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.
“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!”
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.
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.
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.
Get The MagPi #109 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.
This Raspberry Pi-based build aims to deter porch pirates from stealing packages left at your front door. In recent times, we’ve all relied on home-delivered goods more than ever, and more often than not we ask our delivery drivers to stash our package somewhere if we’re not home, leaving them vulnerable to thieves.
Flashing lights, sirens, flour and sprinklers
When internet shopper and AI project maker Ryder had a package stolen from his porch, he wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. He figured that package stealers would be deterred by blaring sirens and flashing red lights. He also went one step further, wanting to hamper the thief’s escape with motion-activated water sprinklers and a blast of flour ready to catch them as they run away.
A simple motion detector wouldn’t work because it would set off Ryder’s booby traps whenever an unsuspecting cat or legitimate visitor happened across his porch, or if Ryder himself arrived home and didn’t fancy a watery flour bath. So some machine learning and a Python script needed to be employed.
How does it catch package thieves?
The camera keeps an eye on Ryder’s porch and is connected wirelessly to a Raspberry Pi 4, which works with a custom TensorFlow machine learning model trained to recognise when a package is or isn’t present. If the system detects a package, it gets ready to deploy the anti-thief traps. The Raspberry Pi sets everything off if it detects that someone other than Ryder has removed the package from the camera’s view.
And Ryder had an interesting technique to train the machine learning model to recognise him:
If you want to make your own anti-porch pirate device, Ryder has shared everything you need on GitHub.
If you’re not familiar with Ryder’s dog-detecting (and happiness-boosting) build, check it out below. We also blogged about this project when we needed a good dopamine boost during lockdown.
Forget Beanie Babies as McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, or U2’s new album magically appearing on everyone’s iTunes list: the collaboration of the century is here. Estefannie Explains it All answered a call from LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER (aka Sam) who was looking for a coding genius to bring his cryptocurrency-measuring musical machine to life.
Sam wanted to use the up-and-down nature of cryptocurrency value to generate voltages that would power synthesisers and generate sounds. He’s good at music, but middlingly bad at the coding side of things, and so he roped in Estefannie’s smarts to devise a solution.
The Raspberry Pi bit
Estefannie‘s plan involved a Raspberry Pi and some pulse-width modulation signals, which can be filtered down into analogue voltages.
Estefannie’s breadboard of cryptocurrency LEDs
She marked this all out on a breadboard, with ten LEDs connected to Raspberry Pi standing in for ten cryptocurrencies. The Raspberry Pi pins send voltages to the LEDs that correlate with the real-time percentage of change the cryptocurrency values experience.
The music bit
In order to make the monotone output of Estefannie’s creation sound more musical, Sam needed more than one cryptocurrency to be heard at a time, and to be able to alter the chords. So he built ten analogue circuits on perf boards. These slow down the changes in the cryptocurrency values, altering the audio output. And ten separate oscillators allow each board to interact with each other. Sam explains it much better, so check out his build video.
Sam’s army of analogue circuits
Transatlantic collaboration videos
This is a cool mash-up of a project, with each maker producing brilliant videos focusing on the separate expertise they brought to the build.
If you want to dig deep into the marathon coding session Estefannie performed to create this musical machine, check out her project video:
Estefannie’s video goes deep into the coding side of things
And if you’re interested in the analog musical side of things, check out Sam’s:
Sam focuses on the musical element of the project
Hour-long cryptocurrency concert
If you actually trade cryptocurrency, this would be a whimsical way to keep an eye ear on market changes. If you don’t trade cryptocurrency and you also don’t have the skills to build something like this, then you can just pretend.
Sam has produced an hour-long ‘performance’ video of the machine doing its thing. So stick it on in the background next time you’re doing busy work at your desk and pretend you’re also a crypto-trading coding artist.
I speak English. Super well. And I can read the rough, overall vibe of writing in French. I can also order beer and taxis in Spanish. Alas, my dog can do none of these things, and we are left in communication limbo. I try asking them (in English) why they’re so mean to that one Cockapoo who lives across the road, or why they don’t understand the importance of the eyedrops the vet insists I have to hold their eyelids open to administer. They just respond with a variety of noises that I cannot translate. We need to fix this, and thankfully NerdStroke has harnessed Raspberry Pi to build a solution.
