All posts by Ashley Whittaker

30-second blood analysis with Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/30-second-blood-analysis-with-raspberry-pi/

A portable, affordable Raspberry Pi-powered blood analyser is helping to “establish a robust healthcare ecosystem” in remote parts of India. Samples can be tested in just 30 seconds, and the cost and size of the parts make it an attractive solution for rural and resource-strapped areas.

It is the work of researchers Sangeeta Palekar and Jayu Kalambe from the Department of Electronics Engineering at Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management.

blood analyser
(Image credit: Shri Ramdeobaba / College of Engineering And Management)

Tiny computer — massive processing power

Regular blood tests are vital in the tracking and elimination of many diseases, but there is a huge time and monetary cost currently tied to this type of laboratory work.

The researchers’s device measures light absorbance through a blood sample, a common type of analysis, and they harnessed the processing capability of Raspberry Pi 4 Model B to analyse the absorbance data. Their Raspberry Pi-powered solution was found to perform on a par with the kind of expensive lab-based blood test typically used.

Quick and easy

Sangeeta and Jayu’s analyser is not only cheaper to build and maintain than the lab-based version, it also does the job better. Using the lab-based method means that samples from patients in rural areas must be sent away for analysis, with results communicated back to patients at a much later date. In contrast, Sangeeta and Jayu’s device can process blood samples there and then. All you need is an electricity source. Patients get their results immediately, and there is no need to transport delicate samples across rural terrain.

Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management

Incorporating an IoT element into their design, which would allow for remote monitoring, is the next step for the researchers. They also intend to develop their invention to allow it to carry out different types of blood analyses.

Read more about the science behind the creation

The full research paper is behind a paywall, but the abstract does a great job succinctly explaining all the science. Sangeeta herself also explains a lot of the magic behind her creation in this interview with IEEE Spectrum.

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See what the sounds around you look like with Raspberry Pi Pico

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/see-what-the-sounds-around-you-look-like-with-raspberry-pi-pico/

Raspberry Pi Pico powers this real-time audio spectrogram visualiser using a digital microphone to pick up the sound and an LCD display to show us what those sounds ‘look’ like.

See Sound in Real-Time Using Your Raspberry Pi Pico

First things first

OK firstly, let’s make sure we know what all of those words mean, because ‘audio spectrogram visualiser’ is a bit of a mouthful:

  • A ‘spectrogram’ is a visual way of representing signal strength, or “loudness”, of a signal.
  • The ‘visualiser’ bit comes in when these frequencies are presented as waveforms on the little screen.
  • And the ‘audio‘ is simply because Sandeep is visualising sounds in this project.
Sadly, Sandeep’s machine can’t tell you why the baby is crying

Perfectly portable sound monitor

This pocket-sized device can be carried around with you and lets you see a visual representation of your surrounding audio environment in real-time. So, if you wander into a peaceful bird reserve or something, the LCD display will show you something very different than if you were in, say, Wembley Stadium during an FA Cup final.

Above, you can see Sandeep’s creation in action in the vicinity of a crying baby.

See Sound in Real-Time Using Your Raspberry Pi Pico

Hardware

That is a satisfyingly affordable hardware list.

How does it work?

In the video below, you can see there is a direct correlation between the original audio signal’s amplitude (on the left) and the audio spectrogram’s representation of the signal on the right.

The Microphone Library for Pico captures data from Sandeep’s digital microphone. And Arm’s CMSIS-DSP library processes the audio in real-time, then transforms it into spectrograms. These are then displayed one row at a time on the LCD screen using the ST7789 Library for Pico.

Maker Sandeep Mistry created the original project guide on behalf of the Arm Software Developers team. Check out his other tutorial on how to create a USB Microphone with the Raspberry Pi Pico.

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Raspberry Pi helped restore this boat to former glory

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-helped-restore-this-boat-to-former-glory/

Baltic is a handsome 1962 vintage tugboat that was built in Norway, where she operated until the 1980s. She’s now in English waters, having been registered in Southampton once renovations were complete. After some initial hull restoration work in France she sailed to the western Ligurian coast in Italy, where it took about five years to complete the work. The boat’s original exterior was restored, while the inside was fully refurbished to the standard of a luxury yacht.

restored boat being pulled out of water before any work had been done on it
You need quite a large crane to do this

But where is the Raspberry Pi?

Ulderico Arcidiaco, who coordinated the digital side of Baltic’s makeover, is the CEO of Sfera Labs, so naturally he turned to Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ in the guise of Sfera’s Strato Pi CM Duo for the new digital captain of the vessel.

Strato Pi CM Duo is an industrial server comprising a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ inside a DIN-rail case with a slew of additional features. The MagPi magazine took a good look at them when they launched.

restored boat control room
Beats the view from our windows

The Strato Pi units are the four with red front panels in the cabinet pictured below. There are four other Raspberry Pi Compute Modules elsewhere onboard. Two are identical to the Strato Pi CM Duos in this photo; another is inside an Iono Pi Max; and there’s a Compute Module 4 inside an Exo Sense Pi down in the galley.

restored boat control cupboard
No spaghetti here

Thoroughly modern makeover

Baltic now has fully integrated control of all core and supplementary functions, from power distribution to tanks and pump control, navigation, alarms, fire, lighting, stabilisers, chargers, inverters, battery banks, and video. All powered by Raspberry Pi.

restored boat docked in sunny blue sky location
What a beauty

Ulderico says:

“When it was built sixty years ago, not even the wildest science fiction visionary could have imagined she would one day be fully computer controlled, and not by expensive dedicated computer hardware, but by a tiny and inexpensive device that any kid can easily buy and play with to have fun learning.

And, if there is some old-fashioned patriotism in things, the Raspberry Pi on board will surely like the idea of being back under their home British Flag.”

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Listen to the weather change with The Sky Vane

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/listen-to-the-weather-change-with-the-sky-vane/

The Sky Vane provides the soundtrack to an immersive sky-driven experience. Just lie down on the grass, gaze up at the sky, and listen to the changing soundscape through the day.

sky vane at night
The structure is impressive, but it’s everything inside that little “shroom pod” at the bottom that powers this build

A Raspberry Pi powers the arresting structure in the middle of the circle of comfy skygazing mats in the photo above, and is connected to an array of atmospheric sensors. These sensors detect changes in light, temperature, pressure, and humidity. Then they send real-time data to the Raspberry Pi computer in order to create a dynamic soundtrack.


