community | Raspberry Pi

Reddit: what do people use their Pis for?

A thread about Raspberry Pi ended up on the front page of Reddit today, and it’s a doozy. There are thousands of people taking part, and some Pi projects mentioned that we’d never even imagined people taking on. Some of them made our little hearts swell with pride. Teaching machines for schools in Ecuador, prosthetic knees in the USA, musical instruments controlled by eye movements for disabled people, solar flare detection, wood engraving, pocket-money analyser – there’s something here for everyone.

You guys are brilliant. With your ideas and our tiny computer, we could get together to rule the universe. Bags I get to wear the hat with the diamonds.

(Update to add: Incidentally, the guy who says his friend disassembled a Pi and built a better one, so we gave him a job? Big fat liar.)

Issue 11 of the MagPi – out now!

April’s MagPi has just been released. As well as all the usual goodies, this month the magazine (free to download, as always) contains features on controlling your house’s heating system using a Pi, a guide to turning your Pi into a wireless access point (I’m thinking of pointing one in the general direction of my village bus stop, where I often find myself standing with only a 2G signal for my phone, waiting impatiently until the bus turns up half an hour late), and some really cute Minecraft pointers. This month’s cover, as you can see, was designed in Minecraft: Pi Edition.

There are competitions in which you can win a Pi and add-ons like a Quick2Wire kit, and, excitingly, an opportunity to win one of the very scarce blue Raspberry Pis which were produced by RS components for our first anniversary. (They’re so scarce we don’t even have one at the Foundation!)

Thanks, as always, to the MagPi team – you guys do an amazing job.

If you’re interested in contributing to the magazine, whether your skill is in writing, designing, typesetting or other production work, give Ash and the team a shout at editor@themagpi.com. At the moment they’re particularly in need of someone to help with testing and other technical editorial work; as well as someone with layout skills.

Add to our demo table!

We’re still settling into the new offices (we’re using Gordon’s phone as a wireless hotspot until the BT guy turns up later this week; we still don’t have a bin, cupboard, coat rack, bookshelf or a coffee machine; glass walls need to be erected; and we really need some whiteboards). One thing we want to set up in here is a demo table: we want some cool Pi stuff that we can take to schools and workshops, show journalists and distract Rob with.

As you can see, we’re not doing very well so far. This is Clive’s (formerly tidy) desk – the jelly baby has dried out, and I’m not sure there’s much we can do to impress kids with a multimeter.

Our table of crap. Please help us make it better. No, we’re not taking the bottle to schools with us.

Have you made something you think we’d like to use in workshops? Do you sell something Pi-related that you’d like to see get a bit more publicity? We’ll consider anything from home-made cases to garden sprinkler devices. Mail rob.bishop@raspberrypi.org if you want to send us something, and he’ll hook you up.

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Bonus ball
The stickers on the Maker’s Notebook (I love those things) represent a number. Unfortunately, it’s obscured by bus tickets, space-food Jelly Babies etc. A prize of the little Android chappie, stickers and whatever else I can find knocking about to the first person to tell us the number (and why).

Clive, 19th Feb

Crowdsourcing new Tips of the Day

One of the changes you’ll have noticed with our new site design is the addition of the Tip of the Day at the top of the home page. We’ve got enough tips to avoid having to cycle for a month or so at the moment – but we want more! This is where you come in.

We’re looking for a selection of useful hints and tips for using your Pi, which will always be the main focus of the Tip of the Day; but we’d also like to be able to include a few tips on…whatever you fancy, just every now and then. Got a one-sentence recipe for killer cheese on toast? A foolproof method for organising your inbox? A quotation that you think is life-changing? (At least as life-changing as killer cheese on toast, at any rate.) A neat idea for tidying cables? An elegant way to clear the sinuses? We want to share your tips with the readers of this site. Submissions, which should be short and snappy, in the comments please – and remember that you’re most likely to have yours picked if it’s a) something Pi-related or b) shocks us with its off-topic brilliance.

A personal Raspberry Pi retrospective

One year ago I had just joined the Raspberry Pi forum. I’d heard about this little, low cost computer that you could plug into a screen and, well, just do stuff. As a teacher of ICT and Computing this interested me a lot, especially bearing in mind the Foundation’s mission and the state of Computing and ICT in many UK schools.

Back then I was one of 3000 forum members; now I’m one of 42000, many of them actively involved in everything from learning to code to robotics to near space flights to… well, just look at a typical Raspberry Pi Grab Bag. Amazing, inspiring stuff. Despite hiccups along the way—who can forget the server-crashing launch?—the Raspberry Pi is unequivocally a great British success story. In fact it’s great success story full stop (that’s ‘period’ for youse lot elsewhere).

