Tag: Nottingham Hackspace

Guest blogs and EVE Alpha

>look
You are at home: a dark cupboard under the stairs of Raspberry Pi Towers. The screen of an Escom P75 glows faintly, warding off grues. To the east, faint cracks of light define an small, unfamiliar door.

>i
You have a sonic screwdriver, a half-eaten packet of Spangles and a Bable Fish.

>open door, e
Hallway
You scuttle crab-like into the hallway, shielding your eyes against the violent glare. To the north, a vast marble staircase sweeps upwards and out of sight. There is a largish machine being operated down the hall to the east. A bust of Clive Sinclair squats purposefully in an alcove to the south.

>examine bust
The bust is beautifully sculpted from snow-white alabaster and has a faint, eerie glow. A ragged sign hangs around its neck by garden twine.

>read sign
Written in red crayon on the back of a Netto cornflake box it says, “Back in two weeks. All passwords are ’123456′. Sort it out.”

And that, dear readers, is the true story of how I found myself looking after the blog for a fortnight. Please bear with me as I’m rather etiolated…

Guest blogs and EVE Alpha

Thanks to everyone who sent in a guest blog: there’s some amazing stuff going on out there and we really are privileged to have such a talented and passionate community. The first guest blog will be posted tomorrow with regular appearances thereafter.

In the meantime, Dominic of Nottingham Hackspace has told us about a wireless development board for the Raspberry Pi called EVE Alpha, developed by some of the Hackspace folk and a tiny local electronics firm CISECO.  It’s on Kickstarter if you want further details and/or to support it. I’m posting this now because EVE alpha is being demonstrated at the Nottingham Raspberry Jam tomorrow, Tuesday 6th November.  Get down to the Cape Bar on Victoria Street in Nottingham  for 6.30pm and say hello! Sorry for the (very) short notice but if you are in the area then this is a chance to be one of the first to see what looks to be a very interesting piece of kit.

Fish Pi

Liz: I try to keep an eye out for some of the kookier projects people are using their Raspberry Pis in. This autonomous, solar-powered, Atlantic-exploring work-in-progress fits the bill precisely (and it has a great name and incorporates Tupperware into its design), so I asked Greg Holloway, the Mind Behind, to write a few words about what he’s doing for us. Hoist the mainsail, Greg!

Massive 25 foot waves, 60mph winds, torrential rain, lightning, and the Kraken.  None of those things should be put anywhere near a Raspberry Pi. On the Atlantic Ocean all of those are commonplace, and that is exactly where I’m sending my Raspberry Pi.  The project is called FishPi, and the aim is to develop an Autonomous Marine Surface Vehicle, and have it cross the Atlantic Ocean.

I don’t suppose it will happen quite like the illustration depicts when the Kraken shows up; FishPi will be powered by a 130watt solar panel, so there will be no masts or sails. The propulsion will run from batteries, charged by the solar panel, and it will utilise a Kort Nozzle to gain maximum thrust from what will be limited power.

There’s a long way to go yet before the Raspberry Pi gets its sea legs, but that’s not to say progress has not been made. At the moment my time is being spent developing the Proof-Of-Concept Vehicle. The POCV has a hull of 20 inches, so it’s quite small. Below deck sits a brushed 540 motor coupled to a 2.5:1 reduction gearbox, which in turn drives a ducted 40mm Kort propeller. There’s also a servo which will rotate the nozzle to turn the vessel.

The Raspberry Pi is going into a waterproof container, an upside down lunch box, along with all the other important components. The important bits will run on the i²c bus, a GPS, a servo controller board (which will drive the rudder and the Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) for the motor), and a compass. I hope to attach the Raspberry Pi’s camera once it becomes available, if it’s not ready in time a USB one will do instead.

 One of the systems I’m looking at now is the power for the POCV, and it looks like I’ll be running it from six 1.2v NiMh batteries. Power to the Raspberry Pi will come from an LDO outputting a regulated 5v, a similar LDO will be used to provide 3.3v for the devices on the i²c bus. The ESC will draw directly from the battery pack, but the output to the motor will be controlled by the Raspberry Pi via the Servo controller board on the i²c bus. The batteries are to be spread around the hull to help balance it on the water and to add ballast for stability.

There is a lot of head scratching going on, and I’m always ready to hear fresh ideas, and of course the occasional warnings associated with undertaking such a task. The project website is at fishpi.org, you’re all welcome to pop onto our forum, and follow the projects progress, and there is also a twitter account; @TheFishPi.

I’ll be taking the FishPi along to the Nottingham Hackspace Raspberry Jam on Tuesday the 3rd of July. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, and if you’re raucous enough, you can join in with some sea shanties too, ye landlubbers.