The Sky Vane’s creators produced a carefully written soundtrack for the experience. Raspberry Pi triggers changes to the number of musical layers, sequences, audio effects processing, and so on, based on the information the sensors read. That’s the “dynamic” bit. A huge gust of wind, for example, leads to a different musical change than the setting sun.

A portable Minirig sound system generates a seriously high-fidelity audio experience that can be heard clearly within a 25-metre radius of The Sky Vane.

Hardware

  • Pisound, a sound card and MIDI interface specially designed for Raspberry Pi
  • A Raspberry Pi, with the Pisound add-on attached, sitting inside the semi-transparent box in the bottom left of the image below
  • The little thing on the breadboard is a Teensy LC
  • Everything hides underneath the dome-shaped “shroom pod”, which in turn sits beneath the big sculpture
skyvane kit

Inspiration behind the installation

The Sky Vane is the latest installation from pyka, a collective of experienced designers who create digital artefacts that enable you to explore the world of sound. Commissioned by Tin Shed Theatre Company and Our Living Levels, The Sky Vane’s big debut was at the Big Skies 2021 event in south Wales.

When they were planning this installation, the creators at pyka weren’t sure how it would go down in a post-pandemic world. They’re used to building things that bring people together, but they were mindful of people’s anxiety around shared public activities. This led to a design that promotes quiet contemplation and mindfulness whilst enjoying the freedom of the outdoors. We think it’s lovely.

The post Listen to the weather change with The Sky Vane appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Automatically tune your guitar with Raspberry Pi Pico

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/automatically-tune-your-guitar-with-raspberry-pi-pico/

You sit down with your six-string, ready to bash out that new song you recently mastered, but find you’re out of tune. Redditor u/thataintthis (Guyrandy Jean-Gilles) has taken the pain out of tuning your guitar, so those of us lacking this necessary skill can skip the boring bit and get back to playing.

Before you dismiss this project as just a Raspberry Pi Pico-powered guitar tuning box, read on, because when the maker said this is a fully automatic tuner, they meant it.

How does it work?

Guyrandy’s device listens to the sound of a string being plucked and decides which note it needs to be tuned to. Then it automatically turns the tuning keys on the guitar’s headstock just the right amount until it achieves the correct note.

Genius.

If this were a regular tuning box, it would be up to the musician to fiddle with the tuning keys while twanging the string until they hit a note that matches the one being made by the tuning box.

It’s currently hardcoded to do standard tuning, but it could be tweaked to do things like Drop D tuning.

Pico automatic guitar tuner
Waiting for that green light

Upgrade suggestions

Commenters were quick to share great ideas to make this build even better. Issues of harmonics were raised, and possible new algorithms to get around it were shared. Another commenter noticed the maker wrote their own code in C and suggested making use of the existing ulab FFT in MicroPython. And a final great idea was training the Raspberry Pi Pico to accept the guitar’s audio output as input and analyse the note that way, rather than using a microphone, which has a less clear sound quality.

These upgrades seemed to pique the maker’s interest. So maybe watch this space for a v2.0 of this project…

Shred, Otto, shred

(Watch out for some spicy language in the comments section of the original reddit post. People got pretty lively when articulating their love for this build.)

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the Roadie automatic tuning device. Roadie is sleek but it costs big cash money. And it strips you of the hours of tinkering fun you get from making your own version.

All the code for the project can be found here.

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Foot pressure sensors detect Parkinson’s disease

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/foot-pressure-sensors-detect-parkinsons-disease/

A team from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University has developed a foot-pressure-sensing insole to detect Parkinson’s disease. Using our tiny computers, they managed to create something discreet that can monitor people as they walk around in their own shoes.

Check out Team Forelook‘s project video

What is Parkinson’s disease?

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that mostly affects people aged over 60, though it can affect younger people too. One symptom that can suggest a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is an abnormal gait – that is, when someone’s walk has changed from its usual pattern. It’s this that the project aims to detect.

While there is currently no cure for Parkinson’s, many people respond well to treatment with medication and physical therapy, and early detection gives people a better chance of a good quality of life for as long as possible.

Hardware

parksinson's detector

Eight FlexiForce sensors are placed evenly on each insole of a user’s shoes to measure their gait as they go about their day:

foot sensors on soles of shoes to detect parkinson's disease

A Raspberry Pi 3 is fixed to a strap around the user’s knee and paired with Himax WE-I Plus. Cables connect the knee- strapped hardware to the sensors in the insoles.

raspberry pi strapped to user's knee to detect Parkinson's Disease

How does it work?

The sensors in the user’s shoes detect pressure across the whole foot while walking. Data is then processed by the Raspberry Pi and the user’s gait is assessed. Users pair the device with a mobile app to see their results. The app also shows real-time data while they’re walking.

parksinson's detector
A user with the devices strapped to their knees, checking out real-time data from the sensors in their shoes

The team took advantage of a free online database that collects foot pressure data from both Parkinson’s disease patients and people without Parkinson’s who have a typical gait. They used this to train their own machine learning model, which predicts whether a user has a gait that may indicate Parkinson’s disease.

Check out a live demo from this point in the project video.

Award-winning design

The team submitted this project in the 2021 Synopsys ARC AIoT Design Contest and scored a second-place prize. Check out more project videos from this year’s submissions.

Assessing gait as part of a diagnosis of potential Parkinson’s disease usually requires that patients take trips to the hospital to have tests on large pressure-sensored walking mats. The team’s new device offers a much more portable and affordable approach.

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Save orchards from pests with Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/save-orchards-from-pests-with-raspberry-pi/

Researchers from the University of Trento have developed a Raspberry Pi-powered device that automatically detects pests in fruit orchards so they can get sorted out before they ruin a huge amount of crop. There’s no need for farmer intervention either, saving their time as well as their harvest.

orchard pest detection prototype
One of the prototypes used during indoor testing

The researchers devised an embedded system that uses machine learning to process images captured inside pheromone traps. The pheromones lure the potential pests in to have their picture taken.

Hardware

Each trap is built on a custom hardware platform that comprises:

  • Sony IMX219 image sensor to collect images (chosen because it’s small and low-power)
  • Intel Neural Compute module for machine learning optimisation
  • Long-range radio chip for communication
  • Solar energy-harvesting power system
Fig. 2: Solar energy harvester and power management circuit schematic block.
Here’s a diagram showing how all the hardware works together

The research paper mentions that Raspberry Pi 3 was chosen because it offered the best trade-off between computing capability, energy demand, and cost. However, we don’t know which Raspberry Pi 3 they used. But we’re chuffed nonetheless.

