Umbrella trees, giant mushrooms, and tiny museums. A light-up Lovelace, LED cubes, LED eyelashes, and LED coding (we have a bit of a thing for LEDs). Magic cocktails, melted ice creams, and the coolest hot dog around. Face paint masterpieces, swag bags, and bingo. More stickers than a laptop can cope with, a flock of amazing volunteers, and it all ending with an exploding microwave! This can only mean one thing: Raspberry Fields 2018.

The #RaspberryFields digital making festival 2018

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://rpf.io/ytsub Help us reach a wider audience by translating our video content: http://rpf.io/yttranslate Buy a Raspberry Pi from one of our Approved Resellers: http://rpf.io/ytproducts Find out more about the Raspberry Pi Foundation: Raspberry Pi http://rpf.io/ytrpi Code Club UK http://rpf.io/ytccuk Code Club International http://rpf.io/ytcci CoderDojo http://rpf.io/ytcd Check out our free online training courses: http://rpf.io/ytfl Find your local Raspberry Jam event: http://rpf.io/ytjam Work through our free online projects: http://rpf.io/ytprojects Do you have a question about your Raspberry Pi?

Raspberry Fields forever

On 30 June and 1 July, our community of makers, vendors, speakers, volunteers, and drop-in activity leaders impressed over 1300 visitors who braved the heat to visit our festival of digital making at Cambridge Junction.

Our mini festival was both a thank you to our wonderful community and a demonstration of the sheer scale of support and ideas we offer to people looking to get involved in digital making for the first time.

Projects and talks galore

Our community of makers came out in force at Raspberry Fields, with shops, hands-on activities, installations, and show-and-tells demonstrating some of the coolest stuff you can do with a Raspberry Pi and with digital making in general.

Many visitors we spoke to couldn’t believe some of the incredible creations and projects our community members had brought along for them to learn about and play with.

Over the weekend, e had 29 talks on two stages, with our community speakers coming from all over the UK, as well as France, Germany, Korea, Japan, and Australia! Their talks covered a fascinating range of topics such as volunteering with our coding clubs, digital inclusion, drones, wildlife conservation, and so much more! If you missed any of the speakers, don’t worry: we will be uploading talks to our Youtube channel for everyone to see.

Spectacular live shows

We rounded off the two days with three smashing performances: on Saturday, the fantastic Neil Monteiro showed off some of the awesome things you can do with an Astro Pi at home. He was followed by the outstanding Ada.Ada.Ada., in which Ada Lovelace, kitted out in an epic tech-covered dress, taught people all about her programming legacy.

Sunday’s finale brought the mischief of Brainiac Live! to Raspberry Fields: the Brainiacs showed us just how much they laugh in the face of science, before providing us with the explosive finish every good festival needs!

Outstanding volunteers

A whopping 60 community members came and helped us out, many of whom had never volunteered at a Raspberry Pi event before! Our festival of digital making would not have happened without these lovely people willing to give up some of their precious weekend to ensure that everything went off without a hitch.

The volunteers were doing everything from greeting and registering guests as they arrived, handing out swag bags, and stamping bingo cards, to giving directions, helping out with activities, and managing our two stages. They were absolutely fantastic, and we hope to see them all again at future events!

Join our community today

Raspberry Fields was just a taster of what is going on around the world every day within the marvellous Raspberry Pi community at Raspberry Jams, Code Clubs, CoderDojos, Coolest Projects events, or at home, where people use our products and free resources to create their own projects. If our festival has made you curious, then dive in and join the amazing people that have made it possible!

Till next time!

The whole Raspberry Pi team is hugely grateful to all our community members who helped out in some way with Raspberry Fields, as well as to all the staff at Cambridge Junction, who were so open and friendly, and happy to let us taking over the whole venue for a weekend. We would like to say a massive thank you for making the event so much fun for everyone involved, and for being so welcoming to everyone who took part!

We look forward to seeing all of you at upcoming events!

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Relive the San Andreas glory days with this Grand Theft Auto radio built by Raphaël Yancey.

Raphaël Yancey on Twitter

With the “tuned” status LED. https://t.co/PuIi6sY78V

…and now I have Barracuda stuck in my head.

The music of GTA

Anyone who has played Grand Theft Auto knows that one of the best parts of the series is the radio stations: a mix of classic tunes and often comical DJ interludes make driving haphazardly through the streets of San Andreas a joy.

And much like fans of the Fallout series, many of us GTA players are guilty of listening to the in-game music outside of gaming sessions.

Hacking a radio

Maker Raphaël Yancey loves the San Andreas tunes so much, he decided to build his own Grand Theft Auto radio, complete with the MP3s available from Rockstar, the game’s creators.

Raphaël used a 1970s Optalix TO100 portable radio for this project, along with a Raspberry Pi 3. While this would be enough to create a music player, he also added two potentiometers for volume control and frequency tuning, as shown in the video above.

Python code allows the potentiometers to move within a virtual frequency range of 88.7Mhz to 108.0Mhz, with five stations to find along the way. A LED comes on whenever the player finds a station, and the Pi then plays the music.

You can find Raphaël’s complete code for building your own GTA radio here. We’re keen to see what other game-based music projects our community will come up with. Here at Pi Towers, we have a spare Fallout Pip-Boy that’s aching to play the sweet sounds of the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth…

Raspberry Pi and music

The integration of Raspberry Pi within music projects is a theme we’re very fond of. From rejuvenated jukeboxes such as Tijuana Rick’s 1960’s Wurlitzer, to The Nest, a USB music download system built into Table Mountain, we’ve seen a host of imaginative projects and are always eager to discover more.

So if you’ve used a Raspberry Pi in your music project, whether it be a jukebox, a guitar pedal, or an instrument, be sure to share it with us.

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Last year, Code Club Australia set a new world record during their Moonhack event for the most young people coding within 24 hours. This year, they’re hoping to get 50000 kids involved — here’s how you can take part in this interstellar record attempt!

Celebrating the Apollo 11 moon landing

Nearly 50 years ago, humankind took one giant leap and landed on the moon for the first time. The endeavour involved an incredible amount of technological innovation that, amongst other things, helped set the stage for modern coding.

To celebrate this amazing feat, Code Club Australia are hosting Moonhack, an annual world record attempt to get as many young people as possible coding space-themed projects over 24 hours. This year, Moonhack is even bigger and better, and we want you to take part!

