Tag: Meltwater

Use your desktop or laptop screen and keyboard with your Pi

Meltwater has come up with a nice little trick which allows you to use your laptop or desktop’s display and keyboard as the display and keyboard for your Pi. You won’t need to do any soldering or to buy any special equipment: all you need is a network cable.

You’ll be using the network port to do this, so if you were relying on it to get internet connectivity you’ll need a wireless dongle too, but using another device’s keyboard and display means that you can cut right down on the kit you need to carry around if you’re bringing your Pi somewhere to show off your latest project.

Meltwater has made an exhaustive guide to setup for beginners available, alongside a cut-down version for advanced users who don’t need quite so much help.

Meltwater’s RGB LED libraries lesson

Meltwater (of MagPi fame) has been working on some affordable teaching add-ons for the Pi. He’s demonstrating what you can do with one of his little kits with this natty tutorial where you’ll be creating your own Python library, and using it to do some low-level control of the GPIO. You’ll need one of his RGB LED kits if you want to be able to use your brand new library to play with making disco rainbows (Meltwater’s selling them for a very reasonable £14.49, and they’re a superb teaching tool) – but if you don’t have the kit you can still use the tutorial, with a little adaptation, for your own GPIO projects. And everybody should know about Python libraries, so if you don’t, get to it.

RGB LED teaching kit, with a rev1 Pi. Click to enlarge.

When you’ve worked through the tutorial, you’ll have learned how to use Python libraries, and you’ll be able to make (tiny) blinky disco lights in many colours. But Meltwater’s not doing all the work for you: there are further tasks in there for extra credit and a (pretend) gold star. For extra credit, you’ll be working out on your own how to make the LEDS output the first five colours of the rainbow, which, as any fule kno, are red and yellow and pink and green, orange…

These little teaching kits come with a useful manual too. Fancy sending us one for the demo table, Meltwater? :)

 

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.