Hackers are buzzing with ideas from Pi-powered arcade machines and drones to the home automation and low-cost tablets. 10 coolest uses for the Raspberry Pi article tells that TechRepublic has delved into the Raspbery Pi’s developer forums, and here’s our round-up of the best ideas so far, ranging from the eminently achievable to the massively ambitious. You can use your Raspberry Pi for example as media streamer, arcade machine, tablet computer, robot controller and home automation controller. Rasberry Pi homepage offers also some more interesting projects like Retro games and a retro joystick.
1,663 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
No computer Ambilight clone uses a computer
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/no-computer-ambilight-clone-uses-a-computer/
It may seem confusing that you’re looking at a Raspberry Pi when this hack is about an Ambilight clone system that doesn’t need a computer. The point here is that this system works no matter what your video source is, where many projects in the past have required the video to be playing from a computer.
use an HDMI splitter to gain access to the feed going to your television. The split signal is fed into an HDMI to composite video adapter. The composite signal is captured by a USB video encoder. The GPIO header drives a strip of addressable RGB LEDs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi camera built as part of advertising campaign
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/raspberry-pi-camera-built-as-part-of-advertising-campaign/
Here’s yet another example of well targeted advertising. This camera built around a Raspberry Pi is a giveaway from Sprite. The “lucky” winner of the camera will have the pleasure of seeing the Sprite logo as a watermark on all of the images they snap with it.
The most obvious part of this build is the custom cast resin case that they came up with which is a gaudy cartoon-like monstrosity. It protects the case-less Raspberry Pi board, and mounts the Pi Camera board so that the lens is positioned correctly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi wedded to a DSLR
http://hackaday.com/2012/08/16/raspberry-pi-wedded-to-a-dslr/
This is a Raspberry Pi outfitted in a DSLR battery grip.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Voice controlled home automation uses Raspberry Pi and LightwaveRF
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/11/voice-controlled-home-automation-uses-raspberry-pi-and-lightwaverf/
It’s not quite artificial intelligence, but saying “Jeeves, lights!” will switch on the bulbs in the room. [Chipos81] built the voice-activated home automation around a Rapsberry Pi board with LightwaveRF devices switching lights and outlets.
The LightwaveRF system offers a WiFi link which provides Internet connectivity for all of those devices in your house. This makes it a snap for [Chipos81] to control them from the RPi. To provide speech recognition he’s using CMU Sphinx. It’s an open source speech recognition library developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and released under a BSD license.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The RPC: a stand-alone MIDI workstation
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/14/the-rpc-a-stand-alone-midi-workstation/
The build uses an Arduino Mega 2560 to handle the MIDI inputs and outputs. It communicates via serial with a Raspberry Pi that acts as the synthesizer and oversees all user interactions.
As an all-in-one solution, this is a sleek little box that–once paired with some software for arpeggiators, chord harmonies, and scales–will be a handy MIDI synthesizer with robust control ready to be conveniently mounted on your rack.
Tomi Engdahl says:
20 Awesome Projects for Raspberry Pi Microcomputers
http://www.treehugger.com/slideshows/gadgets/20-awesome-projects-raspberry-pi-microcomputers/
With all of the builds out there, it can be overwhelming, but don’t worry, we’ve done the hard work for you. Here are 20 of the best Raspberry Pi projects the web has to offer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make a Raspberry Pi door that opens when your dog barks at it
http://www.electronicproducts.com/Computer_Systems/Standalone_Mobile/Make_a_Raspberry_Pi_door_that_opens_when_your_dog_barks_at_it.aspx
After constantly having to let his dog in and out of the house, photographer David Hunt stepped out of his comfort zone to play around with his Raspberry Pi computer looking for a solution. He came up with the “Pi-Rex,” the bark-activated door opener.
Hunt attached a noise detector circuit to his Raspberry Pi that would identify the dog’s bark. Then he used a motor driver circuit to drive an actuator that would unlock his door. He also incorporated a weight/pulley system that would swing the door open for his dog once it was unlocked.
