Here’s a guest post from our old friends Mike Horne and Tim Richardson. Come and join the fun at the next Pi Wars!

Pi Wars is a challenge-based robotics competition in which every robot must be controlled by a Raspberry Pi. It’s great fun, and it will all be kicking off once again on 1st-2nd April 2017. For the first time, we are extending the event to run over two days, as we have been overwhelmed with interested applicants.

Another victim succumbs to the obstacle course and its turntable of doom

We have always tried to encourage young robot builders to get involved in CamJam and in Pi Wars. Previously we have held Pi Wars in September and December, but this did not allow school teams enough time to build, program, test, and otherwise prepare their robot around their schoolwork. We therefore decided to move the event date to later in the academic year: we think April is late enough for schools to have run enough robot club sessions, but early enough not to clash with exams.

People of all ages take part. Here’s Amy, aided by Heffalump and friends, showing Eben her robot.

This time around, we have a celebrity judge: Dr Lucy Rogers from the BBC’s Robot Wars will be putting your robots through their paces.

Dr Lucy Rogers in conversation with an old friend

In previous years, we have categorised robots by cost (in 2014) and size (in 2015). This time, we are going to group teams into the following categories:

• Schools and other clubs

• Families and groups of friends

• Amateur/beginner/intermediate hobbyists(s)

• Professional or expert hobbyist(s)

This means that robot teams will be competing against their peers, rather than against those with different skill levels – so, it will be, for instance, school vs school and family vs family (in a non-Mafia kind of way).

This is the kind of thing you see at Pi Wars: your friendly Director of Communications commandeers a gigantic Big Trak.

This year’s list of challenges is available on the Pi Wars website. As well as winning points for their performance in a range of challenges, this year’s robots are also being given points for artistic and technical merit. There’s even a prize for the funniest robot (the competition does start on April Fool’s Day, after all!) and a pre-event blogging competition which encourages teams write about themselves, and their journey from a collection of parts to a working robot.

We’ve come up with a list of general rules and also rules for each challenge. Perhaps the most important one this year is a requirement that your robot must be sub-A4 in size. This still leaves quite a lot of room for flexibility in design, whilst at the same time levelling the playing field. It also means that those teams who are using kits are in with a better chance of competing against those who make their robot from scratch.

Entry into Pi Wars is on an application basis, rather than first-come, first served. With the number of teams we’re expecting to apply, the quality of your application is important. You can read more about the application and selection process here.

To apply to enter the competition, please fill in the application form. Feel free to take as much time over your application, and provide as much information as possible.

If you’re interested in robotics and technology, but you don’t want to build your own robot this time, you are still very welcome to come and watch the competition. Spectator tickets will go on sale later in the year. We only charge for adults, so it’s great for those on limited incomes. Join our mailing list to be notified when tickets are available, or keep an eye on piwars.org.

The game is afoot! Competitors at Pi Wars 2015

If you’re an altruistic type, you may be wondering if there’s some way you can help with Pi Wars. As with all big events, we need a team of volunteers to make the day go smoothly. Rather than having just a few marshals who spend the entire day helping, we aim to have as many people as possible so that everyone can spend most of the day watching the robots take on the challenges. Depending on the number of people who volunteer, helpers spend approximately two hours doing marshalling activities. Judges generally spend slightly more time judging, but we aim to give everyone a chance to experience the event as a spectator as well as helping us out! If you’d like to help out, please do contact us. We’ll be delighted to hear from you! We are also very happy to hear from potential sponsors: you can check out our website for more information on sponsorship, and on what we can offer in return.

To whet your appetite for the upcoming competition, or if you have never been to Pi Wars and want to know what it’s like on the day, we’d like to leave you with Matt Manning’s video of last year’s event…

Pi Wars 2015

Uploaded by RaspberryPiIVBeginners on 2015-12-05.

…and Spencer Organ’s video of the 2014 wars:

Pi Wars December 2014

What can you do with a Raspberry Pi? Build robots! Check out this video of Pi Wars held on Saturday 6th December 2014.

Tickets will be available for observers as well as competitors; it promises to be another great weekend. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Pi Wars 3.0

In my day, you were lucky if you had some broken Clackers and a half-sucked, flocculent gobstopper in your trouser pockets. But here I am, half a century later, watching a swarm of school pupils running around the playground with entire computers attached to them.

Or microcontrollers, at least. This was Eastlea Community School’s Technology Day, and Steph and I had been invited along by ICT and computing teacher Mr Richards, a long-term Raspberry Pi forum member and Pi enthusiast. The day was a whole school activity, involving 930 pupils and 100 staff, showcasing how computing and technology can be used across the curriculum. In the playground, PE students had designed and coded micro:bits to measure all manner of sporting metrics. In physics, they were investigating g-forces. In the ICT and computing rooms, whole cohorts were learning to code. This was really innovative stuff.

All ICT classrooms should have shelves like this

A highlight of the tour was Mr Richard’s classroom, stuffed with electronics, robots, and hacking goodness, and pupils coming and going. It was a really creative space. Impressively, there are Raspberry Pis permanently installed on every desk, which is just how we envisaged it: a normal classroom tool for digital making.

