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43 Articles

Welcome to Practical Raspberry Pi ProJects

For a device that can fit in the palm of your hand, the Raspberry Pi has had a pretty colossal impact since its launch in 2012. In just a few short years it’s changed the way computer science is taught in schools, it’s been used in some amazing projects at Raspberry Jam events across the world, and it’s inspired a new generation of coders to create and craft new gadgets. No matter your age or experience level, there’s a Pi project for you, and in Practical Raspberry Pi Projects we’re giving you everything you need to fire up your imagination and unleash your creativity. From hardware-based projects like creating a Pi-powered virtual reality setup, through software projects like using Python to code new creations in Minecraft, all the way to…

Welcome to Practical Raspberry Pi ProJects

Raspberry Pi Model B 4

If you’ve never heard of Raspberry Pi, they are single-board computers; meaning they are a desktop PC but built on just one circuit board. What set the original Pi apart from other computers was its size, being the same as a credit card, and today, despite all the spec upgrades, they’re the same size. But as you will soon find out, just because they are small doesn’t mean they are lacking features or power. Raspberry Pis are capable of playing games, browsing the internet, productivity programs, and coding just as you would on a PC or laptop, but as you will find throughout this book they can also be used as part of various projects and gadgets. While the Raspberry Pi has enjoyed years of success, there’s always been a…

Raspberry Pi Model B 4

10 practical Raspberry Pi proJects

From our time covering this incredible credit card sized computer, it’s become clear there are two types of Raspberry Pi owners: those that use theirs and those that don’t. Whether it’s fear of the unknown, a lack of time or inspiration, when we ask people what they do with their Pi we’ll often hear that it’s still in the box. If that’s you, then you’re in the right place. In this feature we’ve handcrafted ten Raspberry Pi projects practically anyone can enjoy. These aren’t just a random selection of side-projects, though. These are practical ideas designed to help kick-start bigger and better things. Knowledge gained from one project can also be applied to another to create something completely new. For example, you could combine our Twitter and three-colour lamp tutorials to…

10 practical Raspberry Pi proJects

Make music with the Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need ■ Portable speakers ■ Sonic Pi www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/sonicpi/teaching.html One of the major features of Scratch is its ability to teach the fundamentals of coding to kids and people with no computing background. For kids, its especially appealing due to the way it allows them to create videogames to interact with as part of their learning. In this kind of vein then, Sonic Pi teaches people to code using music. With a simple language that utilises basic logic steps but in a more advanced way than Scratch, it can either be used as a next step for avid coders, or as a way to create music for an Internet of Things or a robot. 01 Getting Sonic Pi If you’ve installed the latest version of Pi OS, Sonic Pi…

Make music with the Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi voice synthesizer

What you’ll need ■ Portable USB speakers ■ python-espeak module ■ eSpeak ■ Pi OS (latest image) You’ll undoubtedly be aware that the Raspberry Pi can be used to power robots, and as a tiny computer it can also be the centre of an Internet of Things in your house or office. For these reasons and more, using the Raspberry Pi for text-to-voice commands could be just what you’re looking for. Due to the Debian base of Pi OS, the powerful eSpeak library is easily available for anyone looking to make use of it. There’s also a module that allows you to use eSpeak in Python, going beyond the standard command-line prompts so you can perform automation tasks. 01 Everything you’ll need We’ll install everything we plan to use in…

Raspberry Pi voice synthesizer

Program Minecraft-Pi

What you’ll need ■ Pi OS (latest release) ■ Minecraft-Pi tarball ■ Keyboard & mouse ■ Internet connection Minecraft is probably the biggest game on the planet right now. It’s available on just about any format you can imagine, from PCs to gaming consoles to mobile phones. It should probably come as no surprise that it’s also available on the Raspberry Pi. While at first glance Minecraft-Pi is a simplified version of the Pocket Edition (designed for tablets and smartphones), the Raspberry Pi edition is very special, in that it’s the only version of Minecraft to gives users access to its API (application programming interface). In this project we’re going to show you how to set up Minecraft-Pi and configure it so you can interact with Minecraft in a way you’ve…