Moonhack past and present

The first Moonhack took place in 2016 in Sydney, Australia, and has since spread across the globe. More than 28000 young people from 56 countries took part last year, from Syria to South Korea and Croatia to Guatemala.

This year, the aim is to break that world record with 50000 young people — the equivalent of the population of a small town — coding over 24 hours!

Get involved

Taking part in Moonhack is super simple: code a space-themed project and submit it on 20 July, the anniversary of the moon landing. Young people from 8 to 18 can take part, and Moonhack is open to everyone, wherever you are in the world.

The event is perfect for Code Clubs, CoderDojos, and Raspberry Jams looking for a new challenge, but you can also take part at home with your family. Or, if you have access to a great venue, you could also host a Moonhackathon event and invite young people from your community to get involved — the Moonhack team is offering online resources to help you do this.

On the Moonhack website, you’ll find four simple, astro-themed projects to choose from, one each for Scratch, Python, micro:bit, and Gamefroot. If your young coders are feeling adventurous, they can also create their own space-themed projects: last year we saw some amazing creations, from a ‘dogs vs aliens’ game to lunar football!

For many young people, Moonhack falls in the last week of term, so it’s a perfect activity to celebrate the end of the academic year. If you’re in a part of the world that’s already on break from school, you can hold a Moonhack coding party, which is a great way to keep coding over the holidays!

To register to take part in Moonhack, head over to moonhack.com and fill in your details. If you’re interested in hosting a Moonhackathon, you can also download an information pack here.

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Rumour has it that there’s a worldwide football tournament on, and that England, surprisingly, are doing quite well. In celebration, here are some soccer-themed Raspberry Pi projects for you to try out at home between (or during) matches.

FutureLearn Football

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2018-07-09.

Beat the goalie

Score as many goals as you can in 30 seconds with our code-it-yourself Beat the Goalie game for Scratch. You can access Scratch in any web browser, or offline with your Raspberry Pi.

Start by coding a moving football in Scratch, and work through the project to build a game that tallies your successful attempts on goal within a time limit that you choose. Up the stakes by upgrading your game to include second-player control of the penguin goalie.

Table football

Once you’ve moved on from penalty practice, it’s time to recruit the whole team!

Our Table Football project – free, like all of our learning projects – comes with all the ingredients you need to recreate the classic game, including player sprites, graphics, and sounds.

Instant replay!

Scratch is all well and good, but it’s time we had some real-life table football, with all the snazzy upgrades you can add using a Raspberry Pi.

Foosball Instant Replay

Demo of Foosball Instant Replay system More info here: * https://github.com/swehner/foos * https://github.com/netsuso/foos-tournament Music: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar/Blinded_by_dust/Magic_Mountain_1877

Stefan Wehner’s build is fully documented, so you can learn how to add automatic goal detection, slow-motion instant replay, scorekeeping, tallying, and more.

Ball tracking with Marty

Marty is a 3D-printable educational robot powered by a Raspberry Pi. With the capacity to add the Raspberry Pi camera module, Marty is a great tool for practising object tracking – in this case, ball tracking – for some football fun with robots!

Teaching Marty the Robot to Play Football

In this video we start to program Marty The Robot to play football, using a camera and Raspberry Pi on board to detect the ball and the goal. With the camera, Marty can spot a ball, and detect a pattern next to the goal.

You can also check out Circuit Digest’s ball-tracking robot using a Raspberry Pi, and this ball tracking tutorial by amey_s on Instructables.

What did we miss?

Have you built a football-themed project using a Raspberry Pi? What projects did we miss in our roundup? Share them with us here in the comments, or on social media.

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I know: you’ve seen a bajillion RetroPie implementations before, and a bajillion casemods to go with them. But this one’s so hopelessly, magnificently splendid that we felt we had to share. Magnetic levitation. It’s not just for trains and frogs.

This Zelda casemod, covered with engraved pine from the forests of Hyrule and shiny brass mouldings hammered by…dwarves or something, would be gorgeous as-is. The levitating, mirrored Triforce twizzling away on top is the icing on the cake; and a very lovely cake it is too. Here’s some video (in Spanish, with English subtitles) from Tuberviejuner in Spain, walking you through the build.

Raspberry pi Zelda mod: MagicBerry WindWaker by Makomod & Tuberviejuner.

Raspberry pi Zelda mod: Magic Berry WindWaker The Legend of Zelda by Makomod & Tuberviejuner alucinad con el triforce levitador.

This magical piece of work is by MakoMod, a case modder who splits his time between Barcelona and Texas. There’s a Pi inside running RetroPie, and a separate electromagnetic device levitating the Triforce up top. If you’re interested in incorporating something like this into one of your own builds, there are two ways to go: make your own from scratch, as DrewPaul Designs has done here, or buy a pre-built kit.

If you get in there quickly, you’ve a chance to own this one-off case: MakoMod is auctioning it on eBay. You’ve got until July 14 2018 to bid – good luck!

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Take a selfie, wait for the image to appear, and behold a cartoon version of yourself. Or, at least, behold a cartoon version of whatever the camera thought it saw. Welcome to Draw This by maker Dan Macnish.

Dan has made code, instructions, and wiring diagrams available to help you bring this beguiling weirdery into your own life.

Neural networks, object recognition, and cartoons

One of the fun things about this re-imagined polaroid is that you never get to see the original image. You point, and shoot – and out pops a cartoon; the camera’s best interpretation of what it saw. The result is always a surprise. A food selfie of a healthy salad might turn into an enormous hot dog, or a photo with friends might be photobombed by a goat.

OK. Let’s take this one step at a time.

Pi + camera + button + LED

Draw This uses a Raspberry Pi 3 and a Camera Module, with a button and a useful status LED connected to the GPIO pins via a breadboard. You press the button, and the camera captures a still image while the LED comes on and stays lit for a couple of seconds while the Pi processes the image. So far, so standard Pi camera build.

Interpreting and re-interpreting the camera image

Dan uses Python to process the captured photograph, employing a pre-trained machine learning model from Google to recognise multiple objects in the image. Now he brings the strangeness. The Pi matches the things it sees in the photo with doodles from Google’s huge open-source Quick, Draw! dataset, and generates a new image that represents the objects in the original image as doodles. Then a thermal printer connected to the Pi’s GPIO pins prints the results.