All this was amazing, and certainly the most impressive cross-curricular use of computing I’ve seen in a school. But having lived and breathed the Raspberry Pi Oracle weather station project for several months, I was really keen to see what they’d done with theirs. And it was a corker. Students from the computing club had built and set up the station in their lunch breaks, and installed it in a small garden area.

Mr Richards and the Eastlea Community School weather station team

Then they had hacked it, adding a solar panel, battery and WiFi. This gets round the problems of how to power the station and how to transfer data. The standard way is Power over Ethernet, which uses the same cable for power and data, but this is not always the optimal solution, depending on location. It’s not as simple as sticking a solar panel on a stick either. What happens when it’s cloudy? Will the battery recharge in winter? Mr Richards and his students have spent a lot of time investigating such questions, and it’s exactly the sort of problem-solving and engineering that we want to encourage. Also, we love hacking.

Not content with these achievements, they plan to add a camera to monitor wildlife and vegetation, perhaps tying it in with the weather data. They’re also hoping to install another weather station elsewhere, so that they can compare the data and investigate the school microclimate in more detail. The weather station itself will be used for teaching and learning this September.

Eastlea Community School’s weather station really is a showcase for the project, and we’d like to thank Mr Richards and his students for working so hard on it. If you want to learn more about solar panels and other hacks, then head over to our weather station forum.

Weather station update

The remaining weather station kits have started shipping to schools this week! We sent an email out recently for people to confirm delivery addresses, and if you’ve done this you should have yours soon. If you were offered a weather station last year and have not had an email from us in the last few weeks (early July), then please contact us immediately at weather@raspberrypi.org.

Happy Days! @TASIS_Lugano @Raspberry_Pi @clivebeale @tvenchus pic.twitter.com/cExHlAr083

— Amy Bloodworth (@amy_abroad) July 26, 2016

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Computing and weather stations at Eastlea Community School

Hello all! Raspberry Pi would like to ask you out for the day. We have a day of making, hacking, bikes, bird boxes, picnicking, and filming lined up. All we need now is some good company!

YouTube

No Description

This day of tinkering shenanigans is in preparation for our brand new programme for young people, which will be launching soon. If you’d like to apply, you need to be aged between 12 and 18, living in the UK, and free on Tuesday 23rd August 2016. You also need to be comfortable in front of a camera. We’ll be catching all the action throughout the whole day and making videos to share with the world, so we need smiley faces! If you love tinkering and getting creative, then this is for you. You don’t need any experience with computers or electronics; this is for anybody who enjoys making things.

We’ll cover your travel costs, and if you are coming a really long way we can provide accommodation for you and a parent or guardian. Accompanying adults will get the day to themselves to do whatever they please around Cambridge: it’s a beautiful place with lots to see.

Makers make!

In order to bag an invitation, you’ll need to send our judges a mini video about yourself. This video is your chance to shine, so get creative! (Don’t worry about special equipment – we’re expecting most of you to shoot on your phones.)

The video should be no longer than 30-60 seconds. It should introduce you and give us a little run down of what you like making and doing. That can be making cake, videos, clothes, robots, or even just making a mess. Please include anything else you think will entertain us. If you are entering in a group with friends, then feel free to get together for your filming session, but remember that each person must submit an individual video of themselves. Group videos will not be accepted: you all need to have your own 60 seconds in the spotlight.

Applications must be received by midnight on Sunday 7th August.

Submit your video and details to us via the Digital Making Day form.

If you have any questions email digitalmakingday@raspberrypi.org .
Don’t forget to spread the word to anyone else who may want to take part!

The gif that never grows old!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Join us for a day of making!

Formula Pi is the latest Kickstarter project to come from PiBorg, the team responsible for the ZeroBorg motor controller, the wonderful DiddyBorg robot, plus a bunch of other wonderful Pi creations. We’re big fans.

Allowing backers from across the globe to participate, the Formula Pi project consists of two race events. Competing in either the Summer or Winter Series (or in both if they want), participants modify code to run the autonomous Pi Zero-powered cars around 23 laps of the course.

The laps are approximately 1/2 km in length

The team at PiBorg have done the majority of hard work, building the cars and writing the basic code. Entrants then have the chance to add to the code before it’s inserted into their car via SD card, to give their robots an edge – and the race begins.

Claire, Tim and the PiBorg team aim to continue the Formula Pi experience, expanding on the races to allow for different classes, speeds, and coding challenges. They also plan to include a battle series in which a MeArm is attached to their YetiBorg, creating the ultimate fighting ArmyBorg.

Both Summer and Winter Series races will be broadcast live for everybody to watch. (We’ll be covering them here.) If you want to take a active part, entry will cost £35, which includes a customisable ‘lid’ for your car, giving you the chance to make your racer stand out from the competition.

Code will be made available to all racers once the Kickstarter campaign ends on August 22nd, allowing time for modifications before race day. Rewards for backing the Formula Pi campaign include having your logo placed upon the track, owning your own YetiBorg racing robot, and the chance to name the first corner of the track.

For more information on the PiBorg Formula Pi campaign, plus a few chuckles at the outtakes of making a car ‘driverless’, check their Kickstarter page out now.