How does it work?

The Raspberry Pi computer manages the sensor, processing the captured images and transmitting them for classification.

Then the Intel Neural Compute Stick is activated to perform the machine learning task. It provides a boost to the project by reducing the inference time, so we can tell more quickly whether a potentially disruptive bug has been caught, or just a friendly bug.

In this case, it’s codling moths we want to watch out for. They are major pests to agricultural crops, mainly fruits, and they’re the reason you end up with apples that look like they’ve been feasted on by hundreds of maggots.

codling moth detection
Red boxes = bad codling moths
Blue boxes = friendly bugs

When this task is done manually, farmers typically check codling moth traps twice a week. But this automated system checks the pheromone traps twice every day, making it much more likely to detect an infestation before it gets out of hand.

The brains behind the project

This work was done by Andrea Albanese, Matteo Nardello and Davide Brunelli from the University of Trento. All the images used here are from the full research paper, Automated Pest Detection with DNN on the Edge for Precision Agriculture, which you can read for free.

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Zippy the Raspberry Pi Zero-powered mini Mars Rover

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/zippy-the-raspberry-pi-zero-powered-mini-mars-rover/

Maker Mellow was inspired by watching the progress of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover and wanted in on the interplanetary robot scene. Their first idea was to build a scale version of Perseverance, but when their partner stepped in to suggest that starting smaller might be a little easier, Zippy was born.

Zippy 3.0 showcase courtesy of Mellow’s reddit post

Hardware

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Motor driver L298N Mini

3V-6V gear motors

Buck converter

ProtoTank (a bolt-together modular tank-style robotics platform)

Zippy mini mars rover insides
Inside Zippy

Zippy’s basic parts haven’t changed much through its three iterations. You can follow the journey of Zippy 1.0 through 3.0 on Mellow’s website. You’ll see that some additional hardware was required when Mellow made some improvements.

Baby Zippy

The first version of Mellow’s mini Mars rover was just a motor on a 3D-printed body, controlled by plugging in wires to the battery. But Mellow was desperate to level up their robot and build something that could be controlled by an Xbox controller. They reached that goal with Zippy 2.0 and can drive the mini Mars rover remotely via Bluetooth. However, the range is quite tight, so slow runners need not apply for the job of pilot.

Zippy 3.0 comes complete with a DJI Osmo Action camera to capture its adventures.

Baby Zippy 1.0 playing on the carpet

What surfaces can Zippy ride on?

Our favourite part of Mellow’s original project post is the list rating how good Zippy is at navigating various types of terrain (some of which are showcased in the video up top):

Sand – NO it gets stuck in the wheels

Big rocks – NO the robot is too low to the ground and gets stuck

Pebbles – with determination

Grass – only very short grass

Human bodies – surprisingly well

Carpets – Zippy loves carpets

Flat terrain – definitely

Zippy 2.0 out on the road

Here’s all the code you need to build your own mini Mars rover.

Follow the real thing on Mars

Keep up with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Twitter. Perseverance spent its summer drilling into rocks, and has photos to prove it.

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Raspberry Pi displays album art on LED matrix

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-displays-album-art-on-led-matrix/

We’ve seen a few innovative album art displays using Raspberry Pi, from LEGO minifigures playing their own music to this NFC-powered record player.

Redditor u/gonnabuysomewindows was looking for a fun project combining Raspberry Pi and Adafruit’s LED matrix, and has created the latest cool album art display to grace our blog.

Hardware

LED album art back of matrix with raspberry pi attached

How does it work?

The maker turned to PowerShell – a cross-platform task automation solution – to create a script (available on GitHub) that tells the Raspberry Pi which album is playing, and sends it the album artwork for display on the LED matrix.

Raspberry Pi runs a flaschen-taschen server to display the album artwork. The PowerShell script runs a ‘send image’ command every time the album art updates. Then the Raspberry Pi switches the display to reflect what is now playing. In the demo video, the maker runs this from iTunes, but says that any PowerShell-compatible music player (ie: Spotify) will work too.

LED album art

Setting up your own LED album art display

The maker’s original reddit post shares a step-by-step guide to follow on the software side of things. And they detail the terminal code you’ll need to run on the Raspberry Pi to get your LED Matrix displaying the correct image.

They also suggest checking out Adafruit’s setup guides for the RGB Matrix Bonnet for Raspberry Pi and for the LED Matrix itself.

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Meet Geeky Faye: maker, artist, designer, and filmmaker

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/meet-geeky-faye-maker-artist-designer-and-filmmaker/

An artist and maker, Geeky Faye describes themself as a one-man band, tackling whole areas of creation. In the latest issue of The MagPi Magazine, Rob Zwetsloot meets the cosplaying polymath.

Having multiple hobbies and interests can be fun, but they can sometimes get on top of you. Allie, also know online as Geeky Faye, seems to have thrived with so many. “As it currently stands, I will happily refer to myself as a maker, artist, designer, and filmmaker because all of those are quite accurate to describe the stuff I do!” Allie tells us.

geeky faye

“I’ve been making almost my whole life. I dove headlong into art as a young teen, to be quickly followed by cosplay and building things that I needed for myself. I would go on to get a degree in fine arts and pursue a professional career as an artist, but that actually ended out resulting in me being on a computer all day more than anything! I’ve always needed to use my hands to create, which is why I’ve always been drawn to picking up as many making skills as possible… These days my making is all very ‘multimedia’ so to speak, involving 3D printing, textiles, electronics, wood working, digital design, and lots of paint!”

geeky faye project
Testing out various functions of BMOctoPrint

When did you learn about Raspberry Pi?

I’d heard about Raspberry Pi years ago, but I didn’t really learn about it until a few years back when I started getting into 3D printing and discovered that you could use one to act as a remote controller for the printer. That felt like an amazing use for a tool I had previously never gotten involved with, but once I started to use them for that, I became more curious and started learning a bit more about them. I’m still quite a Raspberry Pi novice and I am continually blown away by what they are capable of. 

geeky faye project
The PCB for this project was custom-made by Geeky Faye

What have you made with Raspberry Pi?

I am actually working on my first ever proper Raspberry Pi project as we speak! Previously I have only set them up for use with OctoPrint, 3D-printed them a case, and then let them do their thing. Starting from that base need, I decided to take an OctoPrint server [Raspberry] Pi to the next level and started creating BMOctoPrint; an OctoPrint server in the body of a BMO (from Adventure Time). Of course, it would be boring to just slap a Raspberry Pi inside a BMO-shaped case and call it a day.