Sure there are some security issues that need to be worked out if you wanted to implement this into your home, but that can all be figured out later, in the meantime, enjoy this weekend project
Pi-Rex – Bark Activated Door Opening System with Raspberry Pi
http://www.davidhunt.ie/?p=3132
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Will ‘art’ for cash
http://werk-schau.blogspot.de/2013/08/will-art-for-cash.html
I don’t like works of art that were made for the sole purpose to make money. I think true art always comes from the top end of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and never the bottom. Self preservation (aka making money) can be a later side effect but should never be the initial driver to create.
Thinking about this again as I was looking at a few Banksy stencils I hadn’t seen before, I had the idea to this: A piece of Art, created for the sole purpose of creating money. Literally!
Mounted on a rosewood panel, inside the baroque gold-plated frame (thanks Bele!) is a small computer and four specialised computing units producing Bitcoins, the most known and used cryptocurrency. The small display shows the current rate of calculation and the exchange rate of Bitcoins to Euros. I took special care to mount the hardware and wires in a pleasing, clean way and removed all casings to show of the technology.
The hardware is able to calculate ~1.3GH/s. At the current exchange rate that amounts to around one Euro a day (simplified, bitcoins are complex business).
I used ASICminers for the rig and they are really something. The system has the same hashing performance as a PC with four high end GPUs, but at under 300€ project cost and under 10W of power it beats the traditional rig hands down on cost. And noise (none). And size.
The Raspberry only coordinates the data flow to the miners and (idles most of the time) uses most of its power to run bitcoind to help the bitcoin network and verify transactions for everyone.
Tomi says:
Cambridge Consultants works on project designed to catch rhino poachers
http://www.boston.com/business/innovation/blogs/inside-the-hive/2013/09/06/cambridge-consultants-works-project-designed-catch-rhino-poachers/m2a7QUsZ6kTcWndilf00rK/blog.html
A technology consulting firm with a 35-person office in Kendall Square is now testing an early-warning system designed to protect Kenyan rhinos and elephants from poachers.
The firm is Cambridge Consultants of the UK, and it is now testing a system of motion-triggered cameras that will be deployed around watering holes and connected to the Iridium satellite network. The hope is that a hundred of these cameras will be in place by the end of year. Via the Iridium satellite network, which the cameras link into, photos can be sent to a mobile app that will allow users around the world to have access to near real-time images of rare animals.
The cameras designed by Cambridge Consultants don’t just detect vibrations; they can also triangulate the sound of gunshots.
Among other technologies, the project makes use of Raspberry Pi micro-computers, long-life batteries, and LED flash lighting.
HDMI Adapter says:
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Turning a Raspi into AdBlock
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/15/turning-a-raspi-into-adblock/
There’s nothing quite as annoying as seeing bandwidth wasted on unimpressive flash animations, irrelevant ads, and animated GIFs. The bad news is these ads are the sole source of income for a lot of your favorite websites – Hackaday included. The good news is you can turn these ads off with a Raspberry Pi, a WiFi adapter, and a little bit of fun in the terminal.
This build creates a wireless access point with a WiFi adapter plugged in to a Raspberry Pi. With an Ethernet cable plugged in, this effectively turns the Raspi into a wireless router.
To configure the software to block ads, it’s a simple matter of installing dnsmasq from the command line and making sure all the ads on your favorite webpages time out
with the installation of Pixelserv you can host a 1-pixel transparent GIF image that replaces all the ads and renders them invisible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Giant video walls powered by a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/giant-video-walls-powered-by-a-raspberry-pi/
There’s no denying that giant video walls are awesome, but creating one usually means a fairly complex setup with either multiple computers or very expensive video cards. Now, with Pi Wall, you can make a video wall as large as your wallet will allow with only one Raspi per monitor, and a single master pi to control the whole shebang.
