Tag Archives: MagPi

The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Post Syndicated from Rob Zwetsloot original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/the-official-raspberry-pi-handbook-2022/

Get the Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022 right now! Over 200 pages of Raspberry Pi projects, tutorials, tips, and reviews.

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Hey folks, Rob from The MagPi here. It’s been a while! I hope you’re doing well.

We’ve been on double duty this month. As well as making an amazing new issue of The MagPi (out next week), we’ve also put together a brand new book: the Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022, which is on sale now!

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Packed with projects

The new Handbook is crammed full of incredible community projects, some of our best build guides, an introduction to Raspberry Pi Pico, and reviews of cool Raspberry Pi kits and accessories – all stuffed into 200 pages. Here are some highlights from the book:

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Lunchbox Arcade Game – make lunchtime far more exciting by busting out some Street Fighter II and having someone eat your hadoukens. Make sure to eat between rounds for maximum satisfaction.

We Still Fax – one part escape room, one part performance theatre, this relic of office technology has been hacked with a Raspberry Pi to be the centrepiece of a special show in your own living room.

iPod Classic Spotify Player – using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, this old-school iPod has been upgraded with Spotify access. The interface has even been recreated to work the same way as the old iPod, scroll wheel and all.

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Play classic console games legally on Raspberry Pi – there are a surprising number of ways to get legal ROMs for Raspberry Pi-powered consoles, as well as a plethora of modern games made for the older hardware.

Build the ultimate media centre – get TV, movies, games, streaming, music, and more on one incredible Raspberry Pi build. It looks good too, thanks to the excellent case.

Stellina – this automated telescope is powered by Raspberry Pi and connects to a tablet to look at planets and other distant celestial objects.

… And much, much more!

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

Where can I buy it?

You can grab the Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022 from our online store, the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge, from our Android and iOS app, and in the real world at some newsagents. It will make an excellent stocking stuffer in a few months time. You can also get the PDF free from our website.

Until next time, take care of yourselves!

Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2022

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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.

The post Meet Geeky Faye: maker, artist, designer, and filmmaker appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Humane mouse trap | The MagPi #108

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/humane-mouse-trap-the-magpi-108/

Safely catching mice is a better way of fixing a problem, and using Raspberry Pi means it needs less supervision. In the new issue of The MagPi magazine, Rob Zwetsloot takes a look with the maker, Andrew Taylor.

With some IoT projects, it’s the little things that help. For example, take Andrew Taylor, who did the good thing of setting up a humane mousetrap. However, checking it to see if any mice had been caught in it, while necessary, was getting a little boring.

There’s one major component to the setup, which is the PIR sensor

“If a mouse had gone in and I did not check it, the mouse would quickly run out of food and water!” Andrew tells us. “Having been interested in Raspberry Pi for a couple of years and having recently begun learning Python using the Enviro+ environment sensors, I figured a Raspberry Pi with a motion sensor would be an ideal way to check.”

It’s a fairly simple setup, one commonly used in CCTV builds and some fun ‘parent detectors’ on the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s projects site.

An old coffee tub is used as a case for the sensor, a good way to recycle

Mouse motion

“I came across a couple of automated mousetraps that people had made from scratch, but wanting to keep it simple and cheap,” Andrew explains. “I wanted to use off-the-shelf parts where possible and keep costs down. The Pi Hut had a tutorial for a DIY burglar alarm utilising a PIR sensor, IFTTT, and Pushbullet, which seemed like an ideal starting point.”

A Raspberry Pi Zero is used to check the motion sensor and send data if it’s activated

IFTTT – If This Then That – is an online service popular with IoT folks. It’s great for small things like cross-posting images on social media services, or sending a push notification when motion is detected in a mousetrap.

“I have only had one mouse since, but it worked!” Andrew says. “I was averaging about 800 detections a day and suddenly got well over a 1000. Sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap which I released shortly afterwards. I do tend to notice that the values fluctuate a bit, so it is always worth checking over the previous day’s results to see if it is notably higher.”