So, in spite of zero prior experience (I’m even new to electronics in general), I decided to add in functionality like physical buttons that correspond to printer commands, a touchscreen to control OctoPrint (or anything on Raspberry Pi) directly, speakers for sound, and of course user-triggered animations to bring BMO to life… I even ended out designing a custom PCB for the project, which makes the whole thing so clean and straightforward.

Photography, 3D-printing, and making come together in another project
Photography, 3D-printing, and making come together in another project

What’s your favourite project that you’ve done?

Most recently I redesigned my teleprompter for the third time and I’m finally really happy with it. It is 3D-printable, prints in just two pieces that assemble with a bit of glue, and is usable with most kinds of lens adapters that you can buy off the internet along with a bit of cheap plastic for the ‘glass’. It is small, easy to use, and will work with any of my six camera lenses; a problem that the previous teleprompter struggled with! That said, I still think my modular picture frame is one of the coolest, hackiest things that I’ve made. I highly recommend anyone who frames more than a single thing over the course of their lives to pick up the files, as you will basically never need to buy a picture frame again, and that’s pretty awesome, I think.

geeky faye in cosplay
Geeky Faye’s amazing Hange Zoë cosplay from the Attack on Titan series

Subscribe to Geeky Faye Art on YouTube, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.

Get The MagPi #109 NOW!

magpi 109 front cover

You can grab the brand-new issue right now from the Raspberry Pi Press store, or via our app on Android or iOS. You can also pick it up from supermarkets and newsagents. There’s also a free PDF you can download.

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Robotic waiter learning to serve drinks

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/robotic-waiter-learning-to-serve-drinks/

The maker of this robotic waiter had almost all of the parts for this project just sat around collecting dust on a shelf. We’re delighted they decided to take the time to pick up the few extra bits they needed online, then take the extra hour (just an hour?!) to write a program in Python to get this robotic waiter up and running.

It’s learning! Bartending is hard

We are also thrilled to report (having spotted it in the reddit post we found this project on) that the maker had “so much fun picking up and sometimes crushing small things with this claw.” The line between serving drinks and wanting to crush things is thinner than you might imagine.

And in even better news, all the code you need to recreate this build is on GitHub.

Robo arm, HAT, and Raspberry Pi all together

Parts list

First successful straw-drop. Perfecto!

reddit comments bantz

One of our favourite things about finding Raspberry Pi-powered projects on reddit is the comments section. It’s (usually) the perfect mix of light adoration, constructive suggestions, and gateways to tangents we cannot ignore.

Like this one recalling the Rick and Morty sketch in which a cute tiny robot realises their sole purpose is to pass butter:

No swears in this scene! But it is an adult cartoon in general

And also this one pointing us to another robotic arm having a grand old time picking up a tiny ball, sending it down a tiny slide, and then doing it all over again. Because it’s important we know how to make our own fun:

We also greatly enjoyed the fact that the original maker couldn’t use the Rick and Morty “what is my purpose” line to share this project because they are such an uber fan that they already used it for a project they posted just the day before. This cute creation’s sole reason for existing is to hold an Apple pencil while looking fabulous. And we are HERE for it:

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Teasmade comes back to life with Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/teasmade-comes-back-to-life-with-raspberry-pi/

It hurts our aged soul to think how many of you won’t know what a teasmade is. So here is a quick overview of this classic 20th-century technology. Now we will tell you how VEEB brought such a contraption back to life with Raspberry Pi.

Yeah, we love the project video as much as you do. The clattering trolley rolling in with this ancient tea-making machine on top. Then loudly making a Google calendar note to brew the tea for you while you do something more useful. Genius.

Parts list

teasmade with raspberry pi attached
Look how cute we look stuck on the side of a Teasmade

How does it work?

Raspberry Pi reads your Google calendar and automatically activates the kettle ten minutes before the time when you’ve said you want a coffee.

Then it gets super noisy. Teasmades are like that. But it’s worth it, trust me. To cover the sound of the janky old machine, VEEB has added a speaker that plays God save the Queen as the water heats up and pours into the clever dripper with the coffee filter in it. I’m not sure there is anything more English than that, other than if this project actually made tea and not coffee. I think coffee belongs to Seattle, but I’m not sure Seattle has a national anthem of its own. Correct me in the comments. Maybe Nirvana?

teasmade working with google calendar
You have to log that brew time

Anywho, then you sprinkle your coffee grounds into the hot water, give it a stir with a spoon, and hey presto, you have [kind of automatically brewed] coffee!

File this in the list of projects we love because engineers like to spend several hours building something to automate an activity that takes one second. In this case, switching on a kettle to boil water for your coffee.

For more of VEEBs wonderful projects, check out their YouTube channel.

Public Service Announcement

A quick PSA to share with those not in the know the wonder that is the limited television series Father Ted. The Mrs Doyle character was infamous for her fervent insistence on making everyone a cup of tea and she was crushed when her parochial employer, Father Ted, gave her a Teasmade for Christmas to take the “misery” out of making tea. It is not a miserable task. It is a calming, soothing ritual. Stupid Father Ted.

If you want to watch the whole episode, it’s the 1996 Christmas special

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Super 8 camera goes digital with Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/super-8-camera-goes-digital-with-raspberry-pi/

Clem from element14 found a discarded Super 8 camera and wanted to channel his inner filmmaking hipster, but he didn’t want to spend tons of money on analogue film, so he digitised the camera with Raspberry Pi.

Clem recreated an original Super 8 cartridge and packed it with tiny hardware to do the job of the 8mm analogue film digitally. Doing it this way also means you can just drop the new cartridge into any Super 8 camera and use it as a digital device. It also means you don’t need to cut up any part of your gorgeous retro device in the process.

super 8 camera
Ain’t she a beauty?

Hardware

  • 3D-printed Super 8 cartridge

You can download the files for the 3D-printed case and buttons from the original project post.

Tight spaces, lens alignment and controls

Getting the Raspberry Pi camera lens lined up perfectly with the original lens was the hardest part of this build. But using our tiny camera meant that the lens could be placed at exactly the right angle, because it doesn’t have to be fixed to the PCB.