As long as you have a few displays with an HDMI input, it’s easy to turn them into a giant monitor. Just plug one Pi per monitor into a network switch, have a Pi (or other Linux box) transmit a video to all the video tiles, and sit back and enjoy the show.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EnOcean Pi connects energy harvesting wireless devices with the Raspberry Pi
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4421048/EnOcean-Pi-connects-energy-harvesting-wireless-devices-with-the-Raspberry-Pi
The Raspberry Pi computer can now control gateways for energy usage and automation systems using the new EnOcean Pi accessory, available from element14.
EnOcean Pi is available in three versions: EnOcean Pi 868 MHz (Europe), EnOcean Pi 315 MHz (Japan, India, North America) and EnOcean Pi 902 MHz (North America). Costing $25.00USD the first version to launch is EnOcean Pi 868 which is available from Farnell element14 in Europe and CPC in the UK and Ireland. Versions of the EnOcean Pi supporting the 315 MHz and 902 MHz radio bands will be available in early October 2013 from Newark element14 and MCM in North America, and element14 in Asia Pacific.
EnOcean Pi is a wireless module which connects to batteryless EnOcean modules that are powered by energy converters that use mechanical motion, light or temperature differences as an energy source. This allows for maintenance-free sensor and actuator solutions that provide the necessary data for intelligent control.
The new Pi accessory is supplied with free to download EnOcean Link Trial Version middleware
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Doorlock Uses USB Keys
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1319500&
If you happen to arrive at the Makers Local 256 hackerspace in Huntsville, Ala., when no one else is there, you just might have to unlock the place yourself.
You have to insert an authorized USB storage device to open this door.
The lock is constructed from a Raspberry Pi running a Linux distribution called Raspbian, meant specifically for the Pi. The Relay board is there to drive the Powerbolt deadbolt system when someone successfully authenticates. When you insert a USB device into the Raspberry Pi, a script checks the iSerial number of the device to see if it is in the database as an authenticated user. This method allows the person to fully use the USB storage however they please without affecting their ability to authenticate.
Powerbolt has a backup battery so even if the building lost power, you could still use the stock number pad to gain entry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mechanical Typewriter Types Your Tweets!
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/27/mechanical-typewriter-types-your-tweets/
A mechanized typewriter that types out tweets directed at the maker, @mschwanzer!
The printer-typewriter features an array of solenoids that are controlled by an Arduino using shift registers. A Raspberry Pi collects the information from Twitter and then parses the data to the Arduino for typing. A simple concept, but a complex and relatively expensive build.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Using a Raspberry Pi to give your car more features
http://hackaday.com/2013/09/30/using-a-raspberry-pi-to-give-your-car-more-features/
[Andrei] is cruising in style thanks to his Raspi-powered CarPC project, which is a steal at $200 considering all the functionality it provides.
The Pi runs a Raspbian Wheezy distro with XBMC and is mounted in the storage area beneath the middle armrest. [Andrei] filled the hole left by the old stereo with a 7-inch touchscreen display, which connects to the Pi through both HDMI and USB. If you throw the car into reverse, the Pi automatically selects the touchscreen’s AV input to display the car’s backup camera, then flips back when put in drive.
The unit also provides navigation via the open-source Navit software using OpenStreetMap data. An ST22 SkyTraq GPS receiver grabs coordinates and feeds them into the Raspi, which updates the on-screen map once per second.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Retro, Not Steampunk, Media Center
http://hackaday.com/2013/10/02/a-retro-not-steampunk-media-center/
[toddfx] used a Raspberry Pi to stream music over WiFi, but also wanted to play some classic vinyl. He took apart an old Yamaha YP-D4 turntable. stripped it to the bone, and created a fantastic oak enclosure around it. To this, he added a seven-band graphic EQ, aux jacks (both in and out), and a tiny 5″ CRT from an old portable TV.