Kangaroos from the Quick, Draw! dataset (I got distracted)

Potential for peculiar

Reading about this build leaves me yearning to see its oddest interpretation of a scene, so if you make this and you find it really does turn you or your friend into a goat, please do share that with us.

And as you can see from my kangaroo digression above, there is a ton of potential for bizarro makes that use the Quick, Draw! dataset, object recognition models, or both; it’s not just the marsupials that are inexplicably compelling (I dare you to go and look and see how long it takes you to get back to whatever you were in the middle of). If you’re planning to make this, or something inspired by this, check out Dan’s cartoonify GitHub repo. And tell us all about it in the comments.

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Right now, we’re working on an online project pathway to support you with all your high-altitude balloon (HAB) flight activities, whether you run them with students or as a hobby. We’ll release the resources later in the year, but in the meantime we have some exciting new HAB software to share with you!

Skycademy and early HAB software

Over the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to conduct several high-altitude balloon (HAB) flights and to help educators who wanted to do HAB projects with learners. In the Foundation’s Skycademy programme, supported by UKHAS members, in particular Dave Akerman, we’ve trained more than 50 teachers to successfully launch near-space missions with their students.

Whenever I advise people who are planning a HAB mission, I tell them that the separate elements actually aren’t that complicated. The difficulty lies in juggling them all at the same time to successfully launch, track, and recover your balloon.

Over the years, some excellent tools and software packages have been developed to help with HAB launches. Dave Akerman’s Pi In The Sky (PITS) software gave beginners the chance to control their first payloads: you enter your own specs into a configuration file, and the software, written in C, handles the rest. Dave’s Long Range (LoRa) gateway software then tracks the payload, receiving balloon data and plotting the flight’s trajectory on a real-time map.

Dave at a Skycademy event

These tools, while useful, present two challenges to the novice HAB enthusiast:

• Exposing and adapting the workings of the software is challenging for novice learners, given that it is written in C
• The existing tracking software and tools are fragmented: one application received LoRa signals; another received radioteletype (RTTY) data; photos were received and had to be manually opened elsewhere; and so on

Introducing Pytrack and SkyGate

Making ballooning as accessible as possible is something we’ve been keen to do since we first got involved in 2015. So I’m delighted to reveal that over the past year, we’ve worked with Dave to produce two new applications to support HAB activities!

Pytrack

Pytrack is a Python implementation of Dave’s original PITS software, and it offers several advantages:

• Learners can create their own tracker in a simpler programming language, rather than simply configuring the existing software
• The core mechanics of the tracker are exposed for the learner to understand, but complex details are abstracted away
• Learners can integrate the technology with standard Python libraries and existing projects
• Pytrack is modular, allowing learners to experiment with underlying radio components

SkyGate

After our last Skycademy event, I started to look for a way to make tracking a payload in flight easier. For Skycademy, we made a hacky tracking box using a Pi, a 7” screen, and a very rough GUI app that I wrote in a hurry lovingly toiled over.

Since then, we have gone on to develop SkyGate, a complete tracking application which runs on a Pi and fits nicely on a 7” screen. It brings together all the tracking functionalities into one intuitive application:

• Live tunable LoRa reception and decoding
• Live tunable RTTY reception and decoding (with compatible USB SDR)
• Image reception and previewing
• GPS tracking to report your location (when using compatible GPS USB dongle)
• Data, images, and GPS upload functionality to HabHub tracking site
• An Overview tab presenting a high-level summary and bearing to payload
• Full customisation via the Settings tab

You can get involved!

We would love HAB enthusiasts to test and experiment with both Pytrack and SkyGate, and to give us feedback. Your input will really help us to write the full guide that we’ll release later this year.

To get started, install both programmes using your command prompt/terminal.

For your payload, run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pytrack

And your receiver, run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install skygate

Follow this guide to start using Pytrack, and read this overview on SkyGate and what you’ll need for a tracking box. To give us your feedback, please raise issues on the respective GitHub repos: for Pytrack here, and for SkyGate here.

We’ve developed these software packages to make launching and tracking a HAB payload easier and more flexible, and we hope you’ll think we’ve succeeded.

Happy ballooning!

Disclaimer: each country has its own laws regarding HAB launches and radio transmissions in their airspace. Before you attempt to carry out your own HAB flight, you need to ensure you have permission and are complying with all local laws.

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3D printing has become far more accessible for hobbyists, with printer prices now in the hundreds instead of thousands of pounds. Last year, we covered some of the best 3D-printable cases for the Pi, and since then, Raspberry Pi enthusiasts have shared even more cool designs on sites such as MyMiniFactory and Thingiverse!

Here are ten of our recent favourites:

World Cup Sputnik

“With the World Cup now underway, I wanted a Russia-themed football sculpture to hang over the desk,” explains creator Ajax Jones. “What better than a football-styled Sputnik!”

The World Cup Sputnik comes complete with a Raspberry Pi that transmits the original Sputnik ‘beeps’ on an FM frequency, allowing co-workers to tune in for some 1960s nostalgia.

Radios

We see an abundance of musical Raspberry Pi projects online, and love looking out for the ones housed in interesting, unique cases like these:

The MiniZ is a streaming radio based on the Zenith Cube, created by Thingiverse user thisoldgeek.

This is a case for a small, retro radio powered by Logitech Media Server. It uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W and displays a radio dial (tunes via a knob), a clock, and ‘Now Playing’ album art.

For something a little more simple to use, Lukas2040‘s NFC radio for children comes with illustrated, NFC-tagged cards to allow his two-year-old daughter to pick her own music to play.

Gaming

Whether it’s console replicas or tabletop arcade cabinets, the internet is awash with gaming-themed Raspberry Pi projects. Here are a few of our favourites!

The Okama Gamesphere is a fictional game console from South Park. Leodym has taken the rather stylish design and converted it into a Raspberry Pi 3 case.

Canino‘s Yet Another Mini Arcade is exactly that. We really like how it reminds us of old, imported gaming consoles from our childhoods.

“I really love the design and look of the HP OMEN Accelerator,” writes designer STIG_. “So I decided to draw up a case for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.”

We really love it too, STIG_. Well done.

Ironman, Ironman, does whatever an Ironman can…

atlredninja‘s Ironman Mark 7 torso housing for the Google AIY Projects Voice Kit is pretty sweet!