Program Minecraft-Pi

Get interactive with Scratch

What you’ll need ■ Breadboard ■ LEDs ■ Buttons ■ Resistors ■ Jumper wires ■ ScratchGPIO3 Scratch is a very simple visual programming language, commonly used to teach basic programming concepts to learners of any age. In this project we’ll learn how to light up an LED when a button is pressed in Scratch, and then change a character’s colour when a physical button is pressed. With these techniques you can make all manner of fun and engaging projects, from musical keyboards to controllers for your Scratch games and animations. 01 Installing the required software Log into the Pi OS system with the username Pi and the password raspberry. Start the LXDE desktop environment using the command startx. Then open LXTerminal and type the following commands: This will create a special version…

Get interactive with Scratch

Build a Raspberry Pi web server

What you’ll need ■ Internet connectivity ■ Web browser ■ Google Coder googlecreativelab.github.io/coder/raspberrypi/sonicpi/teaching.html We’re teaching you how to code in many different ways on the Raspberry Pi, so it only seems fitting that we look at the web too. There’s a new way to use the web on the Raspberry Pi as well: internet giant Google has recently released Coder specifically for the tiny computer. It’s a Pi OS-based image that turns your Pi into a web server and web development kit. Accessible easily over a local network and with support for jQuery out of the box, it’s an easy and great way to further your web development skills. 01 Get Google Coder Head to the Google Coder website, and download the compressed version of the image. Unpack it wherever…

Build a Raspberry Pi web server

Code your own Twitter bot

What you’ll need ■ Internet connectivity ■ Latest version of Pi OS www.raspberrypi.org/downloads Twitter is a useful way of sharing information with the world and it’s our favourite method of giving our views quickly and conveniently. Many millions of people use the microblogging platform from their computers, mobile devices and possibly even have it on their televisions. You don’t need to keep pressing that retweet button, though. With a sprinkling of Python, you can have your Raspberry Pi do it for you. Here’s how to create your own Twitter bot… 01 Installing the required software Log into the Pi OS system with the username Pi and the password raspberry. Get the latest package lists using the command sudo apt-get update. Then install the Python Package installer using sudo apt-get install python-pip.…

Code your own Twitter bot

Program your Arduino with Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need ■ Arduino Uno ■ Internet connectivity ■ Nanpy https://github.com/nanpy You might be wondering why you might want to attach an Arduino to your Raspberry Pi. While there are lots of reasons, probably the most poignant is the extra six PWM-capable pins and another six analogue pins that a standard Arduino Uno offers. You see, while the Raspberry Pi has an excellent array of pins and capabilities, it can’t do analogue and it can’t do realtime processing out of the box. With an Arduino, additions like servos, potentiometers and a whole array of analog sensors are trivially easy to trigger and control. The best part is that you don’t even have to program in Arduino’s quasi-C++ language. All you need is a standard USB connection between your Raspberry…

Program your Arduino with Raspberry Pi

Create a Raspberry Pi three-colour lamp

What you’ll need ■ Arduino Uno ■ Breadboard ■ Set of prototyping cables ■ RGB LED (cathode) ■ 3x potentiometers ■ 3x 330 Ohm resisters In the previous project we showed you how you can use an Arduino microcontroller to help the Raspberry Pi become proficient in new skills that can drastically increase the reach of your projects. With the aid of the extra 12 pins capable of PWM and analogue input, you could easily add multiple servos, analogue sensors and even add input devices like joysticks. In this project we’re going to demonstrate this by creating a three-colour lamp that employs three potentiometers (twisty knobs) to control each of the three colours in an RGB LED light. With it you can make most of the colours of the rainbow.…

Create a Raspberry Pi three-colour lamp

Make a game with Python

What you’ll need ■ Latest version of Pi OS www.raspberrypi.org/downloads ■ Pillow https://github.com/python-imaging/Pillow ■ SimpleGUITk https://github.com/dholm/simpleguitk/ The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic way to start learning how to code. One area that can be very rewarding for amateur coders is game programming, allowing for a more interactive result and a greater sense of accomplishment. Game programming can also teach improvisation and advanced mathematics skills for code. We’ll be using the fantastic SimpleGUITk module in Python, a very straightforward way of creating graphical interfaces based on Tkinter. 01 Python module preparation Head to the websites we’ve listed in ‘What you’ll need’ and download a zip of the source files from the GitHub pages. Update your Pi OS packages and then install the following: 02 Install the modules Open the terminal and use cd to…