Wiring up the PIR to Raspberry Pi is quite simple, and means the project is easy to maintain

You might think that 800 push notifications a day is far worse than just occasionally checking your garage, and you’d be right, so Andrew tweaked the code a bit: “The code examples I found sent a notification for each movement detection – which I knew would be rather annoying, considering how randomly PIR sensors sometimes seem to trigger. My script instead logs any hits at a max of 1 per 30 seconds and then triggers a notification once every 24 hours, meaning I just get one notification a day.”

It’s a simple design, and was kept simple to keep to a small budget

Beat a path

There’s always room for improvement, as Andrew explains: “I intend to improve the code so that it can record running averages and give an indication as to whether it believes there has been a significant spike that might necessitate me checking it out.”

The first successful capture was released back outside the garage

Whilst the aim of the project was to keep costs down, Andrew is tempted to experiment by adding a camera, and possibly a light, so he can have a peek remotely when there has been a spike in the readings and to see if it is a false alarm. Which, as he admits, is “a new height in laziness!”

The MagPi #108 out NOW!

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.

The post Humane mouse trap | The MagPi #108 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

#MonthOfMaking is back in The MagPi 103!

Post Syndicated from Rob Zwetsloot original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/monthofmaking-is-back-in-the-magpi-103/

Hey folks, Rob from The MagPi here! I hope you’ve been doing well. Despite how it feels, a brand-new March is just around the corner. Here at The MagPi, we like to celebrate March with our annual #MonthOfMaking event, where we want to motivate you to get making.

A MonthOfMaking project: Someone wearing a wearable tech project featuring LEDs, a two-digit LED matrix, and a tablet screen. The person is high-fiving someone who is out of view.
You could make tech you can wear

But what should I make?

Making what? Anything you want. Flex your creative building skills with some programming, or circuity, or woodworking, metalwork, knitting, baking, photography, and whatever else you’ve been wanting to try out. Just make it, and share it with the hashtag #MonthOfMaking.

A MonthOfMaking project: a wildlife camera camouflaged in branches
You could make something to hide in nature while you capture… nature

In The MagPi 103 we have a big feature on alternative ways you can make — at least alternative to what we usually cover in the magazine. From sewing and embroidery to recycling and animation, we hope you’ll be inspired to try something new.

Try something new with Raspberry Pi Pico

I’ve got a few projects lined up myself, including some Raspberry Pi Pico stuff I’ve been mulling over.

A MonthOfMaking project: a homemade chandelier consisting of glass bottles and an LED ring
You could make a chandelier light fitting out of drinks bottles?!

Speaking of: we also show you some easy Raspberry Pi Pico projects to celebrate its recent release! You’ll discover all the ways you can get started with and learn more about Raspberry Pi’s first microcontroller.

All this and our usual selection of articles on weather maps, on-air lights, meme generators, hardware reviews, and much more is packed into issue 103!

A MonthOfMaking project: two Nintendo Game Boys, one of them hacked with two extra buttons and a colour display
Maybe you could tinker with some old tech

Get The MagPi 103 now

You can grab the brand-new issue right now online from the Raspberry Pi Press store, or via our app on Android or iOS. You can also pick it up from supermarkets and newsagents, but make sure you do so safely while following all your local guidelines.

magpi magazine cover issue 103

Finally, there’s also a free PDF you can download. Good luck during the #MonthOfMaking, folks! I’ll see y’all online.

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17000ft| The MagPi 98

Post Syndicated from Rob Zwetsloot original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/17000ft-the-magpi-98/

How do you get internet over three miles up the Himalayas? That’s what the 17000 ft Foundation and Sujata Sahu had to figure out. Rob Zwetsloot reports in the latest issue of the MagPi magazine, out now.

Living in more urban areas of the UK, it can be easy to take for granted decent internet and mobile phone signal. In more remote areas of the country, internet can be a bit spotty but it’s nothing compared with living up in a mountain.