Iron man AIY case Neopixel Rings Adafruit

Iron man AIY case Neopixel Rings Adafruit 16 and 12 LEDS. 3d files and instructions for assembly here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2950452 This is just a test to make sure the LEDs are working and the A.I. is working correctly. This took me about 3 weeks to design, print, and assemble.

This model is atlredninja‘s second version of an Ironman-themed AIY project: the first fits within a replica helmet. We’re looking forward to a possible third edition with legs. And a fourth that flies.

We can dream, can’t we?

Speaking of Marvel

How often have you looked at Thor’s hammer and thought to yourself “If only it had a Raspberry Pi inside…”

This case from furnibird is one of several pop culture–themed Raspberry Pi cases that the designer has created. Be sure to check out the others, including a Deathstar and Pac-Man.

3D-printable bird box

chickey‘s 3D-printable Raspberry Pi Bird Box squeezes a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a camera into the lid, turning this simple nesting box into a live-streaming nature cam.

The Raspberry Pi uploads images directly to a webpage, allowing you to check in on the feathered occupants from any computer or mobile device. Nifty.

Print a Raspberry Pi!

Using a 3D-printed Raspberry Pi in place of the real deal while you’re prototyping in the workshop may save you from accidentally damaging your tiny computer.

AlwaysComputing designed this Raspberry Pi Voxel Model using MagicaVoxel, stating “I like to tinker and play with the program MagicaVoxel. I find it therapeutic!”

What else?

What Raspberry Pi–themed 3D prints have you seen lately? Share your favourites with us in the comments, or on Twitter and Facebook.

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This is the story of Occu-Pi, or how a magnet, a Raspberry Pi, and a barrel bolt saved an office team from queuing for the toilet.

The toil of toilet queuing

When Brian W. Wolter’s employer moved premises, the staff’s main concern as the dearth of toilets at the new office, and the increased queuing time this would lead to:

Our previous office had long been plagued by unreasonably long bathroom lines. At several high-demand periods throughout the day we’d be forced to wait three, four, five people deep while complaining bitterly to each other until our turn to use the facilities arrived. With even fewer bathrooms in our new office, concern about timely access was naturally high.

Faced with this problem, the in-house engineers decided to find a technological solution.

Occu-Pi

The main thing the engineers had to figure out was just how to determine the difference between a closed door and an occupied stall. Brian explains in his write-up:

There is one notable wrinkle: it’s not enough to know the door is closed, you need to know if the bathroom is actually in use — that is, locked from the inside. After considering and discarding a variety of ‘creative’ solutions (no thank you, motion sensors and facial recognition), we landed on a straightforward and reliable approach.

The team ended up using a magnet attached to the door’s barrel bolt to trigger a notification. Simply shutting the door doesn’t act as a trigger — the bolt needs to lock the door to set off a magnetic switch. That switch then triggers both LED notifications and updates to a dedicated Slack channel.

For the technically-minded, Occu-Pi is a pretty straightforward build. And those wanting to learn more about it can find a full write-up in Brian’s Medium post.

We’ve seen a few different toilet notification projects over the years, for example this project from DIY Tryin’ using a similar trigger plus a website. What’s nice about Occu-Pi, however, is the simplicity of its design and the subtle use of Slack — Pi Tower’s favoured platform for office shenanigans.

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Hey folks, Rob here with good news about the latest edition of The MagPi! Issue 71, out right now, is all about running Android on Raspberry Pi with the help of emteria.OS and Android Things.

Android and Raspberry Pi, two great tastes that go great together!

Android and Raspberry Pi

A big part of our main feature looks at emteria.OS, a version of Android that runs directly on the Raspberry Pi. By running it on a touchscreen setup, you can use your Pi just like an Android tablet — one that’s easily customisable and hackable for all your embedded computing needs. Inside the issue, we’ve got a special emteria.OS discount code for readers.

We also look at Android Things, the official Android release for Raspberry Pi that focuses on IoT applications, and we show you some of the amazing projects that have been built with it.

More in The MagPi

If Android’s not your thing, we also have a big feature on building a Raspberry Pi weather station in issue 71!

Build your own Raspberry Pi weather station

On top of that, we’ve included guides on how to get started with TensorFlow AI and on building an oscilloscope.

We really loved this card scanning project! Read all about it in issue 71.

All this, along with our usual varied selection of project showcases, excellent tutorials, and definitive reviews!

Get The MagPi 71

You can get The MagPi 71 today from WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda. If you live in the US, head over to your local Barnes & Noble or Micro Center in the next few days for a print copy. You can also get the new issue online from our store, or digitally via our Android or iOS apps. And don’t forget, there’s always the free PDF as well.

New subscription offer!

Want to support the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the magazine? We’ve launched a new way to subscribe to the print version of The MagPi: you can now take out a monthly £4 subscription to the magazine, effectively creating a rolling pre-order system that saves you money on each issue.

You can also take out a twelve-month print subscription and get a Pi Zero W plus case and adapter cables absolutely free! This offer does not currently have an end date.

That’s it, folks! See you at Raspberry Fields.

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Fight the urge to chant the Avril Lavigne song as you cruise the streets on Pieter Thomas’s speed- and distance-tracking skateboard.

Instant approval

“That is sweet!” exclaimed Ben Nuttall when I shared this project on the Raspberry Pi Slack channel. And indeed it is — a simple idea, perfectly executed, resulting in a final product that actually managed to coax a genuine and positive response from Ben!

Prove your worth

Project creator Pieter Thomas, a student at Howest Kortrijk University, needed to show off his skills by building a ‘something’ for his course. His inspiration?

I came up with this idea because I like to skate and cruise around. While I’m cruising, it would be handy to see how much distance I’ve travelled and see my speed.

So he decided to incorporate an odometer, a speedometer, and an RFID reader into a skateboard to produce this neat build.

Make and skate

While Pieter has an Arduino manage the onboard RFID reader, he’s put a Raspberry Pi 3 in charge of everything else, including the speed and distance readings taken with the help of a hall effect sensor (a transducer that uses magnetic fields to manage voltage output).

Pieter added the RFID reader to identify different users, with databases allowing for session data collection — perfect for time and speed challenges among friends!

Home-brew casing

All the electronics live in a Tupperware-like container that Pieter screwed to the bottom of the board. Holes in the deck display an LCD screen, a potentiometer, and a buzzer.

