Tag Archives: raspberry pi 3

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.

The post Recycle your old Raspberry Pi boards with OKdo appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi powers weather station in Nepal

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-powers-weather-station-in-nepal/

This Raspberry Pi-powered weather station is a vital tool for Nepalese farmers, who work in remote, changeable conditions, and rely heavily on monitoring the environment.

nepal weather station being built
All the parts had to be low-cost and easy to maintain

It’s hard to forecast the weather in Nepal. Conditions can vary a lot within a small area because the country is so mountainous. Plus, there is no national weather service. This makes life even harder for farmers working in remote villages. There were a few essentials elements that any solution had to have:

  • Low-cost
  • Reliable and easy to maintain
  • Solar-powered
  • Able to run off readily available motorcycle batteries when the solar panels don’t get enough sun
nepal weather station on the roof
A simple plastic food container keeps the hardware safe and dry

How was it made?

Prabesh Sapkota and Binod Kandel from the Robotics Association of Nepal led the team that built the solar-powered weather station with battery back-up. They were able to complete the project affordably using Raspberry Pi. Prabesh and his team wrote the software and created a display dashboard in Raspberry Pi OS Jessie.

nepal weather station hardware insides
The core components put together as a prototype with a breadboard to check everything worked

One of the challenges they faced was being able to power the Raspberry Pi and Arduino reliably, and that’s where the BitScope Blade Uno came in to play (more on that later).

The weather station sensors measure temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, wind direction and wind speed, and all of the sensors are connected to the Arduino, which records the data and sends it to the Raspberry Pi to display on the dashboard.

Full kit list

  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
  • Raspberry Pi 7″ Touch Display
  • Arduino Uno
  • BitScope Blade Uno (directly powers Raspberry Pi and Arduino)
  • GPS module (NEO-6M-0-001)
  • Pressure sensor (BMP180)
  • Humidity sensor (DHT11)
  • 12V Lead-acid battery
  • 20 Watt solar panel
  • Hall effect sensor (used together with magnets in an anemometer to measure wind speed)
  • 8 reed switches (used with a wind vane that has an attached magnet to sense wind direction)
nepal weather station in action
Testing out the weather station on the roof

The team is working with an Australian sponsor to run workshops on basic electronics, with the intention of helping people build more of these affordable weather stations for rural schools and remote areas.

What is Bitscope Blade?

This weather station is an inspiring application of BitScope Blade, available to buy from element14. BitScope developed these power and mounting solutions for people working in challenging conditions, making them perfect for remote areas of Nepal without access to reliable power. They’re designed for industrial deployment as well as being suitable for off-grid hobbyist and educational applications.

You can choose from three variants, according to how many Raspberry Pi computers you need to support: BitScope Blade Uno for one Raspberry Pi and optional HAT, useful for makers and students; Duo for a pair of Raspberry Pis, ideal for building a standalone desktop and server system; and Quattro for four Raspberry Pis in applications such as compute clusters, private clouds or build farms.

Read more on the BitScope blog.

The post Raspberry Pi powers weather station in Nepal appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Make your bike smart with Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/make-your-bike-smart-with-raspberry-pi/

Maker keanuDav was always forgetting to turn on his bike lights when riding out in the dark. He also never knew how fast he was going, or how long his rides were. So he created a shareable smart bike that automatically turns the lights on or off and keeps track of where you’ve ridden. The project uses a RFID scanner so somebody else can use the bike without messing with Keanu’s personal ride data.

Here in Cambridge, if you forget to take your clip-on lights off your bike when you lock it up, chances are they won’t be there when you go back. We reckon this Raspberry Pi-powered solution could work for us here in the UK’s leading cycling city too, since there’s nothing to easily unclip and walk away with.

Hardware

  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • GPS NEO 6M (to track speed and location)
  • Portable power battery
  • RFID RC522 (so guest data and Keanu’s data can be separated)
  • LCD screen (so you can see the IP address and display when a user scans in or out)
  • Elegoo Uno R3 Board

Keanu totted up the total price of the build, including wood and the light, at around €145.

How does it all fit together?

We’re not going to lie: the smart bike looks tricky to recreate. I mean, that is a lot of wires. And several bits of hardware. But it does perform multiple functions for the rider, so we can put up with a little fiddliness.

smart bike electrical parts wired up
So many wires. *Rocks back and forth* So many wires.