Where this build really gets great is the fabrication.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
ArkOS: Building the Anti-Cloud (on a Raspberry Pi)
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/10/04/0338239/arkos-building-the-anti-cloud-on-a-raspberry-pi
“arkOS is a Linux distribution that runs on the Raspberry Pi. It’s an initiative of the CitizenWeb Project, which promotes decentralization and democratization of the Internet. ”
arkOS: Building the anti-cloud (on a Raspberry Pi)
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/528273/arkos_building_anti-cloud_raspberry_pi_/
arkOS is an open source project designed to let its users take control of their personal data and make running a home server as easy as using a PC
At the start of this year, analyst firm Gartner predicted that over the next four years a total of US$677 would be spent on cloud services. The growth of ‘things-as-a-service’ is upending enterprise IT and creating entirely new, innovative business models. At the same time, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have built massive user bases, and created databases that are home to enormous amounts of information about account holders.
Collectively, all of this means that people’s data, and the services they use with it, are more likely than ever to be found outside of home PCs and other personal devices, housed in servers that they will probably never likely to see let alone touch. But, when everything is delivered as a service, people’s control and even ownership of their data gets hazy to say the least.
Earlier this year NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden offered some insight – in revelations that probably surprised few but still outraged many – into the massive level of data collection and analysis carried out by state actors.
arkOS is not a solution to the surveillance state, but it does offer an alternative to those who would rather exercise some measure of control over their data and, at the very least, not lock away their information in online services where its retrieval and use is at the whim of a corporation, not the user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SSTV beacon based on a Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/10/06/sstv-beacon-based-on-a-raspberry-pi/
The Budapest hackerspace did some joint work with a local ham radio club and created an SSTV beacon housed inside a CCTV case that takes an image of its environment and transmits it using slow-scan television over ham bands.
As the title says, the build uses a Raspberry Pi to process the image taken from its camera and then transmits it over the air using a Ricofunk UHF transceiver with a main frequency of 433.425MHz. On the software side, PySSTV is used to convert images to frequency/time tuples, UNIXSSTV then creates the actual audio file and finally sox plays it.
Comments:
Not really a new idea. SSTV beacons have been running on linux for over a decade.
It’s just showing that the rasPi is still king for tinkering.
and on windows for at least 2 decades. JVFax supported all sorts of sstv modes, tried it in 1993 for the first time.
The idea is not new. What’s new is
– it uses free (as in free speech) software and not some closed source Windows GUI freeware crap (see MMSSTV, JVfax)
– the whole thing fits into a CCTV case, and doesn’t require a PC
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer Controlled Water Show
http://hackaday.com/2013/10/07/computer-controlled-water-show/
The setup uses a Raspberry Pi at its core and a set of USB relay boards to turn the valves and lights on and off to the music. They wrote the program in Python and have posted it on their website to share.
They used common household solenoid valves because they are easy to control by relay, but unfortunately they are on/off only, so variable flow is not possible.
The setup doesn’t sound like it cost that much, and now the family has their own music activated water fountain in their garden — how awesome is that!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi I/O expansion card opens Pi to robotic navigation, automation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4422240/Raspberry-Pi-I-O-expansion-card-opens-Pi-to-robotics–automation
Roboteq’s RIO board (for Raspberry I/O) stacks on top the Raspberry to create a powerful embedded control and navigation computer, in a small footprint of just 65x85x20mm.
RIO significantly expands the Raspberry’s limited I/O capabilities by adding 13 inputs that can be configured as digital inputs, as 0-5V analogue inputs with 12-bit resolution, or as pulse inputs capable of pulse width, duty cycle or frequency capture. Eight digital outputs are provided for driving loads up to 1A each at up to 24V.
RIO includes a 32-bit ARM Cortex M4 MCU for processing and buffering the I/O, and creating a seamless communication with the Raspberry. The RIO processor can be user-programmed using a simple but powerful Basic-like programming language
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Can An 8 Node Raspberry Pi Cluster Web Server Survive Hackaday?
