December | 2012 | Raspberry Pi

RasPiLapse

If you go shopping for a time lapse dolly rig for your camera, you’re going to be in for a hefty sum of money. So Rick Adam has put together a website showing you how to construct your own - taking you through software, hardware, construction and all that good stuff. You’ll be using a Raspberry Pi, a motor and timing belt (Rick’s were from eBay), and some bits and pieces from the DIY store. He reckons the whole rig will cost you less than a tenth of what a professional rig might, with results just as good as the pro version. I had a chat with him on Twitter about it. He said: “It’s a first draft, but it works all the same!” And boy, does it. Here’s some video of the setup working – and of its gorgeous output.

Little Box of Geek from Geek Gurl Diaries

The magnificent Miss Philbin from Geek Gurl Diaries has been having fun with a Raspberry Pi, a thermal printer (the sort that till receipts are printed out on) and a big shiny button. She’s made a little Python fortune-telling box, which prints off geek pronouncements when the button’s pressed.

Miss Philbin is the sort of teacher you always wanted. She has some video which will take you step-by-step through setting up the printer, connecting it to the Pi’s GPIO, sorting out the serial port on your Pi, pulling thermal printer Python libraries off Github and getting the thing printing. That sort of thing might sound intimidating to beginners, but Carrie Anne is so good at explaining what’s going on that even those who have never picked up a Pi or used Linux before will be able to follow the tutorial. It’s a really good project if you’re somebody who wants to dive straight in to electronics engineering from a standing start. You’ll learn something, you’ll have made something fun, and you’ll never be afraid of wire strippers again.

There’s a full and very detailed blog post to accompany this video at Geek Gurl Diaries. You’ll find part two of the tutorial at Geek Gurl Diaries too (part two is, if anything, even more fun) along with more video. Get to it – and let us know if you give it a whirl!

Thanks Carrie Anne!

Twelve Pis of Christmas: Eben

Today’s the last day we’ll be listing a very limited pre-production Model A bundle for auction. We’re selecting charities to benefit from the money raised; today’s charity was actually both my and Eben’s first choice, but we couldn’t choose the same one for two auctions, so saved today’s for last. Today’s auction proceeds are going to The Samaritans.

In 2007, one of our very dearest friends, Chris Lightfoot (whom we all called Oggie, so he’ll be Oggie for the rest of this post) killed himself. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 35 in the UK, and what happened to Oggie still bewilders us; he had battled depression for all of his life, but we’ll never know why he did it. He and I had been at school, then later at Cambridge together, where we both met Eben around the same time. He was the cleverest of all of us; Oggie wasn’t famous, but he still merited a half-page obituary in the Times for the astonishing work he’d achieved in his 28 years. He was a founder of MySociety, the e-democracy charity, and…well, Oggie’s Wikipedia page can precis what he did there better than I can. His friends also kept his personal website online – it’s worth spending a little while there to get to know him better. Oggie’s worth knowing.

Oggie, punting in Grantchester Meadows. Ironing was not one of his many talents. Click to visit auction.

Oggie was a modern polymath. He had an innate talent as a social statistician; he was adept at politics. He was a superb coder; an exceptional writer; a mathematician and a funny, funny man. I saw him just before he died, and we were falling about laughing over some of the submissions to the new e-Petitions website (that’s the site that the UK government now uses) which he had built and had to moderate; we clinked glasses over someone’s petition to make Tony Blair take a bath in baked beans. And then he was gone.

There isn’t a single day that goes past when Eben and I don’t think and talk about him. Oggie: I use the silly giant pepper grinder you bought us for our wedding daily. I use your tools to check up on what my MP’s up to, to read Hansard and to host this website. I keep the books you left behind when you died in the bedroom. I wish you were here to enjoy Raspberry Pi with us. You’d have loved it. I miss you.

The Samaritans are there to offer emotional support to people who, like Oggie, are in deep distress. Their job is a hard and taxing one, and they rely entirely on volunteers. They save lives; please bid on this auction.