Now. Now, now, now, now, now!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Formula Pi – the latest from PiBorg

Even you live somewhere heavily endowed with bats, you’ve probably never had a good look at one on the wing. Bats fly so fast – in poor lighting conditions – that if you’re lucky you’ll get a glimpse of something flashing by out of the corner of your eye, but usually you won’t even notice they’re there.

Enter the Batinator.

The Batinator is a portable Raspberry Pi device with an Pi NoIR camera board and a big array of IR lights to illuminate the subject, which means it can see in the infra-red spectrum. Martin Mander has set it up to record at 90 frames per second – enough to capture the very fast flappings of your neighbourhood bats in slow-mo. And it’s powered by a recycled 12v rechargeable drill bat-tery, which makes it look like some sort of police hand-held radar bat scanner. (Which it is not.)

Here’s the Batinator in action (bats start doing bat stuff at about 2:40):

The Raspberry Pi Batinator

The Batinator is a portable Raspberry Pi that uses a PinoIR (No Infrared Filter) camera module to record video in the dark at 90 frames per second, 640×480 resolution. It features a 48 LED illuminator lamp on top and the power is provided by a 12v rechargeable drill battery.

Martin’s made a full writeup available on Instructables so you can make your own, along with some video he’s taken with the same setup of a lightning storm – it turns out that the same technology that’s great for bat-spotting is also great for storm-filming. He’ll walk you through the equipment he’s built, as well as through building your own bat lure, which involves soaking your socks in beer and hanging them from a line to attract tasty, tasty moths.

Thanks Martin – let us know if you take more footage!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Batinator – spot bats in flight

Bees are important. I find myself saying this a lot and, slowly but surely, the media seems to be coming to this realisation too. The plight of the bee is finally being brought to our attention with increasing urgency.

Welcome to the house of buzz.

In the UK, bee colonies are suffering mass losses. Due to the use of bee-killing fertilisers and pesticides within the farming industry, the decline of pollen-rich plants, the destruction of hives by mites, and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), bees are in decline at a worrying pace.

When you find the perfect GIF…

One hint of a silver lining is that increasing awareness of the crisis has led to a rise in the number of beekeeping hobbyists. As getting your hands on some bees is now as simple as ordering a box from the internet, keeping bees in your garden is a much less daunting venture than it once was. 

Everyone say “beeeeeeees!” #bees #beekeeping #savethebees #canon #canon5dmarkii #lightscameraaction #bantamscottage #potton

A photo posted by Chloe Peters (@chloepeters) on Jun 26, 2016 at 11:11am PDT

Taking this one step further, beekeepers are now using tech to monitor the conditions of their bees, improving conditions for their buzzy workforce while also recording data which can then feed into studies attempting to lessen the decline of the bee.

WDLabs recently donated a PiDrive to the Honey Bee Gardens Project in order to help beekeeper David Ammons and computer programmer Graham Total create The Hive Project, an electric beehive colony that monitors real-time bee data.

The setup records colony size, honey production, and bee health to help combat CCD.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is decidedly mysterious. Colonies hit by the disease seem to simply disappear. The hive itself often remains completely intact, full of honey at the perfect temperature, but… no bees. Dead or alive, the bees are nowhere to be found.

To try to combat this phenomenon, the electric hive offers 24/7 video coverage of the inner hive, while tracking the conditions of the hive population.

Bee bringing pollen into the hive

This is from the first live day of our instrumented beehive. This was the only bee we spotted all day that brought any pollen into the hive.

Ultimately, the team aim for the data to be crowdsourced, enabling researchers and keepers to gain the valuable information needed to fight CCD via a network of electric hives. While many people blame the aforementioned pollen decline and chemical influence for the rise of CCD, without the empirical information gathered from builds such as The Hive Project, the source of the problem, and therefore the solution, can’t be found.

Ammons and Total researched existing projects around the use of digital tech within beekeeping, and they soon understood that a broad analysis of bee conditions didn’t exist. While many were tracking hive weight, temperature, or honey population, there was no system in place for integrating such data collection into one place. This realisation spurred them on further.

“We couldn’t find any one project that took a broad overview of the whole area. Even if we don’t end up being the people who implement it, we intend to create a plan for a networked system of low-cost monitors that will assist both research and commercial beekeeping.”

With their mission statement firmly in place, the duo looked toward the Raspberry Pi as the brain of their colony. Finding the device small enough to fit within the hive without disruption, the power of the Pi allowed them to monitor multiple factors while also using the Pi Camera Module to record all video to the 314GB storage of the Western Digital PiDrive.

Data recorded by The Hive Project is vital to the survival of the bee, the growth of colony population, and an understanding of the conditions of the hive in changing climates. These are issues which affect us all. The honey bee is responsible for approximately 80% of pollination in the UK, and is essential to biodiversity. Here, I should hand over to a ‘real’ bee to explain more about the importance of bee-ing…

Bee Movie – Devastating Consequences – HD

Barry doesn’t understand why all the bee aren’t happy. Then, Vanessa shows Barry the devastating consequences of the bees being triumphant in their lawsuit against the human race.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Plan Bee

James Dougherty, co-founder and owner of Real Flight Systems, was looking at how to increase the performance of his high-altitude rockets…

These types of rockets… yeah…

James’s goal was to build a ‘plug and run’ video system within a rocket, allowing high-definition video to be captured throughout the entirety of the flight. He also required a fully functioning Linux system that would allow for the recording of in-flight telemetry.