Make a game with Python

Raspberry Pi stop motion animation

What you’ll need ■ Latest version of Pi OS www.raspberrypi.org/downloads ■ picamera Python module picamera.readthedocs.org ■ RasPi camera module ■ Pygame www.pygame.org The Raspberry Pi camera module opens the door for your Pi projects to incorporate aspects of photography and movie making. We’re combining both here to create a fully featured stopmotion animation application, Pi-Mation, which makes it incredibly easy to create impressive HD animations. We’ve written this project with Python and it relies on two libraries that you will need to install. Picamera (picamera.readthedocs.org) is a pure Python interface to the Raspberry Pi camera module and is a must for all camera module owners. Pygame (www.pygame.org), which ensures our images can be displayed on demand. 01 Set up the camera module First things first, you need to make sure your…

Raspberry Pi stop motion animation

Turn a Pi into a router

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi (V2B recommended, V1B possible) ■ Decent quality MicroUSB power supply ■ Cardreader + MicroSD Card ■ Compatible USB-Ethernet adapter (i-teceurope.eu/?t=3&v=296) ■ Optional, but recommended: Ethernet switch (no router!) Controlling the interconnects between various devices is paramount to keeping systems secure and safe. Sadly, most router operating systems are closed source – finding vulnerabilities in them is difficult to impossible. Sadly, running dedicated open-source router operating systems is not a solution for the average user, as they tend to demand high-end hardware with prohibitively high prices. OpenWRT is an affordable and efficient alternative. It foregoes some of the complexities found in traditional router operating systems, thereby allowing for lower hardware requirements. The community has ported the system to various routers: with a little care, a compatible…

Turn a Pi into a router

Build a Raspberry Pi-controlled car

Web technologies are moving forward at a huge pace, cloud technologies are bringing mass computing to individuals, and hardware has reached a perfect moment in time where sensors, displays and wireless technology have all evolved into efficient and affordable devices. We truly are at a point where nearly anyone can take an idea from nothing to a working product in a week and at very little cost. Just like this project, which is fun, quick and easy to build on and a fantastic way to learn. We’re going to grab an old remote-control car, rip off its radio receiver and replace it with the Raspberry Pi, hook it up on the network, fire up a bleeding-edge web server and then get your smartphone or tablet to control it by tilting…

Build a Raspberry Pi-controlled car

Raspberry Pi-controlled car build process

Components list ■ A toy RC car with two channels (steering and drive) ■ Adafruit PWM I2C servo driver ■ Female-to-female jumper cables ■ 5V battery power bank Estimated cost: £60 /$100 Components from www.modmypi.com To help our toy car come to life using the latest web technologies and our credit card-sized computer, we’re going to need to make some pretty significant changes to its workings. Fortunately, the most complex aspects of the build can be accomplished with a couple of affordable purchases, namely a servo controller board to take care of the steering and throttle, and a 5V battery pack to keep the Raspberry Pi running smoothly. 01 Identify and remove old radio This project is effectively replacing the car’s normal transmitter and receiver. Notice the three sockets on the…

Raspberry Pi-controlled car build process

Controlling your Raspberry Pi-powered car

What you’ll need ■ A RasPi car, ready to go ■ An internet connection ■ A reasonably modern smartphone/tablet ■ Pi car source code github.com/shaunuk/picar Now we have our fantastic Raspberry Pi-powered car all wired and charged, it’s time to make it come alive. We’re using the best web technologies that the JavaScript programming language offers, to harness the natural movement of your hand and wirelessly drive the vehicle. Each little movement will trigger an event that calculates what the car should do and then sends it over a socket connection up to 20 times a second. 01 Download and install the software To get the I2C connectivity working, you can follow the steps from pages 64-65. Next we’ll need to find a home for our new project code – how…

Controlling your Raspberry Pi-powered car

How I made: Robot Arm

Components list ■ Raspberry Pi Model B ■ Maplin Robotic Arm Kit With USB PC Interface ■ MPU-6050 Six-Axis Gyro and Accelerometer ■ 3 Mini Push Button Switches ■ Veroboard ■ Velcro strap ■ 1m Ribbon Cable What first inspired you to begin your robot arm project? The robot arm itself was one I’d seen years ago and I really wanted it because it’s something you can control yourself – it really captured my young imagination. I was volunteering at a science museum down here in Harlow and this club based around the Raspberry Pi sprung up, and I bought the robot arm because I wanted it. So then I had the Raspberry Pi thing going on at the same time and thought, why not meld the two? I had…