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/05/can-an-8-node-raspberry-pi-cluster-web-server-survive-hackaday/
Plenty of folks have used their Raspberry Pi as a web server. [Steve] however is the first 8 node load balanced pi cluster server we’ve run into.
Steve] has created a really nice informative website about the Raspberry Pi, and Linux in general. As his page views have increased, he’s had to add nodes to the server. Currently [Steve] sees about 45,000 page views per month.
He built the load balancer using an old PC with 512MB of RAM and a 2.7GHz x86 CPU. The most important thing about the balancer is dual network interfaces, one side facing the internet, the other facing the Pi cluster. The balancer isn’t a router though. Only HTTP requests are forwarded. The Pi nodes themselves live on their own sub net.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adding more nodes to the cluster
http://raspberrywebserver.com/raspberrypicluster/adding-more-nodes-to-the-cluster.html
My Raspberry Pi server cluster has been running for three months, and is now serving 45,000 page views per month.
As the load on the server increases, it’s important to make sure it has enough capcity, so I decided to increase it’s computing power by adding four more Raspberry Pi server nodes to the cluster.
I built two new racks, each holding four Raspberry Pi servers. I daisy-chained two ethernet switches together, with four Pi servers connected to each switch.
I cloned an SD card from one of the Pi nodes and set up four almost identical SD cards. The only difference between them is the IP address in /etc/network/interfaces. I did a backup of my site from the dashboard of my CMS, and used a script to synchonize the content all worker nodes.
The next step was to modify the load balancer settings to start using the new nodes. On the load balancer, /etc/apache2/sites-available/default needed to be updated to include the new nodes in the cluster declaration:
Tomi Engdahl says:
Upstagram: a Flying Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/12/upstagram-a-flying-raspberry-pi/
This tiny paper house, modeled after the one in Disney’s UP, contains a Raspberry Pi, battery pack, camera, and 3G stick. The Upstagram, built by the folks at HackerLoop, took to the skies of Paris to snap and share photos on Instagram.
We’ve seen Raspberry Pis in flight before, but this build pulls it off using simple party balloons. It took around 80 balloons to get the house to a height of 300 feet. A kite string was used to tether the device and control its flight.
This hack also required some reverse engineering of Instagram.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Driven 128×32 LED sign
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/14/raspberry-pi-driven-128×32-led-sign/
Looks like a commercial LED display sign… right? Not even close. This is a project of [Jon's] from over a year ago, and it is a very impressive 128×132 LED display board, driven using a single Raspberry Pi.
It’s made of eight “P10″ 32×16 LED panels that he bought off of eBay
The display runs off of a single Raspberry Pi and can receive a video signal from anything with an Ethernet port. The individual boards are daisy-chained
he’s able to parse 2 bits per pixel to refresh the display at an impressive 400+ frames per second.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Glass? How about this Home-brew Solution?
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/17/google-glass-how-about-this-home-brew-solution/
There’s not too much info on his blog about them, but we do know he’s using a Raspberry Pi, a few small servos, and a pico LCD screen. Most of the frame is 3D printed, and it also features a hidden camera, accelerometers, and a few environmental sensors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Battery Backup for RasPi Keeps Your Data Safe
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/17/battery-backup-for-raspi-keeps-your-data-safe/
We’ve all raised a clench fist in anger over lost data, and it’s usually the result of unjustified optimism and lack of planning. [George] shared his solution that prepares for the worst: a circuit that provides backup power to a RasPi and its hard drives.
Rather than turn to commercial solutions, however, [George] wanted to take advantage of the Pi’s low power consumption and create an inexpensive custom circuit that would safely and automatically power down the devices upon loss of power. To detect a power failure, the build connects one of the Pi’s GPIOs to an opto-isolator, which—through a zener diode—connects to the 12V wall adapter:
The rest of the circuit serves as a trickle charger for the two attached 9V batteries and as a regulator to supply the correct voltage to the RasPi. Power MOSFETs connected to a GPIO handle the delayed power off.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi Battery backup
http://www.repairhub.co.uk/content/resources/raspberry-pi-battery-backup
This is a step by step instructions on how to make a battery backup circuit for your Raspberry Pi computer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Real-Life Raspi-Controlled Redstone Lamp
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/16/real-life-raspi-controlled-redstone-lamp/
Minecraft fanatics keep finding impressive ways to bring 8-bit components into the real world, and [Chris Tompson's] Redstone Lamp Replica is no exception.