It bears repeating that this time last year the Foundation thought that they might sell just 10000 Raspberry Pis: they are currently well on their way to a million. And whilst the Raspberry Pi itself may not be around in a few years’ time—the Foundation have always encouraged competition—something will fill this vital (important and invigorating) niche. The Raspberry Pi has set something profound in motion, and although we may not see the large scale benefits for some time, we will see them. As Eben says:

We don’t claim to have all the answers. We don’t think that the Raspberry Pi is a fix to all of the world’s computing issues; we do believe that we can be a catalyst.

So here I am on writing a eulogy to the Raspberry Pi on the Foundation’s very own blog. GAK! Doesn’t it make you puke? But I won’t apologise for that. My own site only had three visitors last year (and two of them were the cat stepping on F5) so what would be the point? Yes, I have gone mad for the blogging, just like my doctor warned me. And I’ve changed all the passwords (well, 123456 was rubbish) so that an embarrassed Liz can’t delete this.

There: I’m biased. But I also genuinely think that if you have been part of this then you have been part of computing history, in the same way that us codgers who were around in the 80s were. (Teacher Tip: never try to impress teenagers by gushing, “I had ZX Spectrum you know—I used to spend all night typing hex listings in!”).

So this evening, before the plug is pulled on me, I’d like to raise a glass of Blue Nun to Eben and Liz; the Raspberry Pi Foundation; the volunteers; the developers; the contributors; and most of all you, the community. I hope that you feel a mild urge to do the same (at least toast yourself for flip’s sake: it’s a lovely, warm confidence booster.)

I’m off now. Cheers, and thanks for being around for the past fortnight.

clive

[Disclaimer: this piece is personal opinion and is completely and utterly biased. Anyone commenting that I am completely and utterly biased will be agreeing with me, which I enjoy. No money changed hands in the writing of this panegyric (for that is, of course, what it is.) In fact I only wrote it so I could use the word ‘panegyric’ in a blog. Skills badge!]

—

> e
Your path is blocked by a floor waxer driven by Mooncake the cat

>examine Mooncake
Mooncake gives you the look that only cats can: an oxymoronic glare of pure innocence and deep, predatory malevolence. Around her neck is a curious RFID tag.

>get tag
Mooncake gently bats your hand a way. It’s a casual gesture, but one clearly designed to tell you, “I have razor sharp, retractable claws you know.”

>i
You have That Thing Your Aunt Gave You Which You Don’t Know What It Is, a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, a laser pointer and a lardy cake.

>shine laser pointer at floor
Mooncake leaps down and chases the red dot like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Whilst she is distracted you quickly unclip the curious RFID tag from her neck.

>e
Back door

>say to Thorin “unlock door with curious tag”
Thorin takes the RFID tag from you and waves it at the door. As if by magic a small flap swings open.

>climb through flap
The opening is too small.

>climb through flap
No, really – there’s no way you’ll get through there.

>climb through flap
You stick your head through the hole, followed by one arm. You are now wearing a door. (We did tell you, but you didn’t listen.)

>lubricate flap with lardy cake
You slather the fat-rich dough around the frame and then rub some on yourself for good measure. After some panicked wriggling you manage to squeeze through with only a few scrapes. You find yourself in an overgrown garden. The only exit is east through a small wooden gate.

>e
*** CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE ESCAPED!! ***

Your score is 3 of a possible 100, in 2493 moves. This score gives you the rank of complete and utter dullard.

Would you like to: RESTORE, RESTART or QUIT?

New issue of The MagPi – and now you can buy a print edition too!

Things have been very busy in The MagPi‘s nesting box this month. We saw Ash in early September, and he mentioned that plans were afoot to do something the MagPi editorial team hadn’t imagined would be possible a few months ago. They were going to attempt to produce a print edition.

And being the well-oiled team they are, they got it done in a month. The MagPi will always be available as a free PDF download, but so many of you had asked for a print magazine version that producing one economically is now possible for Will, Ash, Jason, Meltwater and the rest of the team. You can order via Mod My Pi (there’s a big link to buy at the top of The MagPi homepage too). A copy is a pocket-money-friendly £2.99 (£2.49 ex tax).

As with so many parts of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, The MagPi is a completely independent, volunteer-run, community project. We think they’re doing wonderful things, and encourage you to support them in producing this brilliantly educational, entertaining magazine each month by buying a copy, or helping with the writing and production yourself – the guys are always looking for new volunteers.

This month’s issue features the return of the skutter robot, instructions on making a portable power supply to make your Pi mobile, a Halloween project (for which you will require a pumpkin to go with your Pi), programming tutorials, interviews, competitions and much more. I’ll be ordering my own copy as soon as I’m back in the UK next week.

Issue 5 of The MagPi out now!

Another month, another MagPi. This issue has a page from the Raspithon team about their 48-hour coding marathon; a new electronics project from Mike Cook (remember those steady hands games where you’d guide a loop around a bent wire without allowing anything to touch?); a slightly more advanced project where you’ll be hooking up a temperature sensor; information on setting up your Pi as a media centre; comparisons of Debian Squeeze and Wheezy – and all the regular columns, like the C Cave, Scratch Patch and Python Pit.