And don’t worry, Keanu is a hero and shared this Fritzing diagram on his instructable, which is handily set out in a twelve-step format so you can follow along easily.

smart bike fritzing diagram
See, it’s all simple once you know how

How do you collect all the data?

Keanu explains:

“The RFID scanner is used with the arduino. I read out the data from the scanner with the arduino and send it to the Raspberry Pi with Serial USB.

The GPS module is also using serial communication. The data the GPS sends to the Raspberry Pi is not that well formatted, so I used a library to parse the data and make it a lot easier to use.

The analog values from the LDR are converted using the mcp3008 (an adc), then I transform the value to a percentage.”

smart bike data loop

Keanu stores the data in a relational database in mySQL. Then the database and a python script run together on the Raspberry Pi. Here’s everything you need on GitHub.

Take a ride

On top of the impressive coding and electrical skills, Keanu is a dab hand at woodwork. You could use a pre-made box in another material if that’s not your thing. It just needs a hole for the LCD screen to show through.

smart bike parts wired together in the box mount

Make sure to check out maker Keanu’s step-by-step tutorial explaining how he made the smart bike.

The post Make your bike smart with Raspberry Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi R2D2 console (plus tons of other Star Wars projects)

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-r2d2-console-plus-tons-of-other-star-wars-projects/

Diehard Nintendo and Star Wars fan electrouser301 is behind this customised R2D2 Raspberry Pi-powered console. Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is its brain, and a Nintendo GameCube was customised with spray paint and hand-cut stencils.

game cube painted to look like R2D2
A match made in a galaxy far, far away

Unleash your inner child

Telling the story of the build, electrouser301 said:

“When I saw what people were doing with Raspberry Pi and emulation it opened up a new world to me. If you would have shown kid-me that I could play the whole libraries of NES, N64, Arcade games, Genesis, SNES, etc. all on one console that you create yourself, to your own specifications, my mind would have been blown. That’s what this whole project was about, bringing back my inner child. I wanted to create and own something that no one else has.”

Inner workings of R2D2 Cube

Of course, you could just deck out a GameCube case with decals or paint and keep the internals the same if you don’t want to swap a Raspberry Pi in for emulation. But where’s the fun in that?

See the machine’s power circuit plugged into the Raspberry Pi’s micro USB power slot below. The red and green wires are LED wires, and the power switch wires are pink.

And here’s a side view of the guts of the project:

R2D2 makeover

Hand-cut R2D2-inspired paper stencils spray-painted onto the GameCube give it its instantly recognisable style. A unique retro device now adorns electrouser301’s gaming space, and new life has been breathed into one of Nintendo’s finest creations.

R2D2-approved blue and white colour scheme

Top Star Wars maker projects

Take a look at electromaker’s list of Best Star Wars Maker Projects – it’s where we came across this R2D2 GameCube mashup. Naturally, the list features a fair few homemade lightsabers, so check it out if you’re in the market for an upgrade; however, we wanted to share a few Star Wars-themed builds we hadn’t seen before.

First up, an animated Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie poster made with NeoPixel LEDs and an Arduino Mega. Steve from Making at Home coded a built-in motion sensor and customisable brightness settings. Check it out below, because this isn’t just any old poster with a few LEDs taped in the back, oh no.

Pimp my poster

You know we love wearable tech around here, so this DIY Boba Fett helmet with a built-in LED chaser was definitely going to be a favourite. This is a fairly affordable build too, consisting of a few cheap components like LEDs and resistors, while the helmet itself is made from crafty stuff found around the house. Crazy Couple created this project and you should check out their tutorial-packed YouTube channel.

“I am Boba Fett. The ship you seek is nearby.”

BB8 occupies a special place in our hearts, so we love this 3D-printed robot, which is controlled by an Arduino Uno over a Bluetooth connection from your smartphone. Watch maker Lewis’s video below and share in his love for this spherical droid.

Check out maker Lewis’ channel DIY Machines

May the force be with you

Drop some links in the comments to show off your Star Wars-themed builds so we can share in your intergalactic wisdom. Then go be friends with Electromaker on YouTube. Because subscribers of them you should be.