The lamp is a product of the gang at Hive76, who worked together to develop a quick prototype using the Minecraft Python client pyCraft, an Arduino, a transistor and a temporary papercraft lamp mockup. Hive76 member [Kyle] pitched in to write the plugin for pyCraft, which listens for an on/off message and sets one of the RasPi’s GPIO pins accordingly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unbricking a Router With a Raspi
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/15/unbricking-a-router-with-a-raspi/
The parallel port utility bit-banged the new firmware over to the router, something the GPIO port on the Pi could do in spades. By adding Pi support to the debricking utility, [Mansour] had a functional WRT54G with just a little bit of patience and a few wires connecting the GPIO and JTAG header.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspis and Arduinos for FM Broadcast Streaming
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/20/raspis-and-arduinos-for-fm-broadcast-streaming/
The biggest Internet provider in Portugal needed a system to turn FM broadcast stations in Angola, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique into a web stream. Like every good project, the people in charge of the engineering turned to Hackaday staples – Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and TP-Link routers, all stuffed into an awesome modular rackmount cabinet
Each module in this gigantic rackmount system includes an Arduino, a Raspberry Pi, a Silicon Labs Si4705 FM receiver chip, and a TI USB audio capture chip that allows the Pi to turn the audio out from the radio receiver into an audio stream.
The engineering behind each module is pretty impressive – they’re all hot swappable
FM Stream Tech Report
http://artica.cc/blog/2013/11/07/fm-stream-tech-report.html
AKA a beautiful, low cost, carrier grade rack of FM tuners, IP/Internet encoders and broadcasters, using nothing but RaspberryPis, Arduinos, clever electronics, neat mechanics, a shiny aluminium case and lots of passion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi & Arduino Save Goldie the Goldfish
DIY a better life for pet fish
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1320185&
Cabe Atwell loves his goldfish. If there’s one lesson to learn from this project, that’s definitely it.
And when Goldie fell victim to attacks by the other fish, Atwell’s heart was broken. However, thanks to Atwell’s love, devotion, and Raspberry Pi, Goldie is living healthy and strong.
People often tell me that they kept a goldfish in a bowl without a heater, filter, or plants for years, and the fish was fine. Sorry, but you were actually torturing and then killing your fish.
Atwell took action. He came up with a system to supply much better living conditions for Goldie. He set out with the following goals for his system:
To see Goldie remotely in real-time
To control the camera’s location
To cut the power to the tank’s filters and air bubbler
To feed Goldie at will
To sense the tank temperature
Above all, to do all this through a network — and ultimately via the Internet
To achieve this, he used a mixture of the Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. He was going to need motor control, relay control, a moving platform, a temperature sensor, and a camera feed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wolfram’s new equation: Mathematica+RPi=child geniuses everywhere
Mathematica will be baked into future Raspbian releases
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22/mathematica_raspberry_pi/
Los Bros Wolfram have thrown their weight behind the Raspberry Pi and its mission to get more kiddies coding, by offering up their signature product Mathematica as a free inclusion in future versions of Raspbian.
Pi Daddy Eben Upton has offered up predictable praise for the offering, saying Wolfram and his mates in the computer-based maths movement are “trying to bring about the same sort of change in the teaching of other subjects that we’re aiming for in computing.”
It looks like Wolfram Research has ported Mathematica to the Pi
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows CE On A Raspberry Pi
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/27/windows-ce-on-a-raspberry-pi/
From all the BSDs and Linuxes to extraordinarily odd operating systems, it seems just about every OS has been ported to the Raspberry Pi. All except Windows, that is, but a few people are working on it.