As always, the MagPi, which is a community project, is free to download. Have a great weekend!

Pibow

If you’ve listened to interviews we’ve given about the general fantasticness of our community, you’ll have heard us mention more than once that that very fantasticness has, on occasion, made us alter the direction the Foundation has planned to take things in. (Raspbian, a Raspberry Pi optimised distro which came out of the community, and which you should already have upgraded to because it’s 40% faster that Squeeze, is a great case in point.)

What's that, you ask? Keep reading for an explanation.

One of the most surprising about-turns for us came over casing. We had solid plans on getting an official case designed, once we’d sold enough Raspberry Pis that we could afford the injection moulding for large numbers, and selling that alongside the Raspberry Pi. But a cases ecosystem appeared almost instantly once the Raspberry Pi was in the community’s hands, and people started to get very excited about making their own, either for home use, or to sell. And we like that, because we believe the world runs on entrepreneurship, and hope that from small case-companies great things will grow. We also like the fact that the Raspberry Pi acts as inspiration to kids to go and make their own; physical making as well as digital hacking is something we really want to encourage. (The educational release will come in a very bare-bones case, but we hope that one project that schools will take on as soon as they get them will be getting kids to make their own cases, either using that bare case as a base for their design, or making new ones from scratch.)

Pibow set up

So we’re not giving any one case official Raspberry Pi Foundation status. But if you’re still looking for one and don’t own a lathe and a laser cutter, the closest you’re going to come to such a thing is the Pibow from Paul Beech, who designed our logo, does our letterheads and business cards, and is currently working on the Foundation’s new web site design. (Paul posts as @guru here and on our forums.) Lots and lots of you send Eben and me your cases in the mail (soon we will need a larger house to keep them all in), and I should make it clear that I’m not featuring Paul’s here because he works with the Foundation, but because his case is one of the most solid – absolutely no rattling – and best-looking cases I’ve seen yet. (He’s donating a proportion of the profits to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the GIST Foundation and his local Access Space, which we’re very grateful for.)

There's even a clever slot for GPIO ribbon cable if you're doing a spot of physical computing with your Pi.

Paul introduced me to a prototype Pibow at Games Britannia a few weeks ago. About eight seconds after he removed it from his bag, a small girl barrelled up to us and said: “Is that a Raspberry Pi case? It’s LOVELY. Where can I get one?” He then showed us a newer prototype in the pub after the Cambridge Raspberry Jam last weekend, and a cluster of grown men holding pints said: “It’s FANTASTIC. Where can I get one?”, so I reckon he’s got most bases covered.

I agree with the little girl. It’s lovely. You can get one from the Pibow website, I think it’s the nicest retail case I’ve seen, and I want one. Hint hint, Paul.

Monday grab bag

I’ve been sent links to a lot of cool stuff the community’s been working on over the weekend. Here are a few items which really tickled me.

@Jojoreloaded has ported Frontier, the sequel to Elite (David Braben, who developed both games, is one of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s trustees), to the Raspberry Pi. Frontier, unlike Elite, has a shareware licence; I hope @Jojoreloaded also shares his code so we can all have a go! It’s a DOS game, so the last time I saw a working version (curse you, ubiquitous Windows) was on a friend’s Amiga at school.

Matt at Exaviorn has come up with RasPiWrite, an Mac OS X script which automates the preparation of your Raspberry Pi SD card. I’ve been using it myself, and it does what it says on the tin; I think it’s the first such tool available for the Mac, and it’s extremely straightforward. Just follow the instructions he’s put online.

Quentin Stafford-Fraser has put together a nice little embedded hardware app for changing the bandwidth on a couple of webcams so he can press a button to switch from a monitoring state, where the cams take pictures every second or so, to a state where they’re taking several FPS if he needs a closer look at whatever’s going on. (There are flashing LEDs too!) He uses the framebuffer interface in PyGame – there’s no need for XWindows or any of that jazz.

Click to view a larger version on Twitter.

Richard Leggett has been using Cortex to do genome assembly and variation analysis on E.coli using the Raspberry Pi. ~~We’re pretty sure this is the first genetics application we’ve seen running on the device.~~ 7pm – I stand corrected! Here’s a forum thread I was pointed at in the comments that says otherwise.

If you’ve been doing something cool with your Raspberry Pi (or have spotted someone else online doing something you think should get a wider audience) and you have some video or screenshots you think we’d be interested in sharing with the community, please drop me an email at liz@raspberrypi.org.

You asked, Eben answered!

You might be one of the people who took part in the #AskEben questions on Twitter and YouTube last week. Here are Eben’s answers, kindly filmed and edited in a rock-and-roll style by the muscly George from element14.

These are worth a watch. They’re not the questions we usually get asked around here, a few of them had me choking on my glass of water with either horror or laughter, and some of you (UKScone, Romilly) might recognise your questions on the list.