Some Friday video

10th of August 2012 by liz

One of our mods pointed me at this superb video from HomoFaciens. The first part is an elegant introduction to the Raspberry Pi, and the second contains the best example of the sort of things you can achieve with interfacing the Raspberry Pi we’ve seen so far – there are some simply remarkable hardware projects on display in the latter half of the video, and I really, really encourage you to find 14 minutes to sit down and watch it all the way through.

As if that wasn’t enough, HomoFaciens has also made the video available in German.

I’m in awe. I can’t imagine how HomoFaciens has had the time to put together all this hardware, do a load of benchmarking and film and edit this video in two languages. Thanks HF!

Update, Aug 14: Homo Faciens has put up a page with more information about the I/O boards he put together for these projects, since so many of you have asked here and on the forums!

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38 comments

Ravenous on
August 10, 2012 at 2:22 pm said:

…There will now follow a million posts demanding “plz tell me how to do this I can’t be bothered to research it”.

Seriously, great video goes through a range of interfacing ideas.

Comment ↓
CianHa on
August 10, 2012 at 2:32 pm said:

Beautiful Video, thanks to HomoFaciens for making it! hope it inspires a few to get busy with the hardware side of things! Also the best use of a 2CV in a tutorial I’ve ever seen!

Comment ↓
- liz on
  August 10, 2012 at 2:36 pm said:
  
  By the time I got to the 2CV I’d already stopped the video twice to email people about how great it was. I think the point where my mouth flopped open occurred somewhere around the home-made printer – and there’s LOADS more after that.
  
  Comment ↓
stevenspmd on
August 10, 2012 at 2:55 pm said:

Talk about throwing down the gauntlet .. exceptional work!! very inspiring =)

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cnxsoft on
August 10, 2012 at 3:13 pm said:

Excuse my French but: “Holy Shit!!!”

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NZ on
August 10, 2012 at 3:54 pm said:

Wish I had that kind of free time…

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Chris on
August 10, 2012 at 4:01 pm said:

Awesome. This is just fantastic stuff. Inspirational, clear and simple.
The Pi engine governor is great. Internal combustion and Pi are a good mix; call me a traditionalist but I think steam and Pi would be better. )

Funny too. Hilarious, in fact…!

Comment ↓
DexOS on
August 10, 2012 at 4:29 pm said:

Superb video, love the way he demos that you do not need a Atmel chip stuck on the end of the pi, to make it usable for electronics.

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Paul Johnson on
August 10, 2012 at 5:11 pm said:

I think that might be the best video I’ve ever seen!

What really blows my mind is that this is <6 months since the Pi was released. I can't wait to see what people are doing with it in 2 years time…..

Comment ↓
Hove on
August 10, 2012 at 5:48 pm said:

From such simple interface circuitry to protect the GPIO port, to such magnificent examples of what a freed mind could achieve. I love the ink-jet printing, and the milling of it’s own case.

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Alfred on
August 10, 2012 at 6:10 pm said:

The guy’s English is hilarious, but this video is really awesome! People should realize that they can achieve the same things when using the Gertboard (they still need to bring in the programming skills but at least they have to bother less about the interfacing hardware). That will stop all the moaning about the Gertboard’s price tag.

Seriously, the RasPi foundation can’t find a better promotional video!

Btw I suspect mr. Heinz that many projects he demonstrated, already existed but used to be hooked up to an Arduino or similar. But he demonstrates very well that you can use the RasPi for the same projects and that it is far more versatile!

(Very off-topic, but why can’t I post comments using Google Chrome and do I need to switch back to Internet Exploder? I always get password mismatches on Chrome.)

Comment ↓
- Paul Johnson on
  August 10, 2012 at 6:15 pm said:
  
  I’m not sure hilarious is the right word. I think there are few things sound finer than English spoken with a German accent.
  
  Comment ↓
  - liz on
    August 10, 2012 at 6:28 pm said:
    
    Agreed – I thought his accent was very charming and very easy to understand. (And his English is excellent!)
    
    Comment ↓
    - Martyn Jones on
      August 10, 2012 at 6:58 pm said:
      
      So it wasn’t a German English speech synthesiser then ?
      
      Comment ↓
      - Alfred on
        August 10, 2012 at 10:52 pm said:
        
        That’s what I meant with “hilarious”. It sometimes sounds more like the old C64 “Sam Reciter” program than like a human. But indeed, it is very correct and very understandable.
        
        Being Dutch myself, I wouldn’t have done it better…
- Hok on
  August 16, 2012 at 12:30 pm said:
  
  I can assure you that his German sounds a little funny, too. But we are all in awe of his technical skills, and I’m glad he is so modest to keep a low profile elsewhere
  
  Comment ↓
Marc on
August 10, 2012 at 6:11 pm said:

That is just amazing.