To allow speed and distance calculations, Pieter drilled a hole into one of the wheels and inserted a magnet. Once per wheel rotation, the hall effect sensor recognises the passing magnet. The build records the time taken between passes, computes the speed and distance covered, and shows them on the LCD screen.

Pieter’s Instructables project page goes into a lot more detail of how to build your own skate-o-meter. If you’ve used a Pi for your skateboarding project, make sure to let us know!

Skateboard + Pi

Other impressive Raspberry Pi–based board builds include Tim Maier’s motorised skateboard, aka the first blog post I ever wrote for Raspberry Pi, and Matt ‘The Raspberry Pi Guy’ Timmons-Brown’s 30kmph longboard, aka the project that resulted in this video of Raspberry Pi’s Director of Software Engineering:

Sk8r Pi ft. The Raspberry Pi Guy… and Gordon

The Raspberry Pi Guy popped into Pi Towers to show off his new creation. While skating up and down the office on his Pi-powered skateboard, our Director of Software Engineering, Gordon Hollingworth, decided to have a go.

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This week, the ten winning Astro Pi Mission Space Lab teams got to take part in a video conference with ESA Astronaut Tim Peake!

ESA Astro Pi students meet Tim Peake

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2018-06-26.

A brief history of Astro Pi

In 2014, Raspberry Pi Foundation partnered with the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency to fly two Raspberry Pi computers to the International Space Station. These Pis, known as Astro Pis Ed and Izzy, are each equipped with a Sense HAT and Camera Module (IR or Vis) and housed within special space-hardened cases.

In our annual Astro Pi Challenge, young people from all 22 ESA member states have the opportunity to design and code experiments for the Astro Pis to become the next generation of space scientists.

Mission Zero vs Mission Space Lab

Back in September, we announced the 2017/2018 European Astro Pi Challenge, in partnership with the European Space Agency. This year, for the first time, the Astro Pi Challenge comprised two missions: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab.

Mission Zero is a new entry-level challenge that allows young coders to have their message displayed to the astronauts on-board the ISS. It finished up in February, with more than 5400 young people in over 2500 teams taking part!

For Mission Space Lab, young people work like real scientists by designing their own experiment to investigate one of two topics:

Life in space

For this topic, young coders write code to run on Astro Pi Vis (Ed) in the Columbus module to investigate life aboard the ISS.

Life on Earth

For this topic, young people design a code experiment to run on Astro Pi IR (Izzy), aimed towards the Earth through a window, to investigate life down on our planet.

Our participants

We had more than 1400 students across 330 teams take part in this year’s Mission Space Lab. Teams who submitted an eligible idea for an experiment received an Astro Pi kit from ESA to develop their Python code. These kits contain the same hardware that’s aboard the ISS, enabling students to test their experiments in conditions similar to those on the space station. The best experiments were granted flight status earlier this year, and the code of these teams ran on the ISS in April.

And the winners are…

The teams received the results of their experiments and were asked to submit scientific reports based on their findings. Just a few weeks ago, 98 teams sent us brilliant reports, and we had the difficult task of whittling the pool of teams down to find the final ten winners!

As you can see in the video above, the winning teams were lucky enough to take part in a very special video conference with ESA Astronaut Tim Peake.

2017/18 Mission Space Lab winning teams

The Dark Side of Light from Branksome Hall, Canada, investigated whether the light pollution in an area could be used to determine the source of energy for the electricity consumption.

Spaceballs from Attert Lycée Redange, Luxembourg, successfully calculated the speed of the ISS by analysing ground photographs.

Enrico Fermi from Liceo XXV Aprile, Italy, investigated the link between the Astro Pi’s magnetometer and X-ray measurements from the GOES-15 satellite.

Team Aurora from Hyvinkään yhteiskoulun lukio, Finland, showed how the Astro Pi’s magnetometer could be used to map the Earth’s magnetic field and determine the latitude of the ISS.

@stroMega from Institut de Genech, France, used Astro Pi Izzy’s near-infrared Camera Module to measure the health and density of vegetation on Earth.

Ursa Major from a CoderDojo in Belgium created a program to autonomously measure the percentage of vegetation, water, and clouds in photographs from Astro Pi Izzy.

Canarias 1 from IES El Calero, Spain, built on existing data and successfully determined whether the ISS was eclipsed from on-board sensor data.

The Earth Watchers from S.T.E.M Robotics Academy, Greece, used Astro Pi Izzy to compare the health of vegetation in Quebec, Canada, and Guam.

Trentini DOP from CoderDojo Trento, Italy, investigated the stability of the on-board conditions of the ISS and whether or not they were effected by eclipsing.

Team Lampone from CoderDojo Trento, Italy, accurately measured the speed of the ISS by analysing ground photographs taken by Astro Pi Izzy.

Well done to everyone who took part, and massive congratulations to all the winners!

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Tired of using the same old plastic LEDs in your projects? It’s time to grab a hot glue gun and some confectionary moulds to create your own custom LEDs!

Blinky LEDs!

Lighting up an LED is the standard first step into the world of digital making with a Raspberry Pi. For example, at our two-day Picademy training events, budding Raspberry Pi Certified Educators are shown the ropes of classroom digital making by learning how to connect an LED to a Pi and use code to make it blink.

Anastasia Hanneken on Twitter

Blinking LED Light @Raspberry_Pi #picademy! https://t.co/zhTODYsBxp

And while LEDs come in various sizes, they’re all pretty much the same shape: small, coloured domes of plastic with pointy legs that always manage to draw blood when I grab them from the depths of my maker drawer.

So why not do away with the boring and make some new LEDs based on your favourite characters and shapes?

Making custom LEDs with a whole lotta hot glue

The process of creating your own custom LEDs is pretty simple, but it’s not without its risk — namely, burnt fingertips and sizzled LEDs! So be careful when making these, and supervise young children throughout the process.

The moulds

I used flexible ice cube trays, but you could also use silicon chocolate moulds. As long as the mould is flexible, this should work — I haven’t tried hard plastic moulds, so I can’t make any promises for those. Also be sure to test whether your mould will withstand the heat of the hot glue!

Check your LEDs

Before you submerge your LEDs in hot glue, check to make sure they work. The easiest way to do this is to set up a testing station using a Pi, a breadboard, some jumper wires, and a resistor. To save having to write code, I used the 3V3 pin and a ground pin.

Remember, the shorter of the two legs connects to the ground pin, while the longer goes to 3V3. If you mix this up, you’ll end up with a fried LED like this poor LEGO man.