Rob Bishop on CBC Radio

When our developer-evangelist Rob Bishop was in Canada recently, he took part in Spark, a radio programme on CBC. You can download the whole episode, or just the Raspberry Pi bit, from their website. Thanks Rob!

Pi-Point – turn your Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point

I was shown Pi Point before the holidays, but thought it was best to wait until now to spring it on you, because so many of you have got Pis for Christmas and are looking for projects to use them in.

Guy Eastwood has documentation and an SD card image which will allow you to turn your Pi into a wireless access point. With a bit of imagination applied, you can find a million uses for a tiny, waterproofable (think Tupperware and epoxy), cheap access point; of course, you can just use it to extend your home network, but the possibilities get really interesting if you think outside the box. You can build a guest network, firewalled off from your local network. You can learn about network hardening. With the addition of a home-made cantenna, you could set up a line of Pis as relays to get WiFi down to the shed in your allotment, or point a signal at your treehouse. If you’re an altruist, you can provide your local bus stop with free WiFi.

Let us know what you end up doing with Pi-Point. We’d love to hear what you come up with!

Twelve Pis of Christmas: Jack Lang

We’re auctioning off the very first 12 pre-production Model A Raspberry Pis, with some other goodies like signed books, shirts and an Adafruit Pi Plate, to raise money for charities over the holidays. Only 12 of these pre-production boards will ever be made. The first two boards we’re auctioning end in under 24 hours; go and have a look if you want to own a piece of computing history.

Jack Lang, a Founding Trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the Foundation’s Chair, is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. His career hasn’t just been fascinating; it’s positively surreal. He’s been an award-winning restaurateur, a developer for the BBC Micro in its very early days, and founder of a number of successful tech startups. He’s Entrepreneur in Residence at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, lectures at the Judge Institute at Cambridge, and is a Fellow of Emmanuel College. He smokes his own bacon, has a brick pizza oven in his garden, writes for food journals, and makes Consommé à la Royale so wonderful it’ll bring tears to the eyes. He also has a licence for Class IV fireworks displays, and used to be a roadie for Pink Floyd. Jack is brilliant.

Jack Lang, doing something interesting. As usual. Click to bid on Jack’s Pi.

Jack’s chosen charity is one he has a long association with. The Humanitarian Centre is an international development network that connects people working in academia, industry, government and charities to develop more effective ways of working together to tackle global poverty and inequality. The Humanitarian Centre is based in Cambridge, and is affiliated with the University.

Bid on Jack’s Pi here, or click on the picture.

Phoebe is hinting that she wants some LEDs

Meltwater, who you may know from our forums or from the MagPi, where he’s a regular contributor, has been introducing Phoebe, who celebrates her sixth birthday in February, to electronics engineering. He says:

I’ve been working on producing a RGB LED module to use with the Raspberry Pi, since the bright colours and being able to control something so instant is ideal for playing with. I’m using GPIO, LEDs and Scratch being on the to do list (motors to follow).

Anyway, I was writing some notes out for it and Phoebe wanted to help, so she copied the entire page, asking about what each part was (this is before I’ve even shown her the LEDs switched on). She also drew me a diagram of the circuit they did the other week at school, a “battery”, “tough long wires” and “light bulb” (I think I might have to offer an afternoon there at some point, but is only 1st year).

Meltwater attached some photos to the email, and I thought they deserved sharing. Our suspicion is that Phoebe really, really wants some LEDs, and this is a subtle way of getting the message across.

Meltwater’s original notebook scribblings (click to embiggen)…

…and Phoebe’s remarkably faithful copy. A father/daughter trip to the electronics shop for LEDs is coming up this week. Phoebe has said she wants pink ones. (Click to enlarge)

Careers day at Phoebe’s school is going to be a hoot.

I will leave you with Phoebe’s robot; she’s been doing some paper prototyping with Dad. What have you been doing with your kids over the holiday? Mail me if you’ve got something you’d like to share; we love looking at your kids’ projects!