How I made: Robot Arm

Turn a Pi HAT into a Magic 8-ball project

What you’ll need ■ Any 40-pin Pi model ■ SenseHAT ■ Raspberry Pi O ■ Code: https://github.com/lesp/LXF273-SenseHAT/archive/main.zip The Raspberry Pi Foundation released its Sense HAT add-on back in 2015. Yet this board still packs a full scientific platform and an 8x8 RGB LED matrix for a little fun. In this tutorial we’ll introduce the board, show text on the LED matrix and learn how to read accelerometer data for a classic game of chance. Installing Sense HAT is straightforward. With the Raspberry Pi powered off, connect the Sense HAT to all of the GPIO pins, ensuring that the Sense HAT perfectly overlaps the Raspberry Pi. Use the included stand-offs to securely mount the SenseHAT. Now attach your keyboard, mouse, HDMI, micro SD and finally power to boot the Raspberry Pi…

Turn a Pi HAT into a Magic 8-ball project

Make a digital photo frame

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi Model B ■ HDMIPi kit ■ Class 10 SD Card ■ 5.25V Micro USB power supply ■ USB keyboard ■Wi-Fi dongle ■ Internet connection Digital signage is a huge market in modern times, and increasingly we are seeing digital advertising in the public space – be it on street billboards, shopping centres and even in some city taxis. Screenly is an exciting piece of software from Wireload Inc that has set out to reduce the barriers to entry of the digital signage market by employing a Raspberry Pi as its main hardware component for the individual signage nodes. With the powerful VideoCore IV graphics processor at the heart of the Pi and its low electrical power consumption, using it as a digital signage platform…

Make a digital photo frame

Build a Raspberry Pi Minecraft console

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi 2 ■ Latest Pi OS image raspberrypi.org/downloads ■ Minecraft Pi Edition pi.minecraft.net ■ Raspberry Pi case ■ USB game controller (PS3 preferable) Minecraft means many things to many people, and to Raspberry Pi users it’s supposed to mean education. Not everyone knows, though, that you can still have fun and play Minecraft as you normally would. Using Raspberry Pi, it is also the cheapest way to get a fully-functional version of Minecraft up onto your TV. However, in its normal state, just being on a TV isn’t the end of it. Using all the features and functions of the Pi, we can take it to a state more fitting of a TV by making it into a hackable, moddable Minecraft console. In this tutorial, we…

Build a Raspberry Pi Minecraft console

Mod your Minecraft

We program Minecraft to react in python using the API that comes with Minecraft: Pi Edition – it’s what we moved to the home folder earlier on. Now’s a good time to test it – we can do this remotely via SSH. Just cd into the Minecraft folder in the home directory we made, and use nano test.py to create our test file. Add the following: Save it, and then run it with: “Hello, Minecraft!” should pop up on-screen. The code imports the Minecraft function from the files we moved earlier, which allows us to actually use Python to interact with Minecraft, along with the various other functions and modules imported. We then create the mc instance that will allow us to actually post to Minecraft using the postToChat function.…

Mod your Minecraft

Visualise music in Minecraft with the PianoHAT

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi OS set to command line ■ RaspCTL The Raspberry Pi was designed to provide several ways to interact with the world through sensors and activators. In the past, we have looked at using the GPIO interface pins to communicate with several devices at once. This is not the only way to work with the world at large, however. This month, we will look at one of the other mechanisms available, the I2C bus. I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) bus was invented by Philips Semiconductor, with version 1 having come out in 1992. The design is for short connection paths, and supports multiple masters and multiple slaves where messages on the bus are delivered using device addresses. Messages have a START section and a STOP section, wrapped…

Visualise music in Minecraft with the PianoHAT

Supercharge your Raspberry Pi

Your Raspberry Pi is plugged in. Raspberry Pi OS is installed on the SD card and you are right in the middle of setting up a wireless print server or building a robot to collect your mail from your doormat. But are you truly getting the most from your little computer? Do the components you’re using maximise the potential of your Raspberry Pi or are they holding it back? Perhaps you haven’t explored the full set of options in Pi OS, or you’re running the entire OS from SD card, something that can reduce SD card lifespan. Various tools and techniques can be employed to improve performance, from choosing the right hardware to overclocking the CPU. You might even maximise storage space on the Raspberry Pi’s SD card or all…

