Tag Archives: Raspberry Pi 3B+

RetroPie booze barrel

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/retropie-booze-barrel/

What do we want? Retro gaming, adult beverages, and our favourite Spotify playlist. When do we want them? All at the same time.

Luckily, u/breadtangle took to reddit to answer our rum-soaked prayers with this beautifully crafted beer barrel-cum-arcade machine-cum-drinks cabinet.

A beer barrel with drinks inside two opening doors cut into the front of the barrel and a retro arcade console serving as the lid of the barrel with joystick and buttons on a ledge in front
We approve of this drink selection

The addition of a sneaky hiding spot for your favourite tipple, plus a musical surprise, set this build apart from the popular barrel arcade projects we’ve seen before, like this one featured a few years back on the blog.

Retro gaming

A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ runs RetroPie, offering all sorts of classic games to entertain you while you sample from the grownup goodies hidden away in the drinks cabinet.

The maker’s top choice is Tetris Attack for the SNES.

A beer barrel with drinks inside two opening doors cut into the front of the barrel and a retro arcade console serving as the lid of the barrel with joystick and buttons on a ledge in front
Such a beautiful finish

Background music

What more could you want now you’ve got retro games and an elegantly hidden drinks cabinet at your fingertips? u/breadtangle‘s creation has another trick hidden inside its smooth wooden curves.

The Raspberry Pi computer used in this build also runs Raspotify, a Spotify Connect client for Raspberry Pi that allows you to stream your favourite tunes and playlists from your phone while you game.

You can set Raspotify to play via Bluetooth speakers, but if you’re using regular speakers and are after a quick install, whack this command in your Terminal:

curl -sL https://dtcooper.github.io/raspotify/install.sh | sh
Booze barrel joystick and buttons panel during the making process
Behind the scenes

u/breadtangle neatly tucked a pair of Logitech z506 speakers on the sides of the barrel, where they could be protected by the overhang of the glass screen cover.

Hardware

The build’s joysticks and buttons came from Amazon, and they’re set into an off-cut piece of kitchen countertop. The glass screen protector is another Amazon find and sits on a rubber car-door edge protector.

The screen itself is lovingly tilted towards the controls, to keep players’ necks comfortable, and u/breadtangle finished off the build’s look with a barstool to sit on while gaming.

We love it, but we have one very important question left…

Can we come round and play?

The post RetroPie booze barrel appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Global sunrise/sunset Raspberry Pi art installation

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/global-sunrise-sunset-raspberry-pi-art-installation/

24h Sunrise/Sunset is a digital art installation that displays a live sunset and sunrise happening somewhere in the world with the use of CCTV.

Image by fotoswiss.com

Artist Dries Depoorter wanted to prove that “CCTV cameras can show something beautiful”, and turned to Raspberry Pi to power this global project.

Image by fotoswiss.com

Harnessing CCTV

The arresting visuals are beamed to viewers using two Raspberry Pi 3B+ computers and an Arduino Nano Every that stream internet protocol (IP) cameras with the use of command line media player OMXPlayer.

Dual Raspberry Pi power

The two Raspberry Pis communicate with each other using the MQTT protocol — a standard messaging protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT) that’s ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and minimal network bandwidth.

One of the Raspberry Pis checks at which location in the world a sunrise or sunset is happening and streams the closest CCTV camera.

The insides of the sleek display screen…

Beam me out, Scotty

The big screens are connected with the I2C protocol to the Arduino, and the Arduino is connected serial with the second Raspberry Pi. Dries also made a custom printed circuit board (PCB) so the build looks cleaner.

All that hardware is powered by an industrial power supply, just because Dries liked the style of it.

…and the outside

Software

Everything is written in Python 3, and Dries harnessed the Python 3 libraries BeautifulSoup, Sun, Geopy, and Pytz to calculate sunrise and sunset times at specific locations. Google Firebase databases in the cloud help with admin by way of saving timestamps and the IP addresses of the cameras.

Hardware

The artist stood infront of the two large display screens
Image of the artist with his work by fotoswiss.com

And, lastly, Dries requested a shoutout for his favourite local Raspberry Pi shop Gotron in Ghent.