The post Raspberry Pi R2D2 console (plus tons of other Star Wars projects) appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi LEGO sorter

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-lego-sorter/

Raspberry Pi is at the heart of this AI–powered, automated sorting machine that is capable of recognising and sorting any LEGO brick.

And its maker Daniel West believes it to be the first of its kind in the world!

Best ever

This mega-machine was two years in the making and is a LEGO creation itself, built from over 10,000 LEGO bricks.

A beast of 10,000 bricks

It can sort any LEGO brick you place in its input bucket into one of 18 output buckets, at the rate of one brick every two seconds.

While Daniel was inspired by previous LEGO sorters, his creation is a huge step up from them: it can recognise absolutely every LEGO brick ever created, even bricks it has never seen before. Hence the ‘universal’ in the name ‘universal LEGO sorting machine’.

Hardware

There we are, tucked away, just doing our job

Software

The artificial intelligence algorithm behind the LEGO sorting is a convolutional neural network, the go-to for image classification.

What makes Daniel’s project a ‘world first’ is that he trained his classifier using 3D model images of LEGO bricks, which is how the machine can classify absolutely any LEGO brick it’s faced with, even if it has never seen it in real life before.

We LOVE a thorough project video, and we love TWO of them even more

Daniel has made a whole extra video (above) explaining how the AI in this project works. He shouts out all the open source software he used to run the Raspberry Pi Camera Module and access 3D training images etc. at this point in the video.

LEGO brick separation

The vibration plate in action, feeding single parts into the scanner

Daniel needed the input bucket to carefully pick out a single LEGO brick from the mass he chucks in at once.

This is achieved with a primary and secondary belt slowly pushing parts onto a vibration plate. The vibration plate uses a super fast LEGO motor to shake the bricks around so they aren’t sitting on top of each other when they reach the scanner.

Scanning and sorting

A side view of the LEFO sorting machine showing a large white chute built from LEGO bricks
The underside of the beast

A Raspberry Pi Camera Module captures video of each brick, which Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ then processes and wirelessly sends to a more powerful computer able to run the neural network that classifies the parts.

The classification decision is then sent back to the sorting machine so it can spit the brick, using a series of servo-controlled gates, into the right output bucket.

Extra-credit homework

A front view of the LEGO sorter with the sorting boxes visible underneath
In all its bricky beauty, with the 18 output buckets visible at the bottom

Daniel is such a boss maker that he wrote not one, but two further reading articles for those of you who want to deep-dive into this mega LEGO creation:

The post Raspberry Pi LEGO sorter appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi ‘Swear Bear’ keeps your potty mouth in check

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-swear-bear-keeps-your-potty-mouth-in-check/

Why use a regular swear jar to retrain your potty-mouthed brain when you can build a Swear Bear to help you instead?

Swear Bear listens to you. All the time. And Swear Bear can tell when a swear word is used. Swear Bear tells you off and saves all the swear words you said to the cloud to shame you. Swear Bear subscribes to the school of tough love.

Artificial intelligence

The Google AIY kit allows you to build your own natural language recogniser. This page shows you how to assemble the Voice HAT from the kit, and it also includes the code you’ll need to make your project capable of speech-to-text AI.

Black AIY HAT stuck on top of a Raspberry Pi
Image of the Voice HAT mounted onto a Raspberry Pi 3 courtesy of aiyprojects.withgoogle.com

To teach Swear Bear the art of profanity detection, Swear Bear creators 8 Bits and a Byte turned to the profanity check Python library. You can find the info to install and use the library on this page, as well as info on how it works and why it’s so accurate.

You’ll hear at this point in the video that Swear Bear says “Oh dear” when a swear word is used within earshot.

Hardware

Birds eye view of each of the hardware components used in the project on a green table

This project uses the the first version of Google’s AIY Voice Kit, which comes with a larger black AIY Voice HAT and is compatible with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. The kit also includes a little Voice HAT microphone board.

Version 2 of the kit comprises the smaller Raspberry Pi Zero WH and a slimmer ‘Voice Bonnet’.

The microphone allows Swear Bear to ‘hear’ your speech, and through its speakers it can then tell you off for swearing.

All of hardware is squeezed into the stuffing-free bear once the text-to-speech and profanity detection software is working.