NerdStroke’s YouTube channel is new, but good. Subscribe to it! (Video features some bleeped-out strong language, as well as one unbleeped mild swear)
How does it work?
The dog wears a harness with a microphone that picks up its barks. The barks get processed through a device that determines what the dog is saying and then outputs it through speakers.
Raspberry Pi Zero is the affordable brain powering NerdStroke’s solution to this age-old human-and-pup problem. But writing code that could translate the multitude of frequencies coming out of a dog’s mouth when it barks was a trickier problem. NerdStroke tried to work it through on Twitch with fellow hobbyists, but alas, the original dream had to be modified.
The kit worked fine – it was the coding challenge that changed the course of this project
Spoiler alert: fast Fourier transforms did not work. You would need a clear, pure tone for that to work in a project like this, but as we said above, dogs bark in a rainbow of tones, pitches, and all the rest.
So what’s the solution?
Because of this, a time-based model was devised to predict what a dog is likely to be barking about at any given time of day. For example, if it’s early morning, they probably want to go out to pee. But if it’s mid-morning, they’re probably letting you know the postman has arrived and is trying to challenge your territory by pushing thin paper squares through the flap in your front door. It’s a dangerous world out there, and dogs just want to protect us.
Nerdstroke had his good friend record some appropriate soundbites to go with each bark, depending on what time of day it happened. And now, Nugget the dog can tell you “I want to cuddle” or “Why aren’t you feeding me?”
Same, Nugget, same
While the final project couldn’t quite translate the actual thoughts of a dog, we love the humour behind this halfway solution. And we reckon the product name, Holler Collar, would definitely sell.
Follow NerdStroke’s future projects
NerdStroke is all over the socials, so follow them on your platform of choice:
Even if you don’t follow Simone Giertz on social media or YouTube, there’s a good chance you know of her work. Originally hailed as the Queen of S***** Robots, Simone’s early videos of questionable contraptions, such as the Toothbrush Machine and Hair Washing Robot, quickly went viral, birthing a variety of GIFs and shareable content that quickly took over the internet. But, nowadays, she’s shelved her bots and focuses her attention on more reliable projects, such as her highly successful crowdfunding campaign for The Every Day Calendar, and the impressive Truckla, a Tesla pickup truck that beat Elon Musk’s Cybertruck to the post when shared online in June 2019.
Looks like it works fine to me
Alex Bate caught up with Simone Giertz (pronounced Yetch, not Gerts) to discuss how she went from unreliable robots and GIF stardom to bunk-beds made of leaves and office chair sidecars for needy pets, and why her openly discussed brain tumour helped to realign her business model.
A career of two halves
HS To me, as a viewer, it feels like your YouTube career is split into two halves. There’s Simone, the Queen of S***** Robots, and then there’s everything post-surgery, like Truckla and The Every Day Calendar. Do you see it too?
SG The difficult part about YouTube, and also the good side of it, is that if you have a really long career, you grow up during that career, and you change and your interests change. And I don’t want to just play a role, I want to be genuinely excited about the things I do – you get sick of things, and you want to explore new things. So, in order to do that, I’ve really tried to be ‘theme agnostic’ for my YouTube channel.
And that was something that was really hard with S***** Robots, because it was something that I knew that people really liked, and that I had a level of success with. But I was just not that excited about it anymore. And I think the brain tumour became a really good page turner for me, because I had such limited energy capital, you know, and I really just wanted to spend my time and my very limited energy on doing things that I was super-pumped about.
I think the projects I build now still have some elements of the stuff I did in my early days, but they’re definitely less GIF-compatible.
In the beginning, all I was thinking about for every project was a GIF. That was the main deliverable that I had in my head, and the main piece of content that I focused on, and then I kind of built a YouTube video around it, and around the process of creating this GIF. And I let go of that. Not every project needs to have a punchline. It can be fine. It can be a little bit more dull.
But, I still feel guilty about it.
HS Really?