You can totally see the direction he’s headed in, right?

This requirement called for long battery life, high storage to accommodate up to 1080p video, and a lightweight processor, allowing the rocket to be robust and reliable while in flight.

Unsurprisingly, James decided to use the Raspberry Pi for his build, settling for the model B.

Before starting the build, James removed the HDMI port, composite video output, USB post, audio jack, and Microchip LAN9512. Not only did this lessen the weight of the Pi, but these modifications also lowered the power needed to run the setup, thus decreasing the size of battery needed. This shrunken unit, completed with the addition of a Pi camera, meant the Pi could run for 8-10 hours with the recording quality lowered to 720p60 and no audio captured.

Slimline Pi, now with 40% less Pi.

Sadly, the first launch had its issues: the rocket suffered a system failure that resulted in the destruction of the micro SD during the Pegasus flight at BALLS 23, an experimental rocket launch event in the Blackrock desert, USA.

Ruh-roh, Raggy…

Rockets Magazine managed to record the launch which shows the highlights mid-flight.

ROCKETS Mag Balls 23 James Dougherty Pegasus

James Dougherty Pegasus flight at Balls 23

However, the next launch was far more successful, with close friend Jimmy Franco launching Rocket-Pi within a Dominator 4 to record the following footage.

(This clip comes with a motion sickness warning!)

Dominator 4 L1355 – TCC 02/21/15

Jimmy Franco flies Dominator-4 at TCC’s February Launch (02/21/15 on an L1355.

So what was next?

Aside from a few issues with Windows when trying to upload the footage post-flight, the main gripe was the lack of audio.

Investing in a new Raspberry Pi, making sure to keep more of the original components intact, James also updated the board with a USB microphone, added a USB flash drive to eliminate the Windows issues, and replaced the SD card with a lower storage option, as the footage was now stored in the flash drive.

1/3 Scale Nike L3150 – TCC Nike Smoke Drag Race 06/20/15

Launch and recovery of 1/3 Scale Nike Smoke at Tripoli Central Californias June 20th Launch. The vehicle flight-ready weighed 30 lbs, L3150 produces 800lbs initial thrust so we had about 26.6 G’s (burnt time 1.1440 seconds). Max speed: Mach 1.2; Max Altitude, 8,837′ AGL (GPS).

In the meantime, as James has continued to work on the Rocket-Pi, updating the hardware and code, he’s managed to put the Pi through some vigorous testing. During the most recent flight in Blackrock, the Pi reached 48K MSL (48000 feet above sea level… wow), at a speed of up to Mach 1.8 (1381 miles per hour… double wow).

But I AM flying! And from way up here you all look like little ants.

Moving on from the build, James aims to upgrade various features. One of the most exciting upgrades looks to be the migration of Rocket-Pi to the Pi Zero, the smaller size allowing for multiple units in one rocket… creating 360-degree coverage of the flight (yes please!).

More of the build information, coding, and flight documentation can be found at the RFS website.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Rocket Man

Over at Mozilla HQ (where Firefox, a browser that many of you are using to read this, is made), some retro hardware hacking has been going on.

The Mozillans have worked their way through several office music services, but nothing, so far, has stuck. Then this home-made project, which started as a bit of a joke, landed on a countertop – and it’s stayed.

Matt Claypotch found a vinyl record player online, and had it delivered to the office, intending to tinker with it at home. It never made it that far. He and his colleagues spent their lunch hour at a local thrift store buying up random vintage vinyl…and the record player stayed in the office so everybody could use it.

Potch’s officemates embarked on a vinyl spending spree.

What could be better? The warm crackle of vintage vinyl, “random, crappy albums” you definitely can’t find on Spotify (and stuff like the Van Halen album above that you can find on Spotify but possibly would prefer not to)…the problem was, once the machine had been set up in a break room, only the people in that room could listen to the cheese.

Enter the Raspberry Pi, with a custom-made streaming setup. One Mozillan didn’t want to have to sit in the common area to get his daily dose of bangin’ choons, so he set up a Pi to stream music from the analogue vinyl over USB (it’s 2016, record players apparently have USB ports now) via an Icecast stream to headphones anywhere in the office. Analogue > digital > analogue, if you like.

The setup is surprisingly successful; they’ve organised other audio systems which weren’t very popular, but this one, which happened organically, is being used by the whole office.

You can listen to a podcast from Envoy Office Hacks about the setup, and the office’s reaction to it.

The Useless Duck Company’s very splendid videos, demonstrating some of their thoughtful and helpful Internet of Things applications, have been making us LITERALLY DIE WITH HAPPINESS (literally!) ever since we discovered them. Even better: we got in touch with the Chief Duck, and he let us know which of his inventions use a Raspberry Pi. Here are two of the most safe-for-work ones.