The post Global sunrise/sunset Raspberry Pi art installation appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Give your voice assistant a retro Raspberry Pi makeover

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/give-your-voice-assistant-a-retro-raspberry-pi-makeover/

Do you feel weird asking the weather or seeking advice from a faceless device? Would you feel better about talking to a classic 1978 2-XL educational robot from Mego Corporation? Matt over at element14 Community, where tons of interesting stuff happens, has got your back.

Watch Matt explain how the 2-XL toy robot worked before he started tinkering with it. This robot works with Google Assistant on a Raspberry Pi, and answers to a custom wake word.

Kit list

Our recent blog about repurposing a Furby as a voice assistant device would have excited Noughties kids, but this one is mostly for our beautiful 1970s- and 1980s-born fanbase.

Time travel

2-XL, Wikipedia tells us, is considered the first “smart toy”, marketed way back in 1978, and exhibiting “rudimentary intelligence, memory, gameplay, and responsiveness”. 2-XL had a personality that kept kids’ attention, telling jokes and offering verbal support as they learned.

Teardown

Delve under the robot’s armour to see how the toy was built, understand the basic working mechanism, and watch Matt attempt to diagnose why his 2-XL is not working.

Setting up Google Assistant

The Matrix Creator daughter board mentioned in the kit list is an ideal platform for developing your own AI assistant. It’s the daughter board’s 8-microphone array that makes it so brilliant for this task. Learn how to set up Google Assistant on the Matrix board in this video.

What if you don’t want to wake your retrofit voice assistant in the same way as all the other less dedicated users, the ones who didn’t spend hours of love and care refurbishing an old device? Instead of having your homemade voice assistant answer to “OK Google” or “Alexa”, you can train it to recognise a phrase of your choice. In this tutorial, Matt shows you how to set up a custom wake word with your voice assistant, using word detection software called Snowboy.

Keep an eye on element14 on YouTube for the next instalment of this excellent retrofit project.

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Self-driving trash can controlled by Raspberry Pi

Post Syndicated from Ashley Whittaker original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/self-driving-trash-can-controlled-by-raspberry-pi/

YouTuber extraordinaire Ahad Cove HATES taking out the rubbish, so he decided to hack a rubbish bin/trash can – let’s go with trash can from now on – to take itself out to be picked up.

Sounds simple enough? The catch is that Ahad wanted to create an AI that can see when the garbage truck is approaching his house and trigger the garage door to open, then tell the trash can to drive itself out and stop in the right place. This way, Ahad doesn’t need to wake up early enough to spot the truck and manually trigger the trash can to drive itself.

Hardware

The trash can’s original wheels weren’t enough on their own, so Ahad brought in an electronic scooter wheel with a hub motor, powered by a 36V lithium ion battery, to guide and pull them. Check out this part of the video to hear how tricky it was for Ahad to install a braking system using a very strong servo motor.

The new wheel sits at the front of the trash can and drags the original wheels at the back along with

An affordable driver board controls the speed, power, and braking system of the garbage can.

The driver board

Tying everything together is a Raspberry Pi 3B+. Ahad uses one of the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi to send the signal to the driver board. He started off the project with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but found that it was too fiddly to get it to handle the crazy braking power needed to stop the garbage can on his sloped driveway.

The Raspberry Pi Zero W, which ended up getting replaced in an upgrade

Everything is kept together and dry with a plastic snap-close food container Ahad lifted from his wife’s kitchen collection. Ssh, don’t tell.

Software

Ahad uses an object detection machine learning model to spot when the garbage truck passes his house. He handles this part of the project with an Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX board, connected to a webcam positioned to look out of the window watching for garbage trucks.

Object detected!

Opening the garage door

Ahad’s garage door has a wireless internet connection, so he connected the door to an app that communicates with his home assistant device. The app opens the garage door when the webcam and object detection software see the garbage truck turning into his street. All this works with the kit inside the trash can to get it to drive itself out to the end of Ahad’s driveway.

There she goes! (With her homemade paparazzi setup behind her)

Check out the end of Ahad’s YouTube video to see how human error managed to put a comical damper on the maiden voyage of this epic build.

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