SG Yeah. People are very sweet about it, but I still get comments with people being like, ’Oh, I miss the robots.’ But, at the same time, you have to think, ’It’s my life, and I really want to do the things I want to do.’ And I’m also so drawn to my product business and wanting to focus on that. And the way that my YouTube channel can co-exist with that is for me to explore different products and make videos about them. And it’s actually becoming a pretty good tag team.
Kickstarter success
HS Talking about your product business, the biggest one to date was obviously The Every Day Calendar. 2300-odd backers, and over half a million dollars raised. How did you feel when your first Kickstarter just soared like that?
SG It was fun and scary. Because, as somebody who’s terrified of disappointing people, crowdfunding campaigns are kind of like the worst position to put yourself in because you really risk disappointing people. But, I don’t think we did. I mean, we were late, but I really just wanted to deliver a good product because it was expensive. And, yes, we raised over half a million dollars, but it’s not until now that we’ve actually broken even.
HS Wow.
Simone surrounded by The Every Day Calendar
SG It’s so expensive. And so much of that is in product development. When it comes down to it, and you’re actually putting something out in the world, it’s just crazy how much it costs. And I mean, we probably didn’t do it in the most efficient way we could, because we were rookies. But, it was definitely very humbling and terrifying.
HS Would you do further products with Kickstarter? Or do you think you’re now at a point where you would just create a product and sell it, and not have to rely on crowdfunding?
SG We’re hopefully launching our store this summer, and we’re going to have four different products in it. And, I’m hoping that any easier products can be self-funded. And, if there’s something more complicated, like the Companion Chair, which is definitely going to be a bigger project, it might end up being crowdfunded because with funding, you also get market testing. You can get a lot out of it. But, that said, after I did The Every Day Calendar, I remember saying I’d never do it again. Every night at 3 am, I would just wake up and be like, ’Oh my god, what if we send out the calendars and then, in two years, all of them stop working! People are going to be really angry.’ I’m scared of that. But, I guess that also, even if customers are buying your product off the shelf, you are always going to live with that fear over your head.
The early days
HS It’s really interesting to go back and watch your earliest videos, particularly the first one in Swedish, and see how far you’ve come. Was it always the aim to start the business? To have staff and be opening an online store and selling your products?
SG I mean, no, I would definitely be lying if I said that this is some sort of master plan. There was no scheming where I had the large whiteboard – ’This is the trajectory of how I’m going to become known as the Queen of S***** Robots. And then I’m going to pivot that into running a product business.’ I’m definitely not that smart.
But, I had an inkling of what I was interested in. And I mean, I really liked making videos. And I think that everything kind of happened in a very fortunate way. Because I had this job where I was a Maker in Residence at a US company called Punch Through Design. And my job was just to build different things. And right when my job there was ending, I posted the Toothbrush Helmet, and that started getting some traction. I was moving back to Sweden because my visa expired, and I just had this year of living with my mom again, and having very few expenses and I was like, ’OK, I’m gonna just make sure I work enough to get by, but then the rest of the time, I’m just gonna spend it on building these machines that I want to build.’
So I was very fortunate in the way that I could structure things so I was able to spend time on my YouTube channel in the early days.
But, it’s also so easy to look back and be like, ’Of course, all these things led me to where I am today.’ But when you’re in the middle of it, you’re just flailing. And my flailing, fortunately, landed me in a position that I’m very happy with today.
Commander Scraps the canine sidekick
[It’s at this point of the conversation that Simone’s three-legged canine sidekick, Commander Scraps, decides to join us. Those who have seen Simone’s build video for the Companion Chair or Lego-based Dog Selfie Booth will already know of Scraps. Those who haven’t, well, Scraps is adorable, so you should definitely check them out.]
Scraps is first and foremost a dog, but he’s also the brains behind Simone’s Companion Chair
Creative freedom
HS Some online content creators are often stuck within a theme – wood working, electronics, 3D printing, and so on. But, for you, it seems that you’re the theme, you’re the brand, and you can get away with creating whatever content you want. Do you see that when you interact with your community? That freedom?
SG It’s something that I thought a lot about in the early days, like, how much is the channel about me and my life? And how much is it about the things that I build? And I think what I struggled with is that I’m not that interested in my life. Like, I really want to make videos that I myself would want to watch. I’m not really interested in vlogs, so I decided early on that while it’s about my life to an extent, it’s still centred around these projects I’m building.