Sock Removal Robot

Two months ago I made an app for removing socks, but people complained that you need a dog for it to work. I made this robot so everyone can use my app! Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3660602 Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/UselessDuck/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/UselessDuck/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/UselessDuckCompany/ Music by http://www.bensound.com/

Wireless baby crib

If your baby does not fall asleep after use simply press the button again. Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/UselessDuck/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/UselessDuck/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/UselessDuckCompany/ Intro music by http://www.bensound.com/

Useless Duck Company, we salute you. Please invent something to clear up the coffee we’ve all spat across our desks.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Useless Duck Company

I’m Steph, I’m quite new to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and I’m very new to Raspberry Pis. Until quite recently, any mention of pie to me meant that good food was on the horizon – now my horizons are much broader. I’ve been part of the Programmes Team at Pi Towers for about 3 months, and I’ve only just picked my jaw up from the floor in awe of the creative geniuses around me. The things that I’ve seen are mindboggling and I began to wonder how they were created. Well, there was only one way to find out – make something myself.

The smile of a happy maker

The time had come for me to get started in the world of digital making. I’ve always been into arts and crafts, and I love to put my own touch and personality on my possessions; sewing buttons and colourful things on to clothes, revamping drawer knobs, applying découpage to any plain bits of furniture, and taking over the world with my glue gun. However, making something digital from scratch was a daunting prospect! I wasn’t going to let it scare me, though; I’ve dived out of a plane before and landed with a smile on my face.

So, supported by my team and with that ‘Friday feeling’, I took the plunge and transformed into a digital maker for the afternoon. I was presented with a DIY Gamer Kit, from Technology Will Save Us, as my first project. I opened the box of components and loaded up the online instructions, then I had to take a deep breath and compose myself as I read the word ‘solder’. I was very excited that I was going to need to solder, then realised I didn’t know how to do it. Rachel Rayns, my lovely desk buddy, gave me a soldering tutorial; now, I feel like I can solder most metal things in the world. I loved it.

The soldering skills that earned an Instagram marriage proposal.

I continued the rest of my mission on my own, with the incentive of being able to play Snake at the end of it. I worked my way through the kit, identifying all of the digital ingredients and joining them together in the right places. I soldered push buttons, LEDs, a buzzer, resistors, and many other components to a PCB (printed circuit board). I was amazed at how quickly the parts grew into a device that looked very much like a Game Boy, and I was impressed to see how it matched the photo instructions – very useful!

Following the instructions, I added a brain to my device in the form of an Arduino, and an acrylic accessory to the front and back. This was a great way to protect my game; if I’m honest, I may have dropped it a few times whilst fumbling through the engineers’ tool stash. Luckily, nothing fell apart, which was a testament to my new-found soldering skills. After fixing the spacers, nuts and bolts in place, the only thing left to do was to connect a 9v battery to the game, and then run through the office waving it around when it powered up.

I had made the DIY Gamer Kit, and in that moment I wasn’t sure which thing made me smile the most:

• How quickly I was able to put it together – even though I stopped to admire my work every 5 minutes
• The fact that I could now play Snake
• Knowing that, against all odds, I hadn’t burnt myself
• The idea of going to make something else straight away

Once my smile had shrunk back down to normal size, I was calm enough to think about doing some coding. I’ve been told that code can be used to solve real life problems, and I certainly needed it when I uploaded the game ‘Flappy Bird’ on to my new game machine and couldn’t survive for longer than 2 seconds. My problem was that my bird was flying far too fast to control – it had to be hacked! Again, with the help of Rachel we hacked the game and adapted the code. I was then able to play Flappy Bird at a much more reasonable flying speed. My problems didn’t quite stop here, though, as I continued to fly my bird into wall after wall, ending the game prematurely. We hacked it some more, and now I’ll never see the words ‘Game Over’ again.

Coding 101

I’ve been inspired to be more of a digital maker, because I enjoyed every minute of my very first project. I hope that others may find the same inspiration from the amount of joy on my face in the picture below. Go forth and make something, and you too could be this happy.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – One small step for Steph, one giant flap for makerkind

Firstly, lets set the mood. I need you to watch this video.

Go on. Stop what you’re doing and press play. I can wait…

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer Top Gun

Top Gun Little mashup with all aircraft fights and new scenes! Follow us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/dangdogblog/

Done? How good was that, right? RIGHT?! Mmmhmm, I knew you’d like it.

Now, onto ALPHA…

I’ll set the scene.

Imagine it’s the mid eighties. You’re name is Dr Myles Dyson and you’ve just invented the neural-net processor. You see your invention as a massive success, a gift to humanity, a major stepping stone across the treacherous waters toward world piece.

… and then Sarah Connor shoots you.

Wait.

That’s Cyberdyne. This is Psibernetix. My bad. I’ll start again.

University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest may not have built the neural-net processor (thankfully), but he’s definitely created something on that level. Ernest and his team at Psibernetix have created ALPHA, an AI set to be the ultimate wingman of the sky(net)… which runs on a Raspberry Pi.