While running Windows Compact Embedded isn’t as cool as running Windows RT on a Raspi, the latter will never happen. Windows RT requires 1 GB of RAM and a 1 GHz ARM v7 processor, neither of which the Pi has.
pics of [ideeman]‘s Raspi running WinCE.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Raspberry Pi Arcade Stick
http://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/a-raspberry-pi-arcade-stick/
There are plenty of Raspberry Pi arcade builds out there, but rarely do we come across something as sleek as [Jochen Zurborg's] RasPi Arcade Stick. The build combines everything you’d expect from other RasPi arcade projects, but manages to pack everything into the form factor of a portable stick modeled on the Neo Geo 4′s button layout. It may not be as small as the tiny MAME cabinet from last year, but it definitely delivers a more authentic arcade experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zeitfluss [flow of time]
Reasoning about time by printing onto the surface of a river
http://zeitfluss.islandrabe.com/doc/
The core element is an Arduino. It receives the current time trought a Real Time Clock Module. The micro controller maps the numbers of the time onto the available 5×7 pixel grid per digit. The resulting vertical lines of drops get printed one after the other by switching the shift registers and thereby the pumps. The Arduino code and the wiring diagram were done by Albert Frisch and could be found on the projects site on GitHub.
For logging what’s going on, a RaspberryPi receives status messages from the Arduino. Once in a while – on an average every 20min – fswebcam gets called and takes webcam images as fast as it can for about 40 seconds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SkyJack
http://samy.pl/skyjack/
SkyJack is a drone engineered to autonomously seek out, hack, and wirelessly take over other drones within wifi distance, creating an army of zombie drones under your control.
Using a Parrot AR.Drone 2, a Raspberry Pi, a USB battery, an Alfa AWUS036H wireless transmitter, aircrack-ng, node-ar-drone, node.js, and my SkyJack software, I developed a drone that flies around, seeks the wireless signal of any other drone in the area, forcefully disconnects the wireless connection of the true owner of the target drone, then authenticates with the target drone pretending to be its owner, then feeds commands to it and all other possessed zombie drones at my will.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With a mix of Arduino, Raspberry Pi and fun, Maker Box hopes to bolster Africa’s future tech skills
http://www.zdnet.com/with-a-mix-of-arduino-raspberry-pi-and-fun-maker-box-hopes-to-bolster-africas-future-tech-skills-7000023770/
Summary: Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, microscopes and soldering lessons to help children teach themselves the STEM skills that are vital for economic development.
A new Indiegogo project, Afrimakers, is hoping to bring a program of computers and creativity to children across the continent by crowdfunding for 14 ‘Maker Box’ kits which will be distributed at seven tech hubs in seven countries, along with learning materials and training sessions, early next year.
The scheme is the brain child of Stephania Druga, a Romanian-born ex-Google engineer and founder of HacKIDemia, a network of schools and organisations across the world which teach children how to use low-tech tools to make computing fun, through hands-on practical sessions.
Each Maker Box contains a Raspberry Pi, an Adruino controller, an RFID starter kit, a soldering station and several sensors and other tools.
Tomi Engdahl says:
PiMSO
http://linkinstruments.com/appnotes/pimso/
PiMSO, is a Raspberry Pi controlled 200Msa/s mixed signal oscilloscope. PiMSO, a spinoff of WebMSO, is an experimental project to understand the necessary components required to deploy the MSO-28 mixed signal oscilloscope on mobile devices.
With the ever growing list of mobile platforms, it became very difficult for PC based instruments developer such as Link to keep up with the demands to supply driver applications for various platforms.
To date the WebMSO solution has be deployed and tested on the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, MK802, Pogoplug and Seagate Dockstar. Of the above deployments, MK802 with the built in Wi-Fi offered the most integrated solution. While the Raspberry Pi offered the lowest deployed cost for our users. To encourage others to expand upon our work, we decided to release an early Beta version of the PiMSO iteration of the WebMSO as an open source project.