Everything isn’t awesome.

Once you’ve confirmed that your LED works, bend its legs to make it easier to insert it into the glue.

Glue

Next, grab a hot glue gun and fill a mould. The glue will take a while to cool, so you have some time to make sure that all nooks and crannies are filled before you insert an LED.

Tip: test a corner of your mould with the tip of your glue gun to check how heat-resistant it is. One of my moulds didn’t enjoy heat and began to bubble.

Once your mould is properly filled, push an LED into the glue, holding on to the legs to keep your fingertips safe. Have a wiggle around to find the bottom and sides of your mould and ensure that your LED is in the centre.

Pick a colour best suited to your mould. You could try using multiple LEDs on larger moulds to introduce more colours!

You may notice that the LED tries to sink a little and the legs begin to drop. Keep an eye out and adjust them if you need to. They’ll stop moving once the glue begins to set.

These took about ten minutes to cool down.

Be patient

Don’t rush. The hot glue will take time to cool down, especially if you’re using a larger mould like the one for this Stormtrooper helmet.

Here I used a gumdrop LED, which is larger than your standard maker kit LED.

You’ll know that the glue has set when the shape pulls away easily from the mould. It should just pop out when its ready.

Pop!

Light it up

Test your new custom LED one more time on your testing rig to ensure you haven’t damaged the connections.

As with all LEDs, they look better in the dark (and terrible when you try to take a photo of them), so try testing them in a dim room or at night. You could also use a box to create a small testing lab if you’re planning to make a lot of these.

Now it’s your turn

What custom LED would you want to make? How would you use it in your next project? And what other fun hacks have you used to augment tech for your builds?

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Using motion detection and a Raspberry Pi Zero W, Lukas Stratmann has produced this rather creepy moving eye in a jar. And with a little bit of, ahem, dissection, you can too!

Floating Eye in a Jar With Motion Tracking

Made for an Arts seminar I attended for my General Studies, i.e. classes not organized by the faculty for CompSci: “Interaktive Exponate entwickeln mit dem RaspberryPi” (translation: Development of interactive exhibitions with the RaspberryPi). Music: Rise by Meydän: CC-BY http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Meydan/For_Creators/Rise_1709 I embedded some neodymium magnets in a ping-pong ball that I’d cut open.

Eww!

We hear you. Among the Raspberry Pi projects we’ve shared on this blog, Lukas’s eye in a jar is definitely one of the eww-est. But the idea and the tech behind it is quite fascinating.

Here’s what we know…

Lukas hasn’t shared the code for his project online. But with a bit of sleuthing, we’re sure the Raspberry Pi community can piece it together.

What we do know is that the project uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a camera, some magnets, a servo, and a ping pong ball, with a couple of 3D-printed parts to keep everything in place. Lukas has explained:

I embedded some neodymium magnets in a ping-pong ball that I’d cut open. The magnets and weights (two 20 Euro cent coins) are held in place by a custom 3D-printed mount. Everything is glued in with hot glue, and I sealed the ping-pong ball with silicone sealant and painted it with acrylic paint.

Beneath the jar, a servo motor is connected to a second set of magnets. When the servo moves, these magnets cause the eyeball to move in tandem, by magnet magic.

Using this tutorial by Adrian Rosebrock, Lukas incorporated motion detection into his project, allowing the camera to track passers-by, and the Pi to direct the servo and eyeball.

Build your own eye in a jar

The best skill of makers is their ability to figure out how things work to recreate them. So if you’re up for the challenge, we’d love to see you try to build your own tribute to Lukas’s eye in a jar.

And why stop there? Using magnets and servos with your Raspberry Pi opens up a world of projects, such as Bethanie’s amazing Harry Potter–inspired wizard chess set!

How would you use them in your builds?

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Arduino is officially brilliant. It’s the perfect companion for your Raspberry Pi, opening up new possibilities for robotics, drones and all sorts of physical computing projects. In HackSpace magazine issue 8  we’re taking a look at what’s going on on planet Arduino, and how it can make our world better.

This little board and its ecosystem are hugely important to the world of digital making. It’s affordable, it’s powerful, and it’s open hardware so you know that if you embed one of these in a project and the company goes bust tomorrow, the hardware will always be viable.

Arduino has helped power a new generation of digital makers, and now with a new team in charge, new boards and new software, it’s ready for the next generation.

Noisy toys

We get to speak to loads of fascinating people, but this month marks the first time we’ve ever met a science busker. Meet Stephen Summers, a former teacher who makes a mess with cornflour, water, and sound waves, all in the name of sharing the joy of physics.

Glass-blowing

While we love messing about with digital technologies, we’re also a big fan of good old-fashioned craft skills. And you can’t get much more old-fashioned than traditional glass-blowing. Join us as we attempt to turn red hot molten glass into a multicoloured object without burning ourselves or setting anything on fire.

Guitar synth

People are endlessly clever, inventive, and all-round brilliant. A fantastic example is Björk, the Icelandic musician whose work defies categorisation. Another is Matt Bradshaw, who has made a synthesiser that you play by strumming six metal strings with a plectrum to complete a circuit. Oh, and named it after Björk. Read all about it and get inspired to do something equally bonkers.

Machine learning

Do you have children? Do they leave the lights on all the time, causing you to shout, “THIS ISN’T BLACKPOOL FLAMING ILLUMINATIONS, YOU KNOW!” Well, now you can replace those children with an Arduino. With a bit of machine learning, the Arduino can train itself to turn the lights on and off at the right time, all the time. Plus they don’t cost as much as human children, so it’s a double win!

Dry ice cream

When the sun comes out in Blighty, it doesn’t hang around for long. So why wait for your domestic fridge to freeze your tasty dairy-based desserts, when you can add some solid carbon dioxide and freeze it in a flash? Follow our tutorial and you too can have tasty treats with the ironically warm glow that comes from using chemicals at -78°C.

And there’s more

We’ve filled the rest of the magazine with a robot orchestra, watch restoration, audio boards for Raspberry Pi, magical colour-changing wearables, and more. Get stuck in!

Get your copy of HackSpace magazine

If you like the sound of this month’s content, you can find HackSpace magazine in WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and independent newsagents in the UK. If you live in the US, check out your local Barnes & Noble, Fry’s, or Micro Center next week. We’re also shipping to stores in Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Belgium, and Brazil, so be sure to ask your local newsagent whether they’ll be getting HackSpace magazine.