Supercharge your Raspberry Pi

Create your own digital assistant, part 1

Everyone who has watched the Iron Man movies has probably dreamt of having their own artificially intelligent computer system to do their every bid and call. While Jarvis has massive amounts of computing power behind him, you can construct the front-end with very modest resources. With a Raspberry Pi and the Python programming language, you can build your own personal digital assistant that can be used as a front-end to whatever massive supercomputing resources that you use in your day-to-day life as a playboy, philanthropist genius. We will go over the basics that you will need to know over the next few pages, so that by the end of the series you should be able to build your own rudimentary, customised agent. The first step to interacting with the humans around us…

Create your own digital assistant, part 1

Digital assistant, part 2: speech recognition

Previously we looked at how we could have our Raspberry Pis listen to the world around them. This is the first step in building our own version of the J.A.R.V.I.S system made famous in the Iron Man movies. The next step is to try and make sense of what we may have just heard. In general, this is called speech recognition and it is a very large and active area of research. Every major mobile phone operating system has applications trying to take advantage of this mode of human interaction. There are also several different Python modules available that can do this speech-to-text (STT) translation step. In this second article, we will look at using Pocket Sphinx to do all the heavy lifting. Sphinx was developed by Carnegie Mellon University…

Digital assistant, part 2: speech recognition

Digital assistant, part 3: run other programs

This is the last in our trilogy of articles to help you build your own voice control system. The first article looked at how to listen for incoming commands. This involved listening on a USB device and also outputting audio feedback to a user. The second article looked at how to interpret those commands. This involved using speech recognition libraries to translate the recorded audio into text that can be processed. This time, we will look at how to actually run the commands that were given. We will look at a few different options to execute tasks and get work done based on the interpreted speech. If you have put together a system based on the suggestions from the first two articles, you should have a string containing the text…

Digital assistant, part 3: run other programs

Run science experiments on the ExpEYES kit

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi Model B ■ ExpEYES kit bit.ly/3qIB2eu ExpEYES is a relatively unheard of but very impressive hardware and software platform for science and electronics experimentation, as well as a useful electronic probing tool for makers and professionals alike. It is also open source on both the hardware and software sides, which makes it affordable and versatile. ExpEYES is billed as a science and experimentation kit but really it is much more than that – it is a fully-functioning four-channel digital oscilloscope with an impressive array of features. ExpEYES ships with a wealth of online documentation in a variety of formats (graphics, user guides, web content), including upwards of 50 suggested experiments, and the kit itself contains all of the hardware required to play with the…

Run science experiments on the ExpEYES kit

Emulate the Atari ST on your Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi 2 or better ■ Hatari http://hatari.tuxfamily.org You’ll almost certainly remember the late 80s when the eight-bit computing revolution gradually gave way to the rise of 16-bit machines. Atari and Commodore stood at the forefront of this revolution, with the Amiga eventually winning out. And thanks to the brilliant Hatari (http://hatari.tuxfamily.org), you can now resurrect the ST (and its successors) on your Raspberry Pi. 01 First steps You’ll need a desktop environment to run Hatari – we’re using Raspbian PIXEL. The latest version of Hatari uses SDL2 to render graphics, so you’ll need to enable the OpenGL driver, noting that it’s still experimental and may be slightly unstable. It also means Hatari requires a Pi 2 or better to run optimally. To enable the driver, open…

Emulate the Atari ST on your Raspberry Pi

How I made: Scripto

The benefits of using the Pi Zero within Scripto were numerous. Primarily, its small size meant it could be intertwined with the other tech used within. For Craig in particular, it proved to be a massive help with its compatibility with numerous drivers and existing software Components list ■ Raspberry Pi Zero (with enclosure) ■ Biodegradable Arboblend chassis ■ LCD touchscreen ■ Sunpartner transparent solar panel ■ Swappable side panels ■ Wi-Fi antenna ■ 4 x AA batteries ■ SD card reader ■ USB power input Where did the idea for Scripto stem from? The Scripto started as a final project as part of my Computing and Design degree at the Open University. The concept of a distraction-free device for writers is not new, but it is currently under-served in…

How I made: Scripto

Print wirelessly with your Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need ■ Latest Raspberry Pi OS image raspberrypi.org/downloads ■ USB printer Wireless printing has made it possible to print to devices stored in cupboards, sheds and remote rooms. It has generally shaken up the whole process of printing and enabled output from smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers alike. But you don’t have to own a shiny new printer for this to work; old printers without native wireless support don’t have to end up in the bin, thanks to the Raspberry Pi. The setup is simple. With your Raspberry Pi set up with a wireless USB dongle, you connect your printer to a spare USB port on the computer. With Samba and CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) installed on the Raspberry Pi, all that is left to do…