Super 8 cartridges are pretty small, so the super compact Raspberry Pi 3A+ was just the right size for this project, especially as Clem needed wireless connectivity. He had to get the power supply, Raspberry Pi brain, camera, and all the wires into a tight space.

super 8 camera project
Raspberry Pi 3A+ is small but it still takes up half the space in the tiny Super 8 cartridge

Clem wanted to be able to walk around and use the Super 8 as originally intended, so an external screen with a keyboard and a mouse wouldn’t have worked to control the device. Instead, he rigged up some buttons and an LED to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO ports. He explains it all from this point in the build video.

We love that the final output looks just like the kind of films the original camera would have captured back in the day.

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Game Boy + Raspberry Pi insides = ‘DMGPlus’

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/game-boy-raspberry-pi-insides-dmgplus/

In the latest issue of The MagPi Magazine, Jeroen Domburg showcases his refurbed Nintendo Game Boy.

The Nintendo Game Boy – the iconic handheld video game console launched in 1989 – is no stranger to the pages of The MagPi. We’ve seen makers either stuff a Raspberry Pi computer into an original case or buy off-the-shelf projects, such as the superb RetroFlag GPi, and create their own from scratch. It’s great to see the device kept alive.

You can’t tell the difference between the finished DMGPlus project and the original Game Boy – all the alterations are inside

But just as we thought we’d seen it all, along came Jeroen Domburg, aka Sprite_tm. Like us, he’d seen a reasonable number of people modifying Game Boy cases to create portable RetroPie machines. “But because they wanted the thing to emulate as many consoles as possible, they usually went all-out with the modifications: high-resolution screen, Li-ion battery, HDMI and USB, multiple front buttons, shoulder buttons, the works,” he says.

“Obviously this would work really well, but it went against the original Game Boy looks. The projects could look like a weird mutation and it made me think, what if I went the other way? What if instead of sacrificing the original looks for playability, I sacrificed playability for the original looks?” Welcome then, DMGPlus: a handheld that looks familiar but has its internals replaced by something more powerful.

Pressing the right buttons

That something includes a Raspberry Pi Zero computer and a replacement motherboard containing a lower power, high performance ICE40 field-programmable gate array (FPGA). These are fixed either side of a new, printed circuit board, replacing the CPU, GPU, and memory.

The original hardware had a direct connection to the cartridge, but Raspberry Pi Zero has to communicate with the FPGA via the SPI port. To speed things up, the emulator reads an entire region from a cart

Jeroen has retained the buttons, cartridge port, speaker, and link port, with everything capable of being run from four AA batteries, just like the original. “I did change the LCD a little bit by driving it in a smart way so that it can display 16 greys instead of the original four,” he enthuses. 

And the upshot of that? “It ends up substantially increasing the number of games the Game Boy can play,” he continues. “Because of emulation, all of a sudden you can have access to games that originally ran on other consoles, some of which have specs way better than the original Game Boy.”

Work hard, play hard

Making the build extra-special is its use of original carts, emulating the Game Boy experience so closely it’s difficult to tell if anything has changed. It uses the emulator Gnuboy and when Jeroen uses his own reproduction carts containing games not originally made for the Game Boy, Raspberry Pi Zero kicks in and runs the title natively.

This is a reproduction cart. Figuring how to program them properly was tricky because they’re used outside of their specified voltage range, even in a standard Game Boy

“Getting Raspberry Pi Zero to boot as fast as possible was tricky because it needed some rethinking of the boot process, as well as a kernel recompile to make it load within the time it took the Game Boy startup screen to finish,” Jeroen explains. “My hardware also takes a longer path: Raspberry Pi has to talk through the SPI port to the FPGA, which then needs to control the cartridge. Doing this for every byte that the game needs would be very slow, so the emulator uses caching.”

Raspberry Pi Zero seemed the perfect choice. Aside from being able to fit in the case, Jeroen said he knew he could get the video interface to do what he wanted. “Raspberry Pi has proper DPI support, outputting video over the GPIO pins so I could make the Game Boy LCD show up as just another frame buffer device,” he says. “That was important because I didn’t want to hack the video output system of every emulator or game I wanted to run it.”

The result is a stunning handheld console, but not one for the faint-hearted. “The big challenge was the need for custom hardware, custom software, custom gateware, and so on and it took a fair bit of time and effort to develop,” he says. “If you’re looking to replicate it, be prepared to put some work into tweaking and fixing things.”

Get The MagPi #109 NOW!

magpi 109 front cover

You can grab the brand-new issue right now from the Raspberry Pi Press store, or via our app on Android or iOS. You can also pick it up from supermarkets and newsagents. There’s also a free PDF you can download.

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Top project ideas for Raspberry Pi Zero

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/top-project-ideas-for-raspberry-pi-zero/

We came across this ‘Top 15 Raspberry Pi Zero Projects’ video and realised that it’s been a while since we showed our tiniest computer some love on this blog.

Too many cool projects to blog about here, so give the full compilation video a watch for more ideas

The compilation features full build videos for 15 Raspberry Pi Zero projects. Too many to go into detail about here, so we’ve picked out a few of our favourites to share.

Origami sunrise lamp

Time to wake up!

This Sunrise lamp doubles as a psychedelic night light, and is built with snapology origami. Raspberry Pi Zero W powers an Adafruit NeoPixel ring and does a great job of letting maker Russell Eveleigh sleep in past 5am.

Russell coded different sequences to make the NeoPixel lights turn to a calming blue at bedtime, and then brighten up to sunshine yellow when it’s time for the kids to wake up.

mintyPi retro gaming handheld

How could we not share a retro gaming device hidden in an Altoids tin? Raspberry Pi Zero runs RetroPie software, and gameplay lasts up to five hours!

mintyPi is a nice simple do-it-yourself project, and you can find links for the parts at sudomod.com. Good luck finding an Altoids tin in the UK though. If you’ve found a good alternative, let us know in the comments.

Fresh coffee monitor

Brew is ready

We picked this project because Raspberry Pi Towers coffee drinkers have been thinking about making something similar.

Caleb Brewer made his office coffee machine smart by building an alert system that sends notifications when someone brews a fresh pot. A waterproof temperature sensor constantly monitors the coffee pot, and Raspberry Pi Zero W turns on an alert light and sends a Slack notification when a new hot tasty brew is ready.

If you’re into compilation videos featuring Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, follow Top Projects Compilation on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram for more.