And if you can’t get to the shops, fear not: you can subscribe from £4 an issue from our online shop. And if you’d rather try before you buy, you can always download the free PDF. Happy reading, and happy making!

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With the recent announcement of the 2019 Pi Wars dates, we’ve collected some essential online resources to help you get started in the world of competitive robots.

Robotics 101

Before you can strap chainsaws and flamethrowers to your robot, you need to learn some basics. Sorry.

As part of our mission to put digital making into the hands of people across the globe, the Raspberry Pi Foundation creates free project tutorials for hardware builds, Scratch projects, Python games, and more. And to get you started with robot building, we’ve put together a series of buggy-centric projects!

Begin with our Build a robot buggy project, where you’ll put together a simple buggy using motors, a Raspberry Pi 3, and a few other vital ingredients. From there, move on to the Remotely control your buggy tutorial to learn how to command your robot using an Android phone, a Google AIY Projects Voice Kit, or a home-brew controller. Lastly, train your robot to think for itself using our new Build a line-following robot project.

Prepare your buggy for battle

Put down the chainsaw — we’re not there yet!

For issue 51, The MagPi commissioned ace robot builder Brian Cortiel to create a Build a remote control robot feature. The magazine then continued the feature in issue 52, adding a wealth of sensors to the robot. You can download both issues as free PDFs from The MagPi website. Head here for issue 51 and here for issue 52.

Pi Wars

To test robot makers’ abilities, previous Pi Wars events have included a series of non-destructive challenges: the balloon-popping Pi Noon, the minimal maze, and an obstacle course. Each challenge calls for makers to equip their robot with various abilities, such as speed, manoeuvrability, or line-following functionality.

Tanya Fish on Twitter

Duck shoot, 81 points! Nice one bub. #piwars https://t.co/UCSWaEOJh8

The Pi Wars team has shared a list of hints and tips from Brian Corteil that offer a great place to start your robotics journey. Moreover, many Pi Wars competitors maintain blogs about their build process to document the skills they learn, and the disasters along the way.

This year’s blog category winner, David Pride’s Pi and Chips website, has a wealth of robot-making information.

If you’d like to give your robot a robust, good-looking body, check out PiBorg, robot-makers extraordinaire. Their robot chassis selection can help you get started if you don’t have access to a laser cutter or 3D printer, or if you don’t want to part with one of your Tupperware boxes to house your robot.

And now for the chainsaws!

Robot-building is a great way to learn lots of new skills, and we encourage everyone to give it a go, regardless of your digital making abilities. But please don’t strap chainsaws to your Raspberry Pi–powered robot unless you are trained in the ways of chainsaw-equipped robot building. The same goes for flamethrowers, cattle prods, and anything else that could harm another person, animal, or robot.

Pi Wars 2019 will be taking place on 30 and 31 March in the Cambridge Computer Laboratory William Gates Building. If you’d like to take part, you can find more information here.

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Are you interested in using an E Ink display in your next Raspberry Pi project? Let us help you get started!

Weather and new display using a Raspberry Pi Zero and Kindle e-reader by Luke Haas

E Ink displays

E Ink displays are accessible, they don’t need a lot of power, and they can display content without any power connection whatsoever — think Amazon Kindle if you’ve only a vague knowledge of the technology.

E Ink displays work using negative and positive charges. They contain tiny microcapsules suspended in a liquid within a film layer. The microcapsules consist of negatively charged black particles and positively charged white particles. By applying the correct charge, you control whether the black or white particles come to the surface.

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E Ink displays for your Raspberry Pi projects

So how and why would you use an E Ink display in your project? Simple! Aside from their low power consumption and indefinite display time, E Ink displays are relatively cheap, light, and interesting to look at. Plus, they’re easy to read in sunny conditions, which isn’t always true of LCD screens. And with e-readers now in their teens, there are plenty of forgotten devices collecting dust in drawers, ready to be repurposed.

Repurposing old e-readers

If you’ve ever tried to use the ‘experimental browser’ on a Kindle device, you’ll have found yourself transported back to the glory days of dial-up refresh rates and half-downloaded images. The only thing missing is the screeching connection tone. However, by connecting your Kindle to the same network as your Raspberry Pi, you can create a web page accessible to the e-reader to display data to your E Ink screen.

This bike computer by David Schneider makes use of that trick:

DIY: Build A Better Bike Computer

A Raspberry Pi and Kindle make vital information about your bicycle journey readable. Read more: http://spectrum.ieee.org/video/geek-life/hands-on/video-build-a-better-bike-computer

Secondhand e-readers are fairly easy to pick up from websites such as eBay, from your local carboot/yard sale, or from book-loving friends or family members. If you have one to hand and want to get making, you’ll find an abundance of tutorials for notification displays and low-power minimalist computers using e-readers.

Brand-new E Ink displays

If you want to buy a smaller display, or don’t have access to an old e-reader, you’ll find many online hobby retailers selling E Ink screens in several sizes and colours. The Pi Supply PaPiRus comes in many shapes and sizes as an easy-to-use Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware Attached on Top). Simply push it in place on the GPIO pins, download the library to your Pi, and you’re good to go.

In case you’re looking to add a little more colour to your display, the Pimoroni red, white, and black Inky pHAT is an add-on designed for the Raspberry Pi Zero.

A quick and effective project for a smaller display like this is a Raspberry Pi Zero name badge, and we’ve seen our share of them at tech events and Picademy training sessions.

Brian Corteil on Twitter

@MKRaspberryJam Yes, just like this one, pHat badge is a case for showing of your pHats, look mum no power!

Once you’ve programmed your Pi and updated your E Ink screen, you can detach it from the Pi and wow those you meet with your magic power-free digital name badge!

And if you buy yourself an E Ink HAT, you can even have a go at this Monzo-powered money tracker.

Past predictions of Liz Upton

Back in 2013, our Director of Communication, Liz Upton, wrote a post about Max Ogden’s Kindleberry Pi build, commenting the following:

Here at the Foundation, we’re watching the development of e-ink products with great interest. At the moment it’s nigh-on impossible to buy an e-ink display as a consumer unless it comes bundled as part of an e-reader like a Kindle or a Nook; and that makes them very expensive. The technology has all kinds of potential for applications we want to see the Pi being used for: the low energy requirement makes an e-ink screen a perfect choice for places where you’re off the grid or reliant on solar power. We’re looking forward to seeing prices come down and displays becoming more easily available to consumers.