Print wirelessly with your Raspberry Pi

Remotely control your Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi OS set to command line ■ RaspCTL ■ Internet connection Not everyone uses the Raspberry Pi while it’s hooked up to a monitor like a normal PC. Due to its size and excellent portability, it can be located almost anywhere that it can be powered and it’s widely used as a file server, media centre and for other nontraditional applications as well. Some of these uses won’t easily allow access to a monitor for easy updates and maintenance. While you can always SSH in, it’s a bit slower than a full web interface that allows for custom commands and a view of the Pi’s performance. We’re using software called RaspCTL, which is still in development, but works just fine for now. 01 Update your Pi!…

Remotely control your Raspberry Pi

Code a simple synthesiser

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi 2 ■ USB sound card (we used a Behringer UCA202) We are going to take you through the basics of wavetable synthesis theory and use that knowledge to create a real time synthesiser in Python. At the moment, it is controlled by the computer keyboard, but it could easily be adapted to accept a MIDI keyboard as input. The Python implementation of such a synthesiser turns out to be too slow for polyphonic sound (ie playing multiple notes at the same time) so we’ll use Cython, which compiles Python to C so that you can then compile it to native machine code to improve the performance. The end result is polyphony of three notes, so this is not intended for use as a serious…

Code a simple synthesiser

Create a real-time LED humidity display with Python

What you’ll need ■ SenseHAT Humidity is a measure of how much moisture or water there is in the air. In this tutorial you will use Python to build a real-time humidity display. The program takes and stores a humidity reading using the SenseHAT’s on-board sensor. Then it calculates a simple ratio to determine how many LEDs to turn on. In essence, the higher the humidity the more LEDs are turned on. Then the number of LEDs that need to be turned ‘off’ is calculated and these are added to the list. Finally, you’ll set the program to display and ‘turn on’ the required number of LEDs. The program continually loops so both the reading and LED display is updated as the humidity changes. 01 Attach the SenseHAT Ensuring that your…

Create a real-time LED humidity display with Python

How I made: Holographic Audio Visualiser

With some acrylic sheets mounted on a wooden frame, the hacker duo at Hacker House have managed to transform a regular LCD monitor into a 3D ‘holographic’ music visualiser that’s a sure head-turner at any party. The device projects an image from a monitor down onto an acrylic pyramid, or frustum, which then creates the holographic parallax effect. To add to the futuristic aura of the device, Aaron and Davis have connected a Flick board from Pi Supply, which enables them to use Jedi-like hand gestures to control playback, volume and visualisations. The Flick board is connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 that processes the gestures and sends them to the visualiser, which is running on a more powerful computer that can smoothly run WebGL graphics at a decent frame…

How I made: Holographic Audio Visualiser

Transform your Pi into a micro oscilloscope

The Raspberry Pi has been used in a plethora of applications in hardware, software and some quite unbelievable combinations of the two. From recordbreaking space flights to automated bartending devices and much more, there are thousands of Raspberry Pi projects that, over the last two and a half years, have shown what a capable little Linux box this is. The BitScope Micro is certainly no exception and when you couple it with your Raspberry Pi you have a very powerful, pocket-sized oscilloscope that also features a whole host of other functionalities, such as a waveform and clock generator as well as a spectrum and logic analyser. Best of all though, the whole setup (including the Raspberry Pi itself) comes in at well under £150. Requiring no external power source, the…

Transform your Pi into a micro oscilloscope

How I made: Pi Glove 2

Components list ■ Raspberry Pi Model A+ ■ Raspberry Pi camera module ■ 5 Short cables ■ 5 Popper buttons ■ USB mobile phone battery ■ USB Wi-Fi dongle ■ Energenie add-on board ■ Golf glove What physical modifications have you made since we last spoke? The glove is more portable – previously, the Raspberry Pi was in the wearer’s pocket and you had the long CAT5 cables attached the glove. This has all been stripped back and several steps enabled this. Firstly, was the use of fabric clothes poppers to replace the tactile switches. These are metal and when one makes contact with a ground popper on the thumb, it creates the circuit. It has meant that the same functionality is achieved with five wires as opposed to the…