Phoebe’s robot. She says that next she wants to go to the metal shop (B&Q) for parts.

Twelve Pis of Christmas: Liz

As you’ll be aware, unless you got lost down the back of the sofa in a horrible wrapping paper and sticky tape accident before Christmas, we’re auctioning off a very limited edition of twelve pre-production Model A boards (with accompanying goodies like T-shirts, signed books and an Adafruit Pi Plate) to raise money for twelve charities. Today, it’s my turn, and the charity I’ve selected is Refuge.

Typical pose. (Click to bid on Liz’s Model A.)

Refuge has led the campaign against domestic violence in the UK for the last 40 years, and they have grown to become the country’s largest single provider of specialist domestic violence services. On any given day they support over 2,000 women and children. Refuge also advocate for improvements to domestic violence policy and practice, and the implementation of legislation to meet the needs of abused women and children. Most of the charities I considered to benefit from the money we’re raising had mission statements which made me terribly sad; but the work Refuge has to undertake makes me sad and impotently angry. I have friends who have had to use their services; violence in the home happens to people just like you and me, but we’re skilled at turning a blind eye to something that’s so taboo we find it distasteful even discussing it. Our tendency to ignore domestic violence is tantamount to tolerating it.

I hope you’ll help Refuge keep doing the life-saving work it does by bidding on today’s auction.

Twelve Pis of Christmas: the mods

We’re auctioning off the very first 12 pre-production Model A Raspberry Pis, with some other goodies like books, shirts and an Adafruit Pi Plate, to raise money for charities over Christmas.

Today’s charity was chosen (they held a vote and everything) by the team of mods who work so hard to keep our forums a nice place to be: they make sure this site is innocent of spam and flamewars, and make sure it’s a friendly and informative place for kids and new-to-all-this adults to visit. We think they do an incredible job, and they work extraordinarily hard (I’ve just checked the logs, and in the last hour or so just one member of the team has done 50 separate pieces of work, moderating and OK-ing new posts, squashing spam accounts and doing all the other behind-the-scenes stuff you don’t see).

It doesn’t stop: we get thousands of new posts on the forums every day; every single one of them needs checking to make sure it’s not a sneaky advert for a flimsy plastic kichen (we get a lot of kitchen spam, for some reason), and we couldn’t run this place without the incredibly hard work the mods do. So THANK YOU, Abishur, ukscone, ShiftPlusOne, Jamesh, Gert, Obarthelemy, Jongoleur, Dom, Guru, asb, stevepdp, Jessie, Plugwash, Lynbarn, MPThompson, Scep, Mahjongg, Sparky, rdb and Masafumi_Ohta. We appreciate the work you do to keep our forums a safe, happy and informative place all the time, but we particularly appreciate it at Christmas, when we know you have presents to play with and those big boxes of cheesy nibbles to eat.

Click to bid on the Mods’ Pi (and other affiliated goodies). There will only ever be 12 of these pre-production models made, and this one is currently a total steal.

The mods’ chosen organisation is the Open Rights Group (who are not registered with eBay’s charity arm, so the funds look as if they’re going to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but we will be paying 100% of the money raised on this auction to the Open Rights Group). The ORG is UK’s leading voice defending freedom of expression, privacy, innovation, creativity and consumer rights on the net. ORG is a member organisation of European Digital Rights (EDRi). They campaign to change public policy whenever digital rights are threatened, by talking to policy-makers, informing the public through the media, and mobilising their supporters.

Click here to bid!

Twelve Pis of Christmas: Pete Lomas

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you all found what you were hoping for in your stockings.

Today’s charity auction of a Model A Raspberry Pi and accessories has been set up to benefit Claire House Children’s Hospice, which aims to enhance the quality of life for children and young people with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition. Pete Lomas a Founding Trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and MD of hardware design and manufacture company Norcott Technologies, selected Claire House as his charity. All money raised in this auction will be donated directly to Claire House. Click here, or on Pete’s Christmas visage, to bid!