Tablet computers are provided that connect to a Raspberry Pi-powered network

“17000 ft Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation in India, set up to improve the lives of people settled in very remote mountainous hamlets, in areas that are inaccessible and isolated due to reasons of harsh mountainous terrain,” explains its founder, Sujata Sahu. “17000 ft has its roots in high-altitude Ladakh, a region in the desolate cold desert of the Himalayan mountain region of India. Situated in altitudes upwards of 9300 ft and with temperatures dropping to -50°C in inhabited areas, this area is home to indigenous tribal communities settled across hundreds of tiny, scattered hamlets. These villages are remote, isolated, and suffer from bare minimum infrastructure and a centuries-old civilisation unwilling but driven to migrate to faraway cities in search of a better life. Ladakh has a population of just under 300,000 people living across 60,000 km2 of harsh mountain terrain, whose sustenance and growth depends on the infrastructure, resources, and support provided by the government.”

A huge number of students have already benefited from the program

The local governments have built schools. However, they don’t have enough resources or qualified teachers to be truly effective, resulting in a problem with students dropping out or having to be sent off to cities. 17000 ft’s mission is to transform the education in these communities.

High-altitude Raspberry Pi

“The Foundation today works in over 200 remote government schools to upgrade school infrastructure, build the capacity of teachers, provide better resources for learning, thereby improving the quality of education for its children,” says Sujata. “17000 ft Foundation has designed and implemented a unique solar-powered offline digital learning solution called the DigiLab, using Raspberry Pi, which brings the power of digital learning to areas which are truly off-grid and have neither electricity nor mobile connectivity, helping children to learn better, while also enabling the local administration to monitor performance remotely.”

Each school is provided with solar power, Raspberry Pi computers to act as a local internet for the school, and tablets to connect to it. It serves as a ‘last mile connectivity’ from a remote school in the cloud, with an app on a teacher’s phone that will download data when it can and then update the installed Raspberry Pi in their school.

Remote success

“The solution has now been implemented in 120 remote schools of Ladakh and is being considered to be implemented at scale to cover the entire region,” adds Sujata. “It has now run successfully across three winters of Ladakh, withstanding even the harshest of -50°C temperatures with no failure. In the first year of its implementation alone, 5000 students were enrolled, with over 93% being active. The system has now delivered over 60,000 hours of learning to students in remote villages and improved learning outcomes.”

Not all children stay in the villages year round

It’s already helping to change education in the area during the winter. Many villages (and schools) can shut down for up to six months, and families who can’t move away are usually left without a functioning school. 17000 ft has changed this.

“In the winter of 2018 and 2019, for the first time in a few decades, parents and community members from many of these hamlets decided to take advantage of their DigiLabs and opened them up for their children to learn despite the harsh winters and lack of teachers,” Sujata explains. “Parents pooled in to provide basic heating facilities (a Bukhari – a wood- or dung-based stove with a long pipe chimney) to bring in some warmth and scheduled classes for the senior children, allowing them to learn at their own pace, with student data continuing to be recorded in Raspberry Pi and available for the teachers to assess when they got back. The DigiLab Program, which has been made possible due to the presence of the Raspberry Pi Server, has solved a major problem that the Ladakhis have been facing for years!”

Some of the village schools go unused in the winter

How can people help?

Sujata says, “17000 ft Foundation is a non-profit organisation and is dependent on donations and support from individuals and companies alike. This solution was developed by the organisation in a limited budget and was implemented successfully across over a hundred hamlets. Raspberry Pi has been a boon for this project, with its low cost and its computing capabilities which helped create this solution for such a remote area. However, the potential of Raspberry Pi is as yet untapped and the solution still needs upgrades to be able to scale to cover more schools and deliver enhanced functionality within the school. 17000 ft is very eager to help take this to other similar regions and cover more schools in Ladakh that still remain ignored. What we really need is funds and technical support to be able to reach the good of this solution to more children who are still out of the reach of Ed Tech and learning. We welcome contributions of any size to help us in this project.”