How lovely to be sat here in 2018, writing a post about the growing use of E Ink displays and the wide availability of the technology to hobbyists and digital makers! It shows how far the electronics industry for home builders has come, and we’re excited to see where it’s heading next.

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When Abertay University purchased some unwanted Doctor Who props from the BBC in 2011, they could never have known that their future computer science student Gary Taylor would transform a water-damaged robot corpse into a working K-9, the cutest (and snarkiest) of all the Doctor’s companions.

image c/o The Courier

K-9

If you’re unfamiliar with Doctor Who, you may not be aware of the Doctor’s robotic-canine best friend, K-9. I won’t wax lyrical about the long and winding history of this iconic science fiction character (though I could), but those of you who want to learn more can watch the video below.

History of K9 – History of Doctor Who

Hello and welcome to the Whoniverse and to another instalment of the History of Doctor Who series, this time I’m not looking at a universe conquering species but a tin dog. Yes the Doctor’s past travelling companion K9. There have been many versions of K9 and he has appeared alongside numerous Doctor’s and other companions.

Tl;dw: K-9 is basically a really clever, robotic dog invented in the year 5000.

Resurrecting a robotic dog

For his final-year dissertation, computer science student Gary Taylor decided to bring K-9 back to life, having discovered the prop damaged by a water leak in the university hackspace.

“I love robotics, I love programming, I love dogs, and I love Doctor Who.” Don’t we all, Gary. Don’t we all.
Image c/o The Courier

For his dissertation, titled Creating an Autonomous Robot Utilizing Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and Ultrasound Sensors for Mapping a Room, Gary used modern-day technology to rebuild K-9’s original and often unreliable radio-controlled electronics from the 1970s.

However, Gary’s K-9 is more than a simple remote-controlled robot. As the dissertation title states, the robot uses ultrasound sensors for room mapping, and this function is controlled by both an Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

A block diagram taken from Gary’s dissertation

An Arduino Mega 2560 controls the wheels and three ultrasound sensors located at the bottom of K-9’s body. It passes the sensor data to the onboard Raspberry Pi 3, and the Pi plots obstacles and walls to create a map of K-9’s surroundings.

The three ultrasonic sensors can be seen along the bottom of K-9’s body

The Raspberry Pi also connects to a smartphone via Bluetooth, where Gary runs a custome app to remotely control K-9 and view the map it creates.

More information? Affirmative!

The team at the Electronic Engineering Journal has written up a very thorough explanation of Gary’s dissertation. Those interested in the full details of the robot won’t be disappointed!

For a video of Gary and K-9 that refuses to embed itself in this blog post, head over to The Courier’s website.

And for more Doctor Who–related Raspberry Pi builds, check out Jeremy Lee’s remake of Captain Jack’s Vortex Manipulator, a synthesised rendition of the classic theme using a Raspberry Pi Zero, and a collection of builds and props in this Doctor Who roundup, including a sonic screwdriver, a Dalek, and a TARDIS in near-space.

Oh, and another thing…

BBC released some cool behind-the-scenes images and photos from season ten of Doctor Who, including this production art for Nardole’s tracking device:

The Pi Towers staff may have let out a little squee of delight when we noticed the Raspberry Pi included within.

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Artist Steve Messam is celebrating the North of England’s historic role in railway innovation with 16 Raspberry Pi–controlled steam engine whistles around the city of Newcastle.

The Great Exhibition of the North

The Great Exhibition of the North is a summer-long celebration of the pioneering spirit of the North of England. Running over 80 days, the event will feature live performances, exhibitions, artworks, and displays of innovation from 22 June – 9 September 2018.

As part of the celebration, artist Steve Messam is introducing his Whistle project in Newcastle in honour of the North’s part in the innovation of the railway. “Listen out for the evocative sound of steam engine whistles once again echoing across the city of Newcastle,” states the project page of The Great Exhibition of the North. “The sound installation is designed to recall the role of the North in engineering and the invention of the railway, sparking memories and forging links between past and present.”

Whistle

Steve first developed the idea for Whistle as a pitch to the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park back in 2014. He originally wanted to install a line of whistles along the 22-mile course of the old railway line between Callander and Glen Dochart, with whistles sounding off in one-second intervals, recreating the sound of the old line.

Below is a very nice roundup of the initial 2-mile test run, including the original whistle designs.

Steve Messam | Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park

The Artistic Reflections publication will be available from June 2017 For more information, or to order a copy, please contact: susechristie@googlemail.com Designed by Marco Scerri, edited by Susan Christie and supported by Creative Scotland Steve Messam Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park 186,340 hectares Project website: www.mistandmountains.wordpress.com Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park was designated in 2002 and covers 720 square miles of outstanding landscape adjacent to the central belt of Scotland.

Fast forward to 2018 and The Great Exhibition of the North, where Steve is surrounding the city of Newcastle with 16 newly casted brass whistles. The new installation follows the old city wall of Newcastle, with each whistle sounding at exactly 1pm on every day of the exhibition.

Original plans for the whistle

The William Lane Foundry cast the 16 whistles to match a design by William Armstrong based on measurements of an original whistle held by the North East Locomotive Preservation Group.

Whistle casting at the William Lane Foundry

Each whistle is equipped with a Raspberry Pi that controls the release of compressed air through the brass to replicate the sound of a steam whistle.

Steve Messam on Twitter

Another roof, another day of testing #whistle for #getnorth2018 https://t.co/j5Yszx1Crl

Each unit is powered by solar panels and registers the time from the National Physical Laboratory’s atomic clock in London to ensure accurate timings. As a fallback in case of WiFi issues, the whistles are also linked to the clock set on the Raspberry Pi itself.

Steve Messam on Twitter

The more I think about it the more I really like that ‘Whistle’ only really exists for about 20 seconds each day.

For more information on Whistle, check out this wonderful article by the Teesdale Mercury. You can also find out more about Steve Messam projects, such as his paper bridge that can support the weight of a Land Rover, on his website or by following his Twitter account.

A Whistle-stop tour of Newcastle

And if you’re in Newcastle while The Great Exhibition of the North is running and you spot one of the 16 whistles, be sure to tag us in your pics and videos on social media so we can see it in action.

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