Exciting, yes? Let me explain…

ALPHA is an artificial intelligence with the capability to out-manoeuvre even the most seasoned fighter pilot pro… and to prove this, ALPHA was introduced to retired U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Gene Lee in a head-to-head dogfight simulation.

When pitted against Col. Gene Lee, who now works as an instructor and Air Battle Manager for the U.S. Air Force, ALPHA repeatedly shot down the pro, never allowing Lee to get a single shot in.

“I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions, and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed.”

Before ALPHA, pilots training with simulated missions against AIs would often be able to ‘trick’ the system, understanding the limitations of the technology involved to win over their virtual opponents. However, with ALPHA this was simply not the case, instead leaving Lee exhausted and thoroughly defeated by the simulations.

“I go home feeling washed out. I’m tired, drained and mentally exhausted. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge.”

Prior to their work alongside Col. Gene Lee, ALPHA was set up against the current AI resources used for training manned and unmanned teams as part of the Air Force research programme. Much like its sessions with Lee, ALPHA outperformed the existing programmes, repeatedly beating the AIs in various situations.

Nick Ernest, David Carroll and Gene Lee vs ALPHA

In the long term, ALPHA looks set to continue to advance in the field with additional development options, such as aerodynamic and sensor models, in the works. The aim is for ALPHA to work as an AI wingman for existing pilots. With current pilots hitting speeds of 1500 miles per hour at altitudes thousands of feet in the air, ALPHA can provide response times that beat their human counterparts by miles; this would allow for Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) to defend pilots against hostile attack in the skies, while learning from enemy action.

This ability to run ALPHA on such a low-budget PC make the possibilities for using the AI in the field all that more achievable. As confirmed by Ernest himself (we emailed him to check), the AI and its algorithms can react to the simulated flight’s events, and eventually real-life situations, with ease, using the processing power of a $35 computer. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is incredible.

This blog post was bought to you by the 1980’s*. You’re most welcome.

*Yes, we know Terminator 2 was released in 1991. Give us some slack.

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We keep a very close eye on the annual Tech4Good competition, and especially the children who are nominated for their BT Young Pioneer award; there are some fiercely smart kids there doing some hugely impressive work. This year’s was a very close field (I would not like to have been judging – there were some extraordinary projects presented).

Tech4Good award winners 2016

Arnav Sharma, nine years old, was the Winner of Winners as well as the winner of the Young Pioneer section with this asthma monitor, which runs on Raspberry Pi. Arnav started by learning about the causes and effects of asthma, and thought about ways to help patients. He discovered that asthma is hard to diagnose, but can be fatal if left undetected. This leads to many children being over-diagnosed and over-medicated; inhalers are often given as treatment to reduce the symptoms of asthma, but come with side-effects like reduced growth and immunity. Arnav discovered that the best way to manage asthma is to prevent attacks by understanding what triggers asthma attacks and following a treatment plan.

AsthmaPi

Arnav’s AsthmaPi uses a Raspberry Pi, a Sense HAT, an MQ-135 Gas Sensor, a Sharp Optical Dust Sensor and an Arduino Uno.The sensors on the SenseHAT are used to measure temperature and humidity, while the MQ gas sensor detects nitrogen compounds, carbon dioxide, cigarette smoke, smog, ammonia and alcohol, all known asthma triggers. The dust sensor measures the size of dust particles and their density. The AsthmaPi is programmed in Python and C++, and triggers email and SMS text message alerts to remind the owner take medication and to go for review visits.

Here’s Arnav’s very impressive project video, which will walk you through what he’s put together, and how it all works.

AsthmaPi Asthma Management Kit Arnav, Asthma, Allergy, Raspberry Pi, Dust Sensor, Gas Sensor

This is the video demo for the AsthmaPi: An affordable asthma management kit made by Arnav Sharma, aged 9, finalist of Tech For Good competition. Please tweet him at #T4GArnavSharma or visit his page here http://www.tech4goodawards.com/finalist/arnav-sharma/ or vote for him at http://www.tech4goodawards.com/peoples-award/ Thank you.

Well done Arnav!

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Back in the mists of time, when Apple released the Apple Watch, there was gentle buzz in the Raspberry Pi community about the Raspberry Pi’s potential in DIY smartwatch projects. That gentle buzzing subsided, like the buzzing of a wasp succumbing to flypaper, pretty quickly once people realised that a regular Raspberry Pi, while very tiny when compared to your desktop computer, is actually a bit massive when compared to your standard watch.

Here’s Alex Eames’ effort, which he made in 2014 as a response to the Apple Watch. It is less of a wristwatch and more of a forearm watch. Terrific proof of concept, but zero points for usability. (Alex has a great and very informative video to go with it: check it out.)

The Alex Eames forearm watch

How times change. Since 2014, we’ve released the Raspberry Pi Zero, and peripherals companies have been making teenier and teenier displays. Smaller watch devices are now buildable at home. And they’re starting to look pretty good. Here’s our favourite so far.

Jeremy Lee, an amateur astronomer, has been thinking about ways to automate running back and forth between telescope and Linux device.

Why do I need such a thing? Well, personally, I’ve found that doing digital astronomy is a pain in the ass if you have to keep running between the telescope and PC. Especially if one is inside the house. Or you’re in the field, literally.