For donations from outside India, write to [email protected]. Indian citizens can donate through 17000ft.org/donate.

The MagPi magazine is out now, available in print from the Raspberry Pi Press onlinestore, your local newsagents, and the Raspberry Pi Store, Cambridge.

You can also download the PDF directly from the MagPi magazine website.

Subscribers to the MagPi for 12 months get a free Adafruit Circuit Playground, or can choose from one of our other subscription offers, including this amazing limited-time offer of three issues and a book for only £10!

The post 17000ft| The MagPi 98 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Atomic TV | The MagPi 97

Post Syndicated from Lucy Hattersley original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/atomic-tv-the-magpi-97/

Nothing on television worth watching? Ryan Cochran’s TV set is just as visually arresting when it’s turned off, as David Crookes reports in the latest issue of the MagPi magazine, out now.

Flat-screen televisions, with their increasingly thin bezels, are designed to put the picture front and centre. Go back a few decades, however, and a number of TVs were made to look futuristic – some even sported space age designs resembling astronaut helmets or flying saucers sat upon elaborate stands. They were quirky and hugely fun.

Maker Ryan Cochran’s project evokes such memories of the past. “I have a passion for vintage modern design and early NASA aesthetics, and I wanted to make something which would merge the two into an art piece that could fit on my shelf,” he recalls. “The first thing I could think of was a small television.” And so the idea for the Atomic TV came into being.

Made of wood and using spare tech parts left over from a couple of past projects, it’s a television that’s as compelling to look at when it’s turned off as when it’s playing videos on a loop. “My main concern was fit and finish,” he says. “I didn’t want this thing to look amateurish at all. I wanted it to look like a professionally built prototype from 1968.”

Turn on

Before he began planning the look of the project, Ryan wanted to make sure everything would connect. “The parts sort of drove the direction of the project, so the first thing I did was mock everything up without a cabinet to make sure everything worked together,” he says.

This posed some problems. “The display is 12 volts, and I would have preferred to simplify things by using one of the 5-volt displays on the market, but I had what I had, so I figured a way to make it work,” Ryan explains, discovering the existence of a dual 5 V-12 V power supply.

With a Raspberry Pi 4 computer, the LCD display, a driver board, and a pair of USB speakers borrowed from his son all firmly in hand, he worked on a way of controlling the volume and connected everything up.

“Power comes in and goes to an on/off switch,” he begins. “From there, it goes to the dual voltage power supply with the 12 V running the display and the 5 V running Raspberry Pi 4 and the small amp for the speakers. Raspberry Pi runs Adafruit’s Video Looper script and pulls videos from a USB thumb drive. It’s really simple, and there are no physical controls other than on/off switch and volume.”

Tune in

The bulk of the work came with the making of the project’s housing. “I wanted to nod the cap to Tom Sachs, an artist who does a lot of work I admire and my main concern was fit and finish,” Ryan reveals.

He filmed the process from start to end, showing the intricate work involved, including a base created from a cake-stand and a red-and-white panel for the controls. To ensure the components wouldn’t overheat, a fan was also included.

“The television runs 24/7 and it spends 99 percent of its time on mute,” says Ryan. “It’s literally just moving art that sits on my shelf playing my favourite films and video clips and, every now and then, I’ll look over, notice a scene I love, and turn up the volume to watch for a few minutes. It’s a great way to relax your brain and escape reality every now and then.”

Get The MagPi magazine issue 97 — out today

The MagPi magazine is out now, available in print from the Raspberry Pi Press onlinestore, your local newsagents, and the Raspberry Pi Store, Cambridge.

You can also download the PDF directly from the MagPi magazine website.

Subscribers to the MagPi for 12 months get a free Adafruit Circuit Playground, or can choose from one of our other subscription offers, including this amazing limited-time offer of three issues and a book for only £10!

The post Atomic TV | The MagPi 97 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.