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Behind the scenes at Atari

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/behind-the-scenes-at-atari/

We love Wireframe magazine’s regular feature ‘The principles of game design’. They’re written by video game pioneer Howard Scott Warshaw, who authored several of Atari’s most famous and infamous titles. In the latest issue of Wireframe, he provides a snapshot of the hell-raising that went on behind the scenes at Atari…

Behind the scenes at Atari Wireframe magazine
A moment of relative calm in Atari’s offices, circa the early 1980s. There’s Howard nearest the camera on the right

Video game creation is unusual in that developers need to be focused intently on achieving design goals while simultaneously battling tunnel vision and re-evaluating those goals. It’s a demanding and frustrating predicament. Therefore, a solid video game creator needs two things: a way to let ideas simmer (since rumination is how games grow from mediocre to fabulous) and a way to blow off steam (since frustration abounds while trying to achieve fabulous). At Atari, there was one place where things both simmered and got steamy… the hot tub. The only thing we couldn’t do was keep a lid on the antics cooked up inside.

The hot tub was situated in the two-storey engineering building. This was ironic, because the hot tub generated way more than two stories in that building. The VCS/2600 and Home Computer development groups were upstairs. The first floor held coin-op development, a kitchen/cafeteria, and an extremely well-appointed gym. The gym featured two appendages: a locker area and the hot tub room. Many shenanigans were hatched and/or executed in the hot tub. One from the more epic end of the spectrum comes to mind: the executive birthday surprise.

Behind the scenes at Atari Wireframe magazine
Those prizes look pretty impressive

It was during the birthday celebration of a VP who shall remain nameless, but it might have been the one who used to keep a canister of nitrous oxide and another of pure oxygen in his office. The nitrous oxide was for getting high and laughing some time away, while the oxygen was used for rapid sobering up in the event a spontaneous meeting was called (which happened regularly at Atari). As the party raged on, a small crew of revellers migrated to the small but accommodating hot tub room. Various intoxicants (well beyond the scope of nitrous) were being consumed in celebration of the special event (although by this standard, nearly every day was a special event at Atari).

As the party rolled on, inhibitions were shed along with numerous articles of clothing. At one point, the birthday boy was adjudged to be in dire need of a proper tubbing as he hadn’t lost sufficient layers to keep pace with the party at large. The birthday boy disagreed, and the ensuing negotiation took the form of a lively chase around the area. The VP ran out of the hot tub room and headed for the workout area with a wet posse in hot pursuit, all in varying stages of undress. 

Behind the scenes at Atari Wireframe magazine
Refreshments were readily available at Atari in its heyday

It’s important to note here that although refreshments and revelry were widely available at Atari, one item in short supply was conference rooms. Consequently, meetings could pop up in odd locales. Any place an aggregation could be achieved was a potential meeting spot. The sensitivity of the subject matter would determine the level of privacy required on a case-by-case basis. Since people weren’t always working out, the gym had enough places to sit that it could serve as a decent host for gatherings. And as for sensitivity, the hot tub room was well sound-proofed, so intruding ears weren’t a concern.

As the crew of rowdy revellers followed the VP into the workout area, they were confronted by just such a collection of executives who happened to be meeting at the time. I don’t think the birthday party was on the agenda. However, they may have been pleased that the absentee VP had ultimately decided to join their number. It was embarrassing for some, entertaining for others, and nearly career-ending for a couple. The moral of this story being that Atari executives should never go anywhere without their oxygen tanks in tow.

Behind the scenes at Atari Wireframe magazine
Between developing games, Howard and Atari’s other programmers found time to play a bit of Frisbee

But morals aside, there was work to be done at Atari. In a place where work can lead to antics and antics can lead to work breakthroughs, it’s difficult at times to suss out the precise boundary between work and antics. It takes passion and commitment to pursue side quests productively and yet remain on task when necessary.

The main reason this was a challenge comes down to the fact there are so many distractions constantly going on. Creative people tend to be creative frequently and spontaneously. Also, their creativity is much more motivated by fascination and interest than it is by task lists or project plans. Fun can break out at any moment, and answering the call isn’t always the right choice, no matter how compelling the siren.

Behind the scenes at Atari Wireframe magazine
Nice hat

Rob Fulop, creator of Missile Command and Demon Attack for the Atari 2600 (among many other hits) isn’t only a great game maker, he’s also a keen observer of human nature. We used to chat about just where the edge is between work and play at Atari. Those who misjudge it can easily fall off the cliff.

Likewise, we explored the concept of what makes a good game designer. Rob said it’s just the right combination of silly and anal. He believed that the people who did well at Atari (and as game makers in general) were the people who could be silly enough to recognise fun, and anal enough to get all the minutia and details aligned correctly in order to deliver the fun. Of course, Rob (being the poet he is) created a wonderful phrasing to describe those with the right stuff. He put it like this: the people who did well at Atari were the people who could goof around as much as possible but still go to heaven.

Get your copy of Wireframe issue 53

You can read more features like this one in Wireframe issue 53, available directly from Raspberry Pi Press — we deliver worldwide.

Wireframe 53 store cover

And if you’d like a handy digital version of the magazine, you can also download issue 53 for free in PDF format.

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Recycle your old Raspberry Pi boards with OKdo

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/recycle-your-old-raspberry-pi-boards-with-okdo/

Ever wondered what to do with Raspberry Pi boards you haven’t used in a while? Do you tend to upgrade your projects to newer models, leaving previous ones languishing at the back of a drawer? There are a lot of venerable Raspberry Pis out there doing useful stuff just as well as ever, and we take great care to make sure new versions of Raspberry Pi OS continue to run on these models, but we’re realists: we understand that ending up with older boards lying around doing nothing is a thing. Rather than leave them to gather dust, you now have a sustainable way to get your unused tech back in the hands of makers who’ll put it to work.

okdo renew logo for the raspberry pi boards recycling initiative

OKdo has partnered with Sony to launch the first official Raspberry Pi recycling initiative. OKdo Renew gives you rewards in return for your preloved boards.

Which boards can I recycle?

If you have any of these boards sitting around unused, you can recycle them:

Our Raspberry Pi boards are manufactured at the Sony Technology Centre in Wales, and that’s where OKdo returns all the hardware you donate. When it gets there, it’ll be tested, reconditioned, and repackaged, ready to be sold to its new home. OKdo will be offering the refurbished boards at a lower price than new boards, and they all come with a twelve-month warranty.

Some brand new Raspberry Pi boards coming to life at the Sony factory
Some brand new Raspberry Pi boards coming to life at the Sony factory

How do I send my preloved Raspberry Pi boards to Sony?

