Cult (whose name is actually Adam Foster) found that a lot of people were very interested in this project. Not least, Radio 4. Who interviewed him for the PM programme this afternoon about his hack. You can hear the programme at the PM website – listen now, because I can’t guarantee how long this will stay up! Adam’s bit starts at 27m00s. I know several of you are making your own version of this project. Adam’s… More
The folks at element 14/Premier Farnell announced today that they alone have now made and sold more than half a million Raspberry Pis. They’re only one of two official distributors; we don’t have completely up-to-date figures from RS Components yet, but Farnell’s news suggests that we’re well on the way to having sold our millionth Raspberry Pi. Click to embiggen! I’ve not got much more to say – but I will note that we’ll be opening… More
FamiLAB is a hackspace in Orlando, Florida that Eben and I had a really great time visiting back in October. It’s hidden away in an industrial unit – it’s a big space, with its own commercial-sized CNC milling machine, 3d printers, laser cutters, an in-progress replica of the Bridge from Star Trek: TNG, some traffic lights, a cherry picker and a whole bunch of computers – broadly speaking, it’s pretty close to heaven. And it’s full of some great people,… More
We knew when we were designing it that the Pi would make a great bit of digital/real-world meccano. We hoped we’d see a lot of projects we hadn’t considered ourselves being made with it. We’re never so surprised by what people do with it as we are by some of the photography projects we see. Using a €15 solenoid valve, some Python and a Raspberry Pi to trigger the valve and the camera shutter at the same time, Dave has built a… More
Liz: Our friend Dr Andrew Robinson (whom you may have spotted on this site before) has been working hard to introduce schools to the Raspberry Pi, and recently he’s been teaming up with STEMnet ambassadors to run workshops. Here’s a post from him about a recent visit to Fairfield High Girls’ School in Manchester. Just before Christmas we were inspired when we saw the Raspberry Pi engaging young people with computing at an event in a Manchester School. It’s great to see… More
You might remember that we mentioned last year that a team of UK teachers from Computing at School (CAS) was working on a Creative Commons licensed teaching manual for the Raspberry Pi, with recognition and encouragement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. That manual is now available at the Pi Store (which you’ll find on your Raspberry Pi’s desktop) as a PDF. If you’re not a Pi owner, there’s a link to a copy at the bottom of this post. The manual… More
Jim JKla, 1 minute ago:
New Linux user help • Re: Keyboard and mouse don't work together…
Yes I am using one of the original Belkin USB2 7+1 (7 "A" type + 1 "B" type) port beasts a F5U010 the PSY is 6V 4A it is easily about 5 times the size of one of those plug…
pepedog, 7 minutes ago:
Arch • Re: a very rookie question
It's all here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LXDM#AutologinEasy way, make sure lxdm is installed if it wasn't installed earlier, or install it also (lxdm is a gui unername/password thang)Code: pacman -Sy lxdmCreate a new user if root is the only user (I put archuser…
sycarion, 7 minutes ago:
General discussion • Re: Pi & Windows Domain
SimonSmall wrote:Wow, thanks for that. I had guessed there might be all sorts of administrative rules, but not that many. I don't know if the same things apply in the UKI was thinking about how the RPi Foundation had suggested…
drgeoff, 8 minutes ago:
Media centres • Re: NAS with 3TB
ghans wrote:Isn't 3TB too much for a device without UEFI ?And the Pi has no BIOS , too.ghansIs that relevant if the 3Terabyte drive is connected to the RPi via USB?
Raspberry_Pi, 2 hours ago
Fans of Mooncake, the Raspberry Pi cat, will see lots of her in this vid - it's hard to Skype with her in the room! http://t.co/jiA4G6MR Cambridge, UK
colinnapier, 4 hours ago
Heavy snow has killed our SkyTV signal. @Raspberry_Pi and RaspBMC to the rescue with TVCatchup plugin. Brownie points with wife :) Northern Ireland
Rob_Bishop, 7 hours ago
Looking forward to running @Raspberry_Pi hacking workshops with @OCRexams at @Bett_show. Teachers, come see how you can inspire with making! Cambridge, United Kingdom
Raspberry_Pi, 7 hours ago
Are you a teacher who's coming to @BETT_show later this month? You'll want to read this: http://t.co/ypelhVDk Cambridge, UK