PiMSO network connections
http://linkinstruments.com/appnotes/2013/12/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Goldie Fishwater & the Internet-Connected Aquarium
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=270289&cid=nl.dn17
I was on a trip, and I left her to the uncaring care of an automatic fish feeder. A week later, I returned home to a broken fish feeder, a polluted tank, and an overfed Goldie. It took a whole night to clean the tank, and I vowed I would never let this happen again.
Despite my constant worry, there was nothing I could do that week. And that’s when I realized I want to watch over Goldie, no matter where I am. I want to be the one to feed her. I put my engineering experience to the task. Using a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino Uno, I developed a system to meet all my requirements. It is a true remote fish tank controller.
The Raspberry Pi is central and network/Internet connected, and it streams a live camera feed of the tank. I can move the camera around to see different parts of the tank.
When developing today, there is almost no need to reinvent anything. Motor control was handled through an Arduino Motor Shield — I send the stepper driver pulses, and it handles the rest. The entire development board setup was attached to the handy Bud Industries Boardganizer, where I combined two of them for more space. The moving platform was pulled from a printer/scanner. I simply adapted a NEMA17 stepper motor to the pulley mount. Instead of moving the entire system, as I had planned, I moved the Raspberry Pi Camera Module.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi learns the lost art of Teletext
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/07/raspberry-pi-learns-the-lost-art-of-teletext/
Teletext was a method of accessing information on a television before computer networks were available to the general public. It was pretty impressive at the time
[Moonlit] started looking into recreating a Teletext device by simply generating a PAL signal with an AVR chip
As you can see, his success even led him to spin a breakout board which plugs in to the RPi GPIO header.
Tomi Engdahl says:
S.A.M. The Safety Attention Monitor
http://hackaday.com/2014/01/30/s-a-m-the-safety-attention-monitor/
Last term’s project at Chico State University hopes to reduce driver distraction by alerting you when it notices you aren’t paying attention (to the road!).
The team designed SAM using OpenCV to track your face in order to recognize when you aren’t watching the road.
The proof of concept device was built using a Raspberry Pi, the PiCam, and a breadboard to accommodate some manual controls, the buzzer, and LEDs. It also continuously records video of you on a 30 second loop, and in the event of an accident, it saves all the video — perhaps proving it was your fault.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pan Flute Hero
http://hackaday.com/2014/01/30/pan-flute-hero/
Each pipe houses what appears to be an electret microphone breakout board
The sensors connect to the GPIO connector on the Raspi, which communicates to a local TCP/IP server the team ran as a controller hub.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Accelerating Fourier transforms using the GPU
Tags: Andrew Holme, fast Fourier transform, FFT, libraries
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/5934
experimenting with writing general purpose code for the VideoCore IV graphics processing unit (GPU) in the BCM2835, the microchip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi, to create an accelerated fast Fourier transform library
GPU_FFT is an FFT library for the Raspberry Pi which exploits the BCM2835 SoC V3D hardware to deliver ten times the performance that is possible on the 700 MHz ARM. Kernels are provided for all power-of-2 FFT lengths from 256 to 131,072 points inclusive.
The library runs on dedicated 3D hardware in the BCM2835 SoC
Tomi Engdahl says:
40-Node Raspi Cluster
http://hackaday.com/2014/02/17/40-node-raspi-cluster/
40nodepicluster
Multi-node RasPi clusters seem to be a rite of passage these days for hackers working with distributed computing. [Dave's] 40-node cluster is the latest of the super-Pi creations
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does your Raspberry Pi belong in a gallery?
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/6256
It is a beautiful piece of hardware and I’m sure takes pride of place in many a building, with scores of people gazing upon it in wonder, especially if you’ve hacked it to do something cool. But is it art? Google Developers certainly think so, and have launched Dev Art: Art Made with Code mid-February, as an open platform that allows artists to share their digital art with the world and also detail the process they took to create their work in a unique way.