In some ways, I’m pretty private on the internet, but also very open, like when it comes to brain tumour stuff. I was really open about it, and I wanted to tell everyone about it because it was a way for me to process what was happening. I remember having to tell myself that I had to stop telling waiters or Uber drivers that I had a brain tumour. ’Hi sweetie, how are you today? Well, I have a brain tumour, but other than that, I’m pretty good.’
When it came to talking about it online, it was a no-brainer. Haha.
But then there’s other stuff that I don’t talk about, like, I don’t really document my life. I don’t talk about my friends really, or my relationship status, or anything like that. Because you have to draw the line somewhere. And I always felt like documenting my life was just too intrusive.
Don’t ask
Robot queen
HS When you look at your most popular videos on your channel, even though you’re known as the Queen of S***** Robots, those videos aren’t actually in the Top 5. Instead, it’s the video of you in the zero gravity simulations, and Truckla, and locking yourself in your bathroom for 48 hours. It’s interesting that the thing you’re most known for isn’t the thing your audience is most interacting with.
SG Those robot videos mostly did really well on other platforms, like Twitter and Reddit. Not so much on YouTube because it has its own metrics and algorithms.
The thing that is really useful for other creators who are getting started is to figure out what is your hook, or what is the very simple version of what you’re doing. Like, Queen of S***** Robots kind of became the headline. And it was this very clear message, and it was something that was really easy for journalists to write about. It was a spearhead for branding.
This was not something I was thinking about at the time, but looking back, my fear then was to make sure I didn’t get pigeonholed, and that I could never move on from it, because that’s the problem when people only know you for one thing – you can’t really move on beyond that. It’s really nice to have that spearhead, and then you can broaden it, and that’s how you have longevity.
I didn’t want this to be over in a year. I wanted to be able to keep on doing it because I was really enjoying it. And now, I want to make sure that I have more legs to stand on, because when you’re going through health problems, you realise that if you can’t be in front of a camera, everything grinds to a halt. If you’re not well enough to work, or if YouTube changes its algorithm, it becomes such a fragile business structure. So, that was one of the reasons why I decided I needed to go into products.
HS I guess you can’t really be known as the Queen of S***** Robots where everything you make doesn’t really do what it’s meant to do, and then expect people to buy serious products from you and trust they’ll work.
SG That’s definitely one of the things when we launched The Every Day Calendar – I was wondering how are people going to be able to take this seriously? But, I think that’s what’s really nice, that my audience has been around long enough and they’ve seen that there’s more to it than that – there’s actually, ironically, a lot of work that goes into making S***** Robots.
Collaborative community
HS I remember the first time I saw your work was when you collaborated with Adam Savage to make an automated popcorn machine in 2016. It’s a great video that really highlights how great collaborative work can be when two people focus on what they’re really interested in to make a final product. And you’ve worked on other videos with creators such as Laura Kampf. Is there anyone else you’d like to work with?
SG I’m really interested in people who are kind of beyond the community that I’m currently in. It would be really fun to do stuff with musical artists; I’d love to collaborate with OK Go. Or venture beyond that and work with people who make art, and fashion designers. People who are outside the world where I’m creating. And there are people that I just love and would always want to work with, like Laura. She’s the sweetest, most talented, down-to-earth and funny person. I really love working with her. I should really think of who’s on my bucket list.
Something I’ve really missed during the pandemic is just getting to spend time with people who are excited about what they’re doing, and having that excitement rub off on me. There’s nothing more inspiring than someone being pumped about something, even if you don’t understand what it is. In some ways, lockdown has been great for creating as I’ve had more time to loiter in the shop, but I definitely miss that input and just being able to talk to people.
A surprisingly interesting video, despite the title
Secret new ideas…
HS And are there any projects you’d like to build that you just haven’t gotten around to doing yet?