If you have one of the boards listed above and it’s still in working order, you can register to renew your Raspberry Pi. Print the prepaid label so you can return you board for free! Then package up your board to avoid damage, being careful not to exceed the dimensions listed here.

Make sure you remove your memory card before posting your board. Sony can’t return them and we don’t want you to lose any important stuff you’ve got stored.

What’s my reward?

In return for recycling your board, you will get a £10 voucher to use towards your next OKdo purchase. You could upgrade to a faster board than the one you recycled, or pick up a new accessory.

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Raspberry Pi Zero waters your plants and records growth timelapse

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero-waters-your-plants-and-records-growth-timelapse/

We’re not going to lie — the thing we like most about this automated plant watering project is the timelapse at the very end of the build video. But we also thought now might be a good time to show you another Raspberry Pi project for keeping an eye on your plants, since some of us are getting back to something more like our usual routines and our houseplants are no longer our best friends, so they might need a little extra automated attention.

Raspberry Pi can’t make your plants grow this fast in real life, sorry

Maker Christopher Barnatt chose Raspberry Pi Zero for this project because although Raspberry Pi Pico could handle it, he needed a camera connector to record timelapse video of his plants’ growth.

Hardware

Raspberry Pi Plant Watering hardware
Image grabbed from Christopher’s build video

Christopher is a gem and has included links to all the hardware he used. There are also some cheaper, smaller alternatives listed in the info section of his build video.

Kit list:

plant watering system full set up in maker's greenhouse
The full setup in Christopher’s greenhouse

How does it work?

The moisture sensor checks every half hour to determine whether or not the plant has enough water, and communicates with the Raspberry Pi. Water flow is controlled by the solenoid valve, and if the Raspberry Pi finds the soil is too dry, it opens the valve for a set amount of time to let water out.

Check out the full build video for detailed setup instructions and code tests

Code your own plant watering machine

Christopher has shared all the code you need to make your own plant watering system:

Check out Christopher’s YouTube channel Explaining Computers where he posts new videos every week on topics like PC hardware, single board computers such as Raspberry Pi, AI, Big Data, and quantum computing.

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IoT gets a machine learning boost, from edge to cloud

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/iot-gets-a-machine-learning-boost-from-edge-to-cloud/

Today, it’s easy to run Edge Impulse machine learning on any operating system, like Raspberry Pi OS, and on every cloud, like Microsoft’s Azure IoT. Evan Rust, Technology Ambassador for Edge Impulse, walks us through it.

Building enterprise-grade IoT solutions takes a lot of practical effort and a healthy dose of imagination. As a foundation, you start with a highly secure and reliable communication between your IoT application and the devices it manages. We picked our favorite integration, the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, which provides us with a cloud-hosted solution backend to connect virtually any device. For our hardware, we selected the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi 4, and of course Edge Impulse, which will connect to both platforms and extend our showcased solution from cloud to edge, including device authentication, out-of-box device management, and model provisioning.

From edge to cloud – getting started 

Edge machine learning devices fall into two categories: some are able to run very simple models locally, and others have more advanced capabilities that allow them to be more powerful and have cloud connectivity. The second group is often expensive to develop and maintain, as training and deploying models can be an arduous process. That’s where Edge Impulse comes in to help to simplify the pipeline, as data can be gathered remotely, used effortlessly to train models, downloaded to the devices directly from the Azure IoT Hub, and then run – fast.

This reference project will serve you as a guide for quickly getting started with Edge Impulse on Raspberry Pi 4 and Azure IoT, to train a model that detects lug nuts on a wheel and sends alerts to the cloud.

Setting up the hardware

Hardware setup for Edge Impulse Machine Learning
Raspberry Pi 4 forms the base for the Edge Impulse machine learning setup

To begin, you’ll need a Raspberry Pi 4 with an up-to-date Raspberry Pi OS image which can be found here. After flashing this image to an SD card and adding a file named wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=<Insert 2 letter ISO 3166-1 country code here>

network={
	ssid="<Name of your wireless LAN>"
	psk="<Password for your wireless LAN>"
}

along with an empty file named ssh (both within the /boot directory), you can go ahead and power up the board. Once you’ve successfully SSH’d into the device with 

$ ssh pi@<IP_ADDRESS>

and the password raspberry, it’s time to install the dependencies for the Edge Impulse Linux SDK. Simply run the next three commands to set up the NodeJS environment and everything else that’s required for the edge-impulse-linux wizard:

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo bash -
$ sudo apt install -y gcc g++ make build-essential nodejs sox gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-apps
$ npm config set user root && sudo npm install edge-impulse-linux -g --unsafe-perm

Since this project deals with images, we’ll need some way to capture them. The wizard supports both the Pi Camera modules and standard USB webcams, so make sure to enable the camera module first with 

$ sudo raspi-config

if you plan on using one. With that completed, go to the Edge Impulse Studio and create a new project, then run the wizard with 

$ edge-impulse-linux

and make sure your device appears within the Edge Impulse Studio’s device section after logging in and selecting your project.

Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

Capturing your data

Training accurate machine learning models requires feeding plenty of varied data, which means a lot of images are required. For this use case, I captured around 50 images of a wheel that had lug nuts on it. After I was done, I headed to the Labeling queue in the Data Acquisition page and added bounding boxes around each lug nut within every image, along with every wheel.

Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

To add some test data, I went back to the main Dashboard page and clicked the Rebalance dataset button, which moves 20% of the training data to the test data bin. 

Training your models

So now that we have plenty of training data, it’s time to do something with it, namely train a model. The first block in the impulse is an Image Data block, and it scales each image to a size of 320 by 320 pixels. Next, image data is fed to the Image processing block which takes the raw RGB data and derives features from it.

Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

Finally, these features are sent to the Transfer Learning Object Detection model which learns to recognize the objects. I set my model to train for 30 cycles at a learning rate of .15, but this can be adjusted to fine-tune the accuracy.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the model I trained was able to achieve an initial accuracy of 35.4%, but after some fine-tuning, it was able to correctly recognize objects at an accuracy of 73.5%.

Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

Testing and deploying your models

In order to verify that the model works correctly in the real world, we’ll need to deploy it to our Raspberry Pi 4. This is a simple task thanks to the Edge Impulse CLI, as all we have to do is run 

$ edge-impulse-linux-runner

which downloads the model and creates a local webserver. From here, we can open a browser tab and visit the address listed after we run the command to see a live camera feed and any objects that are currently detected. 