How I made: Pi Glove 2

Assemble a Minecraft power move glove

What you’ll need ■ Raspberry Pi 2 or newer ■ 4 x 6mm tactile buttons ■ Female-to-female jerky ■ Terminal blocks ■ A glove ■ Router ■ 2x CAT5 cables Many of you will be avid fans of the game Minecraft. In schools it is fast becoming a motivational teaching and learning tool, useful in areas such as programming, creating logic gates and setting up a network. This project is framed around creating a simple networked Minecraft game where one player chases the other and tries to hit the block they are standing on. The real hack is programming a ‘power glove’ that enables you to assign power moves to each button. These powers can then be deployed and used to slow down the other player and get yourself out of…

Assemble a Minecraft power move glove

Build a complex LED matrix

What you’ll need ■ Breadboard & wires ■ 16x16 LED Matrix ■ 2x 74HC238 ■ 2x 74HC244 ■ 16x 220 Ohm Resistor Driving LEDs in an efficient fashion is a science of its own. The common availability of single-board computers has put the necessary technology within reach of everyone. When dealing with LED displays, two different systems must be considered. We will focus on traditional matrix-based systems made up of one or more LEDs. Their affordable nature makes them ideally suited to classic display applications: they communicate currency prices, provide stock-brokers with updates from the trading floor and have even been used as basic displays for primitive oscilloscopes. Finally, we will also provide you with an overview of electronic basics. This tutorial is a bit more advanced than the ones…

Build a complex LED matrix

Use a Raspberry Pi as your daily driver

What you’ll need ■ Rasperry Pi 4 8GB ■ latest version of Raspberry Pi OS ■ MicroSD Card or external storage device ■ Keyboard & mouse ■ Wireless printer Much has been written about using a Raspberry Pi as a desktop replacement. When the Raspberry Pi launched in 2012, this seemed unfeasible. With the arrival of the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4, it is eminently possible. Take the basic specification of a low-cost desktop PC from a well-known retail park supplier. The Lenovo IdeaCentre 3 is under £300 and features a dual-core 2.3GHz Athlon Silver CPU, 4GB GDDR4 RAM, and a 1TB drive. Storage aside, there isn’t anything to set that computer apart from a quad-core 1.5GHz Raspberry Pi 4. In many ways this is comparing apples and oranges, but it seems…

Use a Raspberry Pi as your daily driver

How I made: Joytone

Components list ■ Raspberry Pi Model B ■ Cypress PSoC 4 ■ Arduino Micro ■ 57 Xbox 360 thumbsticks ■ 57 NeoPixel Diffused 8mm Through-Hole LEDs (Adafruit) ■ 8 16-channel analogue multiplexers ■ 5 16mm Illuminated Pushbuttons (Adafruit) ■ 200mm SoftPot Membrane Potentiometer What inspired the Joytone? David Sharples The Joytone is an expressive isomorphic musical instrument which came out of my frustration trying to learn to play musical instruments. I was trying to teach myself piano and was wondering why there are white and black keys – it makes things so much harder. I learned a bit of music theory and came to realise that a major scale is just a well-defined musical structure; the gaps between the notes in a major scale are the same regardless of which…

How I made: Joytone

How I made: Connect 4 robot

What inspired you to make this? I took part in Pi Wars, hosted at Cambridge University last December, and following this I was approached to supply some robots to the Raspberry Pi foundation for their ‘Robot Pod’ as part of the BETT show in January. My wife bought me the brilliant MeArm kit and I used it to build a LEGO block sorter, as you do. This used the Picamera module and a colour recognition script I wrote in Python to identify the different coloured blocks and then used the arm to drop them in the correct ‘buckets’. You can find a video over at: https://youtu.be/FJ8WV1uLhFA Based on this I was then looking for other uses for the colour-capture code and Connect 4 seemed like a really good choice. Research…

How I made: Connect 4 robot

Program a Raspberry Pi quadcopter

The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic project board. Since we love a challenge, we set out looking for something to really take advantage of its capabilities in the most spectacular way possible, something that would really push the limits of our hacking and coding skills. We chose a quadcopter. Kits are available as ready-to-fly (RTF) if you just want the joy of flight, but where’s the challenge in that? We started with an almost-ready-to-fly (ARF) kit – the DJI Flame Wheel F450 – all the hardware, but none of the control electronics or software. Many enthusiasts have created DIY quadcopters using Arduino microcontrollers, so we knew a DIY build was possible, but very few, if any, have successfully used the Raspberry Pi. This article uses the Python code on the…

Program a Raspberry Pi quadcopter

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