SG Honestly, I just want to build stuff for my house right now, which I know isn’t the most interesting answer. I still have the CEO Bouncy Chair on my list – I want to make this kids’ bouncy chair, the type where you’re almost in some sort of plastic diaper. But I want it to look like a mahogany desk with a Rolodex and it’s for grown-ups. And make some spoof commercial for it when it’s marketed as an exercise device, but there’s just some balding white guy in it. I think that’s the only one that I’m still eager to build. Let me look at my notes…
[Simone proceeds to pull out her phone and list project ideas from the notes app. Should I tell you what they are or should I leave them as a surprise? With great power comes great responsibility!]
HS Those are definitely some interesting ideas…
[I’m very responsible].
Check out Simone’s TED Talk
HS Going back to your audience, you seem to have been somewhat spared a lot of the negativity people receive in comments, and online in general. Why do you think that is?
SG I’m just always so scared. Haha. I’ve been spared from the trolls and the hate, and I’m just terrified of ruining whatever equilibrium is happening right now. That’s one of the reasons I post so seldomly. I was looking the other day and thought, ’Oh, it’s been 45 days since I last posted on Instagram!’, and I notice I keep getting DMs from people asking if I’m OK. I’m just always scared to overstep, or do something that would upset people, or cause me to fall from some sort of pedestal. I just never want to post something that doesn’t work for other people, you know?
Simone gives a great interview here
Inspirational YouTubers
HS I get it. The comments section of YouTube alone can be an awful place sometimes. Speaking of YouTube, are there any other makers at the moment who are inspiring you?
SG I love 3×3 Custom. She’s my happy place because she’s at a level of making that I’m just not at. Her jig work is just wild, and the quality she puts out. And I love Nicole McLaughlin. She does these really fun and weird fashion contraptions, like shoes made out of tennis balls. She’s very cool. She’s a level of coolness that I aspire to and never expect to get to.
But, one of the most inspiring things for me is time. And I know that if I run out of ideas, it’s because I’m overworked and I haven’t had enough downtime and time to just loiter in the shop. I try to enforce this on Fridays, where me and my teammates just work on whatever project, and it doesn’t have to be work-related. And some of my best ideas have come from that type of work, where I don’t know what my end goal with this is, but I’m just going to tinker with it for a little bit.
Simone was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert!
You can follow Simone on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos of her project, and subscribe to her YouTube channel for new content. Also, because why wouldn’t you, you can follow Scraps on Instagram too!
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’.
9 servo motors (controlled through a servo multiplexer communicating with the Raspberry Pi on I2C)
6 LEGO motors (controlled through L298N motor controllers using digital I/O ports on Raspberry Pi)
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
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
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:
Hacking apart a sweet, innocent Raspberry Pi – who would do such a thing? Network Chuck, that’s who. But he has a very cool reason for it so, we’ll let him off the hook.
He’s figured out how to install VMware ESXi on Raspberry Pi, and he’s sharing the step-by-step process with you because he loves you. And us. We think. We hope.
Get cutting
In a nutshell, Chuck hacks apart a Raspberry Pi, turning it into three separate computers, each running different software at the same time. He’s a wizard.
Our poor sweet baby 😮
VMware is cool because it’s Virtual Machine software big companies use on huge servers, but you can deploy it on one of our tiny devices and learn how to use it in the comfort of your own home if you follow Chuck’s instructions.
Useful labels explaining which bit of Raspberry Pi is capable of what
Firstly, you need to make sure you’re running the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS. Chuck uses Raspberry Pi Imager to do this, and the video above shows you how to do the same.
Format your SD card
It’s teeny, but powerful
Then you’ll need to format your SD card ready for VMware ESXi. This can be done with Raspberry Pi Imager too. You’ll need to download these two things:
Chuck is the kind of good egg who walks you through how to do this on screen at this point in the project video.
VMware installation
Then you’ll need to create the VMWare Installer to install the actual software. It’s at this point your USB flash drive takes centre stage. Here’s everything you’ll need:
And this is the point in the video at which Chuck walks you through the process.
Once that’s all done, stick your USB flash drive into your Raspberry Pi and get going. You need to be quick off the mark for this bit – there’s some urgent Escape key pressing required, but don’t worry, Chuck walks you through everything.
Create a VM and expand your storage
Once you’ve followed all those steps, you will be up, running, and ready to go. The installation process only takes up the first 15 minutes of Chuck’s project video, and he spends the rest of his time walking you through creating your first VM and adding more storage.