He found his ideas and build started to snowball, and ended up with this: the Manipulator Zero. It’s tiny, it puts the raw power of the Linux desktop on your wrist, watch-style, it’s got gyroscopes for tilt-control – and best of all, it’s housed in a Dr Who Vortex Manipulator (Captain Jack’s wristwatch thingy, for those of us not paying quite enough attention).

The “gyromouse” driver Jeremy has put together means that most applications which don’t require a lot of typing or shift-clicking can be used easily by tilting the wrist (and he can type with the Florence on-screen keyboard – slowly). Here’s a very neat demo of the gyromouse in action:

Gyromouse Demo – Smallest GUI in the world?

http://unorthodox-engineers.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/pi-manipulator-build-part-1.html The Raspberry Pi Zero is tiny and powerful, but how do you operate a machine with no mouse or keyboard, and too small to have a sensible touchscreen? (4cm diagonal) First, you need the heart of a quadcopter – an MPU6040 Inertial Management Unit.

Jeremy says:

What makes the device actually useful is that it’s a full Linux machine, with a WiFi connection. That makes any nearby PC that can run SSH or VNC into a handy keyboard, mouse and ‘big’ screen. Or even a remote PC – once the manipulator is on the network, it doesn’t matter where it is, or you are. It acts very much like a ‘cloud server’ which just happens to be located on your wrist.

We, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, love it. Jeremy has written the first of two blog posts about the build, and also made this video, which we recommend you spend a while cooing at in awe. Thanks Jeremy!

Manipulator Zero – Linux Smartwatch

So rather than do a detailed build video for a device that no-one else should even attempt to make (in this exact form, it was basically microsurgery) I decided to put it to music, and try to convey the overall process. You can operate the pause button as you wish.

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Here’s a really neat solution from the inestimable Dan “PiGlove, mind where you put the capitals” Aldred. If you’re not able to get to another screen or monitor, or if you’re on the move, this is a very tidy way to get set up.

Programming the Pi over USB

A comprehensive video covering how to set up your Raspberry Pi Zero so that you can access it via the USB port. Yes, plug it in to a USB port and you can use the command line or with a few tweaks a full graphical desktop.

This is a really comprehensive guide, taking you all the way from flashing an SD card, accessing your Pi Zero via Putty, installing VNC and setting up a graphical user interface, to running Minecraft. Dan’s a teacher, and this video is perfect for beginners; if you find it helpful, please let us know in the comments!

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Here at Raspberry Pi, we get to attend all sorts of exciting events, from Maker Faires and Raspberry Jams to education and technology gatherings. So far, we have never made it to the American Library Association’s annual conference and exhibition. There’s a first time for everything, though, so at the end of June, Matt, Courtney, and I packed our bags with stickers, books, and heavy-duty sunscreen, and headed off to the enormous Orange County Convention in Orlando, Florida to spread the word about Raspberry Pi to the library and information science community.

You may wonder what libraries have to do with coding in general and with Raspberry Pi in particular. Remember that libraries have transformed their spaces to respond to the needs of modern users, and deal with coding and digital making on many levels, as well as providing an inclusive venue for teaching and learning within the local community. We met many librarians, both from school libraries and from public ones, who were either already running makerspaces within their library service, or were figuring out how to offer makerspace facilities to their users. While libraries, particularly those outside the school system, may not have a formal requirement to support the local educational curriculum, it is clear that the vast majority of staff were keenly aware of current developments in ICT education, and were eager to support these to the best of their abilities. On the second full day of the conference, Matt Richardson delivered his talk, Library of the Future – Learning with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which sparked an enormous amount of interest from conference attendees. At our stand in the exhibition hall’s Maker Pavilion, we met many people who had heard Matt speak, and who were now full of excitement about the ways in which they could use Raspberry Pis in their own library service, as well as those who were delighted to hear that their own programmes were inspirational to others.

Raspberry Pi on Twitter

Hello #alaac16 librarians! Come meet some of the Raspberry Pi team at booth 875! Try out our $35 computer!pic.twitter.com/GUvxsvSAed

Makerspaces and coding lessons within the library itself may be one way in which services can provide innovate resources for users, but these were far from being the only ways in which we saw Raspberry Pis being used in the industry. Many libraries were using Raspberry Pis to provide educational resources for children and young people of all ages, while others were providing similar services to adult users. Others were thinking of ways to put the tools for learning literally into the hands of their users, by making up kits of Raspberry Pis and necessary peripherals, which could then be put into circulation for home use. Gratifyingly, nobody reported problems with hardware going missing, and the potential danger of personal data going astray was dealt with by a policy of formatting and re-imaging the SD cards of returned Pis. The low cost of the Pi was also instrumental in its integration into other aspects of library service life: many Pis were reportedly being used to drive digital display screens, or as general public workstations. At least one library is using Raspberry Pis to drive their OPACs (web-catalogue terminals, for the uninitiated!), and there was a great deal of interest in the possibility of Pis being used to run self-service book checkout kiosks. This would, however, mean that the Pi would also have to deal with the deactivation of RFID tags, which might make for a more complicated conversion process.