Integrating your models with Microsoft Azure IoT 

With the model working locally on the device, let’s add an integration with an Azure IoT Hub that will allow our Raspberry Pi to send messages to the cloud. First, make sure you’ve installed the Azure CLI and have signed in using az login. Then get the name of the resource group you’ll be using for the project. If you don’t have one, you can follow this guide on how to create a new resource group. After that, return to the terminal and run the following commands to create a new IoT Hub and register a new device ID:

$ az iot hub create --resource-group <your resource group> --name <your IoT Hub name>
$ az extension add --name azure-iot
$ az iot hub device-identity create --hub-name <your IoT Hub name> --device-id <your device id>

Retrieve the connection string with 

$ az iot hub device-identity connection-string show --device-id <your device id> --hub-name <your IoT Hub name>
Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

and set it as an environment variable with 

$ export IOTHUB_DEVICE_CONNECTION_STRING="<your connection string here>" 

in your Raspberry Pi’s SSH session, as well as 

$ pip install azure-iot-device

to add the necessary libraries. (Note: if you do not set the environment variable or pass it in as an argument, the program will not work!) The connection string contains the information required for the device to establish a connection with the IoT Hub service and communicate with it. You can then monitor output in the Hub with 

$ az iot hub monitor-events --hub-name <your IoT Hub name> --output table

 or in the Azure Portal.

To make sure it works, download and run this example to make sure you can see the test message. For the second half of deployment, we’ll need a way to customize how our model is used within the code. Thankfully, Edge Impulse provides a Python SDK for this purpose. Install it with 

$ sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev libportaudio0 libportaudio2 libportaudiocpp0 portaudio19-dev
$ pip3 install edge_impulse_linux -i https://pypi.python.org/simple

There’s some simple code that can be found here on Github, and it works by setting up a connection to the Azure IoT Hub and then running the model.

Edge Impulse Machine Learning screengrab

Once you’ve either downloaded the zip file or cloned the repo into a folder, get the model file by running

$ edge-impulse-linux-runner --download modelfile.eim

inside of the folder you just created from the cloning process. This will download a file called modelfile.eim. Now, run the Python program with 

$ python lug_nut_counter.py ./modelfile.eim -c <LUG_NUT_COUNT>

where <LUG_NUT_COUNT> is the correct number of lug nuts that should be attached to the wheel (you might have to use python3 if both Python 2 and 3 are installed).

Now whenever a wheel is detected the number of lug nuts is calculated. If this number falls short of the target, a message is sent to the Azure IoT Hub.

And by only sending messages when there’s something wrong, we can prevent an excess amount of bandwidth from being taken due to empty payloads.

The possibilities are endless

Imagine utilizing object detection for an industrial task such as quality control on an assembly line, or identifying ripe fruit amongst rows of crops, or detecting machinery malfunction, or remote, battery-powered inferencing devices. Between Edge Impulse, hardware like Raspberry Pi, and the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, you can design endless models and deploy them on every device, while authenticating each and every device with built-in security.

You can set up individual identities and credentials for each of your connected devices to help retain the confidentiality of both cloud-to-device and device-to-cloud messages, revoke access rights for specific devices, transmit code and services between the cloud and the edge, and benefit from advanced analytics on devices running offline or with intermittent connectivity. And if you’re really looking to scale your operation and enjoy a complete dashboard view of the device fleets you manage, it is also possible to receive IoT alerts in Microsoft’s Connected Field Service from Azure IoT Central – directly.

Feel free to take the code for this project hosted here on GitHub and create a fork or add to it.

The complete project is available here. Let us know your thoughts at [email protected]. There are no limits, just your imagination at work.

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Summer at the Raspberry Pi Store with The Centre for Computing History

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-store-summer-2021/

A whole lot of super free hands-on activities are happening at the Raspberry Pi Store this summer.

We have teamed up with the Centre for Computing History to create an interactive learning space that’s accessible to all ages and abilities. Best of all, everything is free. It’s all happening in a big space new space we’ve borrowed a few doors down from the Raspberry Pi Store in the Grand Arcade in Cambridge, UK.

What is Raspberry Pi doing?

Everyone aged seven to 107 can get hands-on and creative with our free beginner-friendly workshops. You can make games with Scratch on Raspberry Pi, learn simple electronics for beginners, or get hands-on with the Raspberry Pi camera and Python programming.

Learners of all ages can have a go

If you don’t know anything about coding, don’t worry: there are friendly people on hand to help you learn.

The workshops take place every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until 3 September. Pre-booking is highly advisable. If the one you want is fully booked, it’s well worth dropping by if you’re in the neighbourhood, because spaces often become available at the last minute. And if you book and find you can no longer come along, please do make sure you cancel, because there will be lots of people who would love to take your space!

Book your place at one of our workshops.

Not sure what you’re doing? We can help!

What is the Centre for Computing History doing?

Come and celebrate thirty years of the World Wide Web and see how things have changed over the last three decades.

This interactive exhibition celebrates the years since Tim Berners-Lee changed the world forever by publishing the very first website at CERN in 1991. You can trace the footsteps of the early web, and have a go on some original hardware.

centre for computing history web at 30
So much retro hardware to get your hands on

Here are some of the things you can do:

  • Browse the very first website from 1991
  • Search the web with Archie, the first search engine
  • Enjoy the very first web comic
  • Order a pizza on the first transactional website
  • See the first webcam site
  • See a recreation of the trailblazing Trojan Room Coffee Cam

But I don’t live near the Raspberry Pi Store!

While we would love to have a Raspberry Pi store in every town in every country all over the world (cackles maniacally), we are sticking with just the one in our hometown for now. But we make lots of cool stuff you can access online to relieve the FOMO.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s livestreamed Digital Making at Home videos are all still available for young people to watch and learn along with. You can chat, code together, hear from cool people, and see amazing digital making projects from kids who love making with technology.

Taking a scroll through our FutureLearn courses

There are also more than thirty Raspberry Pi courses available for free on FutureLearn. There’s something for every type of user and level of learner, from coders looking to move from Scratch to Python programming, to people looking to start up their own CoderDojo. Plus tons of materials for teachers sharing practical resources for the classroom.

Raspberry Pi books

If you like to tinker away in your own time, there are loads of books for all abilities available from the Raspberry Pi Press online store. The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide comes in five languages. Game designers can Code the Classics. And fashion-forward makers can create Wearable Tech Projects.

More books than the library in Beauty and the Beast

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