Top job, Chuck.
Keep up with Chuck
Fun fact: Raspberry Pi 4 is the same length as Network Chuck’s beard
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.
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.
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.
Mike reports a “substantial difference in sound quality” compared to his previous setup (the aforementioned and reviled Bluetooth and RCA plug options).
This project lets you use a Raspberry Pi as a music player and control it from your mobile phone.
You can use an Ethernet cable, but Mike wanted to utilise Raspberry Pi 4’s wireless connectivity to boot the Volumio app. This way, the Raspberry Pi music player can be used anywhere in the house, as it’ll create its own wireless hotspot within your home network called ‘Volumio’.
Eew! No more direct audio connection to your phone to listen to music.
You’ll need a different version of the Volumio app depending on whether you have an Android phone or iPhone. Mike touts the app as “super easy, really robust”. You just select the music app you usually use from the ‘Plugins’ section of the Volumio app, and all your music, playlists, and cover art will be there ready for you once downloaded.
And that’s basically it. Just connect to the Volumio OS via the app and tell your Raspberry Pi what to play.
Amp it up
To get his new music player booming all around the house, Mike used a Starke Sound AD4, which you can watch him unbox and review.
What kind of amplification system have you got paired up with your Raspberry Pi–powered music player?
Design Engineering student Ben Cobley has created a Raspberry Pi–powered sous-chef that automates the easier pan-cooking tasks so the head chef can focus on culinary creativity.
Ben named his invention OnionBot, as the idea came to him when looking for an automated way to perfectly soften onions in a pan while he got on with the rest of his dish. I have yet to manage to retrieve onions from the pan before they blacken so… *need*.
The full setup (you won’t need a laptop while you’re cooking, so you’ll have counter space)
Ben’s affordable solution is much better suited to home cooking than the big, expensive robotic arms used in industry. Using our tiny computer also allowed Ben to create something that fits on a kitchen counter.
What can OnionBot do?
Tells you on-screen when it is time to advance to the next stage of a recipe
Autonomously controls the pan temperature using PID feedback control
Detects when the pan is close to boiling over and automatically turns down the heat
Reminds you if you haven’t stirred the pan in a while
A thermal sensor array suspended above the stove detects the pan temperature, and the Raspberry Pi Camera Module helps track the cooking progress. A servo motor controls the dial on the induction stove.
Labelling images to train the image classifier
No machine learning expertise was required to train an image classifier, running on Raspberry Pi, for Ben’s robotic creation; you’ll see in the video that the classifier is a really simple drag-and-drop affair.
Ben has only taught his sous-chef one pasta dish so far, and we admire his dedication to carbs.
Training the image classifier to know when you haven’t stirred the pot in a while
Ben built a control panel for labelling training images in real time and added labels at key recipe milestones while he cooked under the camera’s eye. This process required 500–1000 images per milestone, so Ben made a LOT of pasta while training his robotic sous-chef’s image classifier.
Ben open-sourced this project so you can collaborate to suggest improvements or teach your own robot sous-chef some more dishes. Here’s OnionBot on GitHub.
We love seeing how quickly our community of makers responds when we drop a new product, and one of the fastest off the starting block when we released the new Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 on Monday was YouTuber Jeff Geerling.
Jeff Geerling
We made him keep it a secret until launch day after we snuck one to him early so we could see what one of YouTube’s chief advocates for our Compute Module line thought of our newest baby.
So how does our newest board compare to its predecessor, Compute Module 3+? In Jeff’s first video (above) he reviews some of Compute Module 4’s new features, and he has gone into tons more detail in this blog post.
Jeff also took to live stream for a Q&A (above) covering some of the most asked questions about Compute Module 4, and sharing some more features he missed in his initial review video.
His next video (above) is pretty cool. Jeff explains:
“Everyone knows you can overclock the Pi 4. But what happens when you overclock a Compute Module 4? The results surprised me!”
Jeff Geerling
And again, there’s tons more detail on temperature measurement, storage performance, and more on Jeff’s blog.
Top job, Jeff. We have our eyes on your channel for more videos on Compute Module 4, coming soon.
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