Our stand in the Maker Pavilion. The stickers proved to be very popular!

Elsewhere, Raspberry Pis were being used in more unexpected projects: the ResCarta Foundation are a non-profit organisation working on low-cost digitisation projects and open-source software and community metadata standards to support them. They are currently using Raspberry Pis to run their scanners, and are working on making their cataloguing and indexing software able to run on Raspbian. It’s easy to see how this could be an extremely important resource for archives and records management services anywhere where budgets are tight. ResCarta already have plans to work with archives in the developing world to help safeguard historic documents, photographs, and recordings. Another wonderful Pi-powered device with a very different intended user group was the Call Me Ishmael telephone. This retro telephone, controlled by a Pi, can be installed in libraries, bookshops, and other places, and functions as in interactive book-recommendation device. It’s a lot of fun!

Perhaps one of the most cheering things about attending the ALA conference, though, was how very inclusive we found it. In an exhibition hall full of publishers, zine makers, LMS software vendors, and, at one point, several full-size bookmobiles, a computing charity might have expected to feel a little out of place. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and we were welcomed with open arms.

An impromptu bookclub meeting which sprang up in one of the meeting areas.

In a broader sense, the entire conference was marked by a widespread drive towards inclusion, tolerance, and embracing diversity. Opening less than two weeks after the devastating mass shooting at the city’s Pulse nightclub, the conference’s organisers and delegates were to be commended for their outspoken and all-pervading commitment to all ALA members and library service users, and to the LGBTQ community in particular. Pride flags were in evidence throughout the venue, and all attendees were offered rainbow ribbons to wear, with most people sporting them proudly throughout the event. The conference website featured a page on support activities which might be helpful in the wake of the tragedy, and several bathrooms were specifically designated for the use of any person regardless of gender identity or expression.

In a statement released the day after the shooting, and shortly before the conference opened, ALA president Sari Feldman underlined the important role libraries play in society: “Our nation’s libraries serve communities with equity, dignity and respect. ALA will carry this legacy to Orlando. In defiance of fear, ignorance, and intolerance, the library community will continue its profound commitment to transforming communities by lending its support…Librarians and library workers are community leaders, motivators, and social change agents”. On a more personal level, one librarian who visited our stand proudly told me, “whenever someone comes into the library, no matter who they are – whatever race, sexuality, or religion – it’s my job to help them. And that’s what I do”. Although we were only a small part of a very large conference, we at Raspberry Pi are delighted to work with such a wise and welcoming group of people as the bad-ass librarians of ALA.

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Over in a land of palm trees and breezy sunsets, Adafruit’s Noe Ruiz has been making things. (My Noe story: I waltzed up to him in the Adafruit factory once, grabbed his hand, pumped his arm up and down and said: “SO good to see you again. How’s your brother?” He looked deeply confused. Turns out we’d never met; I’d just recognised him, and his brother Pedro, from YouTube. I’m still red with embarrassment a couple of years later.)

Anyway. Camera.

This build’s a great project for those of you with access to a 3d printer. It’s a teeny-weeny wearable camera which you can program to take a continuous stream or (more fun) use to take a time-lapse recording of your day.

Wearable Camera using Raspberry Pi Zero #3DPrinting

Worn on a lanyard or clipped to a pocket or pack, this adorable camera snaps a photo every few seconds. Slide the SD card into your computer to review the day’s activities or merge all the images into a timelapse animation. Powered by the diminutive and affordable Raspberry Pi Zero, this DIY project is eminently configurable and customizable!

Sample time-lapse output was showcased on Adafruit’s 3d Thursday Hangout. You can see some here:

3D Hangouts – Wearable Pi #3DThursday #3DPrinting

Hang out with Noe & Pedro Ruiz and discover 3D printing! Get your 3D news, projects, design tutorials and more each week on Google+ Hangouts On Air. Subscribe to the Adafruit and follow us on Google+ to catch future broadcasts. We’re warming up our printers, come hang out with us this Thursday!

Wearable cameras are fun – they’re great for recording events like parties or weddings, for keeping a record of holidays, or for dedicated diarists. They’ve also got a more serious side; there’s plenty of research available on using wearable cameras to aid people with memory impairments, not only acting as a piece of bionic memory, but also supporting the brain’s ability to build memories by enabling it to review material.

This being an Adafruit project, it’s documented down to the tiniest detail; there are even instructions to build the device using other models of Raspberry Pi if you haven’t got your hands on a Zero yet. (Good news: Zero availability at the four distributors, Pimoroni, The Pi Hut, Adafruit and Micro Center, is much improved, with stock appearing at each location weekly now – sign up to their newsletters to be notified when stock arrives.)

Adafruit have made files for your 3d printer available, and they’ve provided a ready-to-download SD card image for the project along with instructions on rolling your own if you want a bit more of a challenge. You’ll find an easy-to-follow wiring tutorial, and a user-guide.

Big thanks are due to Philip Burgess and both Ruiz brothers. We loved the whole thing: it’s a brilliant project, a perfect write-up, and it offers so much opportunity for expansion. Thanks all!

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