Babbage Bear hack?

Babbage the Bear

8 Bits and a Byte fan Ben Scarboro took to the comments on YouTube to suggest they rework one of our Babbage Bears into a Swear Bear. Babbage is teeny tiny, so maybe you would need to fashion a giant version to accomplish this. Just don’t make us watch while you pull out its stuffing.

The post Raspberry Pi ‘Swear Bear’ keeps your potty mouth in check appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Turn a watermelon into a RetroPie games console

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/turn-a-watermelon-into-a-retropie-games-console/

OK Cedrick, we don’t need to know why, but we have to know how you turned a watermelon into a games console.

This has got to be a world first. What started out as a regular RetroPie project has blown up reddit due to the unusual choice of casing for the games console: nearly 50,000 redditors upvoted this build within a week of Cedrick sharing it.

See, we’re not kidding

What’s inside?

  • Raspberry Pi 3
  • Jingo Dot power bank (that yellow thing you can see below)
  • Speakers
  • Buttons
  • Small 1.8″ screen
Cedric’s giggling really makes this video

Retropie

While this build looks epic, it isn’t too tricky to make. First, Cedrick flashed the RetroPie image onto an SD card, then he wired up a Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins to the red console buttons, speakers, and the screen.

Cedrick achieved audio output by adding just a few lines of code to the config file, and he downloaded libraries for screen configuration and button input. That’s it! That’s all you need to get a games console up and running.

Cedrick just hanging on the train with his WaterBoy

Now for the messy bit

Cedrick had to gut an entire watermelon before he could start getting all the hardware in place. He power-drilled holes for the buttons to stick through, and a Stanley knife provided the precision he needed to get the right-sized gap for the screen.

A gutted watermelon with gaps cut to fit games console buttons and a screen

Rather than drill even more holes for the speakers, Cedrick stuck them in place inside the watermelon using toothpicks. He did try hot glue first but… yeah. Turns out fruit guts are impervious to glue.

Moisture was going to be a huge problem, so to protect all the hardware from the watermelon’s sticky insides, Cedric lined it with plastic clingfilm.

Infinite lives

And here’s how you can help: Cedrick is open to any tips as to how to preserve the perishable element of his project: the watermelon. Resin? Vaseline? Time machine? How can he keep the watermelon fresh?

Share your ideas on reddit or YouTube, and remember to subscribe to see more of Cedric’s maverick making in the wild.

The post Turn a watermelon into a RetroPie games console appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi retro player

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-retro-player/

We found this project at TeCoEd and we loved the combination of an OLED display housed inside a retro Argus slide viewer. It uses a Raspberry Pi 3 with Python and OpenCV to pull out single frames from a video and write them to the display in real time.​

TeCoEd names this creation the Raspberry Pi Retro Player, or RPRP, or – rather neatly – RP squared. The Argus viewer, he tells us, was a charity-shop find that cost just 50p.  It sat collecting dust for a few years until he came across an OLED setup guide on hackster.io, which inspired the birth of the RPRP.

Timelapse of the build and walk-through of the code

At the heart of the project is a Raspberry Pi 3 which is running a Python program that uses the OpenCV computer vision library.  The code takes a video clip and breaks it down into individual frames. Then it resizes each frame and converts it to black and white, before writing it to the OLED display. The viewer sees the video play in pleasingly retro monochrome on the slide viewer.

Tiny but cute, like us!

TeCoEd ran into some frustrating problems with the OLED display, which, he discovered, uses the SH1106 driver, rather than the standard SH1306 driver that the Adafruit CircuitPython library expects. Many OLED displays use the SH1306 driver, but it turns out that cheaper displays like the one in this project use the SH1106. He has made a video to spare other makers this particular throw-it-all-in-the-bin moment.

Tutorial for using the SH1106 driver for cheap OLED displays

If you’d like to try this build for yourself, here’s all the code and setup advice on GitHub.

Wiring diagram

TeCoEd is, as ever, our favourite kind of maker – the sharing kind! He has collated everything you’ll need to get to grips with OpenCV, connecting the SH1106 OLED screen over I2C, and more. He’s even told us where we can buy the OLED board.

The post Raspberry Pi retro player appeared first on Raspberry Pi.