Comment ↓
Chris on
August 10, 2012 at 7:06 pm said:

To be clear, when I said ‘hilarious’ I was referring to his comments about shiny toy computers versus real computers that you can use to control, say, an engine. And program without silly shiny interfaces. I positively, definitely, was *not* talking about HF’s splendid accent which (like the welsh accent, c.f. Rhod Gilbert, and the Scottish accent, c.f. Billy Connolly) lends warmth and personality to the monologue and makes it much funnier. Clearly an educated man and a smooth talker.

More inspirational Pi videos! We need more!

Comment ↓
- asb on
  August 10, 2012 at 7:14 pm said:
  
  He has a fantastic sense of humour, which made it even more fun to watch. “There is no power switch on the board, because that would have lifted the production costs into astronomical heights”
  
  Comment ↓
  - Robert on
    August 11, 2012 at 12:13 am said:
    
    I got a kick out of that one, too!
    
    Comment ↓
Angel Padilla on
August 10, 2012 at 7:21 pm said:

Brilliant! Many more reasons to start pre-ordering the GERTBOARDS!

Comment ↓
David Ball on
August 10, 2012 at 8:06 pm said:

Good work! And with full subtitles Really useful when you’re deaf!

Comment ↓
Mats on
August 10, 2012 at 8:26 pm said:

Damn, my old “school” german is worse then I thought
But nice videos

Comment ↓
Peter Jenkins on
August 10, 2012 at 8:34 pm said:

I have been reading the articles here for a while now. But this is the first artcile that has made me want to comment. This was brilliant. This should be emailed to all IT / Science teachers.

Just brilliant.

Comment ↓
- scep on
  August 11, 2012 at 1:45 am said:
  
  Wot no tech teachers?
  
  Comment ↓
LaurieHTjfJzIx5mDcL on
August 10, 2012 at 9:54 pm said:

Fantastic

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Robert on
August 11, 2012 at 12:20 am said:

That was _definitely_ worth the time. Lots of great ideas tossed out, with a nice dollop of good jokes to sweeten then whole thing

Good work, H.F.!

Comment ↓
David on
August 11, 2012 at 3:33 am said:

This is awesome! Keep up the good work. I think I’m going to have to order one or two or three.

Comment ↓
pauldow on
August 11, 2012 at 3:50 pm said:

Well, that puts me, and my blinking LED, back to the drawing board.

Comment ↓
andy on
August 11, 2012 at 6:08 pm said:

Excellent video, narrated by Schwarzenegger. 10/10 would watch again.

Comment ↓
Chewy on
August 12, 2012 at 1:47 pm said:

The video is excellent but it has nothing to do with the price of a Gert board, it’s all about ingenuity and imagination which are both priceless.

Comment ↓
jerrylamos on
August 13, 2012 at 2:31 am said:

“Some Friday video” not viewable on this RasPi Debian all up to date and firmware updated. A few days ago I tried Gnash, re-installed, tried Gnash again, which was huge, and didn’t work. Couldn’t get internet on raspbmc I think that’s what is called. I haven’t seen HTML5 available for the Pi?

Shouldn’t things published on Rasperry Pi Org be viewable on a raspberry pi?

Thanks, Jerry

Comment ↓
- stevepdp on
  August 13, 2012 at 9:27 am said:
  
  Bare in mind I haven’t actually tried this yet on the Pi, but I suspect that it will work as I use it on my Ubuntu laptop just fine.
  
  There’s a script out there called youtube-dl http://rg3.github.com/youtube-dl/. To fetch the first video, you would run:
  
  stevepdp@pi:~$ youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuYLTudcOaM
  
  …and what it will do is fetch the video typically in either the flv format or for newer videos, MP4 which *should* play fine in both omxplayer and the various xbmc builds.
  
  Hope this helps
  
  Comment ↓
reiuyi on
August 13, 2012 at 10:08 am said:

This is amazing!

I’ve read numerous things about linux not being suitable for doing exact timing, but if you restrict yourself to the lower run levels, it seems to be working perfectly! Many more pages of the internet to read

Comment ↓
Jude on
August 13, 2012 at 1:37 pm said:

Excellent video. I haven’t touched a soldering iron in 26 years but this video is inspiring enough to make me start thinking about hardware again.

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Chris on
August 14, 2012 at 11:57 am said:

I wish this guy was my Science teacher! And it’s a long time since I’ve been in school.

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Spütnik on
August 16, 2012 at 8:49 pm said:

This guy is amazing. Some of this stuff is bordering on magic.

Comment ↓
ken dakin on
August 18, 2012 at 9:06 pm said:

This is a BRILLIANT video – must see

Comment ↓

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