Across Code Clubs, CoderDojos, Raspberry Jams, and all our other education programmes, we’re working with hundreds of thousands of young people. They are all making different projects and learning different things while they are making. The research team at the Raspberry Pi Foundation does lots of work to help us understand what exactly these young people learn, and how the adults and peers who mentor them share their skills with them.

We do our research work by:

• Visiting clubs, Dojos, and events, seeing how they run, and talking to the adults and young people involved
• Running surveys to get feedback on how people are helping young people learn
• Testing new approaches and resources with groups of clubs and Dojos to try different ways which might help to engage more young people or help them learn more effectively

Over the last few months, we’ve been running lots of research projects and gained some fascinating insights into how young people are engaging with digital making. As well as using these findings to shape our education work, we also publish what we find, for free, over on our research page.

How do children tackle digital making projects?

We found that making ambitious digital projects is a careful balance between ideas, technology, and skills. Using this new understanding, we will help children and the adults that support them plan a process for exploring open-ended projects.

For this piece of research, we interviewed children and young people at last year’s Coolest Projects International and Coolest Projects UK , asking questions about the kinds of projects they made and how they created them. We found that the challenge they face is finding a balance between three things: the ideas and problems they want to address, the technologies they have access to, and their skills. Different children approached their projects in different ways, some starting with the technology they had access to, others starting with an idea or with a problem they wanted to solve.

Achieving big ambitions with the technology you have to hand while also learning the skills you need can be tricky. We’re planning to develop more resources to help young people with this.

We also found out a lot about the power of seeing other children’s projects, what children learn, and the confidence they develop in presenting their projects at these events. Alongside our analysis, we’ve put together some case studies of the teams we interviewed, so people can read in-depth about their projects and the stories of how they created them.

Who comes to Code Club?

In another research project, we found that Code Clubs in schools are often diverse and cater well for the communities the schools serve; Code Club is not an exclusive club, but something for everyone.

Code Clubs are run by volunteers in all sorts of schools, libraries, and other venues across the world; we know a lot about the spaces the clubs take place in and the volunteers who run them, but less about the children who choose to take part. We’ve started to explore this through structured visits to clubs in a sample of schools across the West Midlands in England, interviewing teachers about the groups of children in their club. We knew Code Clubs were reaching schools that cater for a whole range of communities, and the evidence of this project suggests that the children who attend the Code Club in those schools come from a range of backgrounds themselves.

We found that in these primary schools, children were motivated to join Code Club more because the club is fun rather than because the children see themselves as people who are programmers. This is partly because adults set up Code Clubs with an emphasis on fun: although children are learning, they are not perceiving Code Club as an academic activity linked with school work. Our project also showed us how Code Clubs fit in with the other after-school clubs in schools, and that children often choose Code Club as part of a menu of after-school clubs.

In the last few months we’ve also published insights into how Raspberry Pi Certified Educators are using their training in schools, and into how schools are using Raspberry Pi computers. You can find our reports on all of these topics over at our research page.

Thanks to all the volunteers, educators, and young people who are finding time to help us with their research. If you’re involved in any of our education programmes and want to take part in a research project, or if you are doing your own research into computing education and want to start a conversation, then reach out to us via [email protected].

Create something beautiful with silicon, electricity, your endless imagination, and HackSpace magazine issue 16 — out today!

LEDs are awesome

Basically, LEDs are components that convert electrical power into light. Connect them to a power source (with some form of current limiter) in the right orientation, and they’ll glow.

Each LED has a single colour. Fortunately, manufacturers can pack three LEDs (red, green, and blue) into a single component, and varying the power to each LED-within-an-LED produces a wide range of hues. However, by itself, this type of colourful LED is a little tricky to control: each requires three inputs, so a simple 10×10 matrix would require 300 inputs. But there’s a particular trick electronics manufacturers have that make RGB LEDs easy to use: making the LEDs addressable!

Addressable LEDs

Addressable LEDs have microcontrollers built into them. These aren’t powerful, programmable microcontrollers, they’re just able to handle a simple communications protocol. There are quite a few different types of addressable LEDs, but two are most popular with makers: WS2812 (often called NeoPixels) and APA102 (often called DotStars). Both are widely available from maker stores and direct-from-China websites. NeoPixels use a single data line, while DotStars use a signal and a clock line. Both, however, are chainable. This means that you connect one (for NeoPixels) or two (for DotStars) pins of your microcontroller to the Data In connectors on the first LED, then the output of this LED to the input of the next, and so on.

Exactly how many LEDs you can chain together depends on a few different things, including the power of the microcontroller and the intended refresh rate. Often, though, the limiting factor for most hobbyists is the amount of electricity you need.

Which type to use

The big difference between NeoPixels and DotStars comes down to the speed of them. LEDs are made dimmer by turning them off and on very quickly. The proportion of the time they’re off, the dimmer they are. This is known as pulse-width modulation (PWM). The speed at which this blinking on and off can have implications for some makes, such as when the LEDs are moving quickly.

NeoPixels

• Cheap
• Slowish refresh rate
• Slowish PWM rate

DotStars

• More expensive
• Faster refresh rate
• Fast PWM rate

Safety first!

HackSpace magazine’s LED feature is just a whistle-stop guide to the basics of powering LEDs — it’s not a comprehensive guide to all things power-related. Once you go above a few amperes, you need to think about what you’re doing with power. Once you start to approach double figures, you need to make sure you know what you’re doing and, if you find yourself shopping for an industrial power supply, then you really need to make sure you know how to use it safely.

Read more

Read the rest of the exclusive 14-page LED special in HackSpace magazine issue 16, out today. Buy your copy now from the Raspberry Pi Press store, major newsagents in the UK, or Barnes & Noble, Fry’s, or Micro Center in the US. Or, download your free PDF copy from the HackSpace magazine website.

We’re also shipping to stores in Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Belgium, and Brazil, so be sure to ask your local newsagent whether they’ll be getting HackSpace magazine.

Subscribe now

Subscribe to HackSpace on a monthly, quarterly, or twelve-month basis to save money against newsstand prices.

Twelve-month print subscribers get a free Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, loaded with inputs and sensors and ready for your next project. Tempted?

Playing sound through a Raspberry Pi is a simple enough process. But what if you want to play multiple sounds through multiple speakers at the same time? Lucky for us, Devon Bray figured out how to do it.

Play multiple audio files simultaneously with Raspberry Pi

Artist’s Website: http://www.saradittrich.com/ Blog Post: http://www.esologic.com/multi-audio/ Ever wanted to have multiple different sound files playing on different output devices attached to a host computer? Say you’re writing a DJing application where you want one mix for headphones and one for the speakers.

Multiple audio files through multiple speakers

While working with artist Sara Dittrich on her These Blobs installation for Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Devon was faced with the challenge of playing “8 different mono sound files on 8 different loudspeakers”. Not an easy task, and one that most online tutorials simply do not cover.

Turning to the sounddevice Python library for help, Devon got to work designing the hardware and code for the project.

The job was to create some kind of box that could play eight different audio files at the same time on eight different unpowered speakers. New audio files had to be able to be loaded via a USB thumb drive, enabling the user to easily switch files without having to use any sort of UI. Everything also had to be under five inches tall and super easy to power on and off.

Devon’s build uses a 12v 10 amp power supply controlled via a DC/DC converter. This supply powers the Raspberry Pi 3B+ and four $15 audio amplifiers, which in turn control simple non-powered speakers designed for use in laptops. As the sound is only required in mono, the four amplifiers can provide two audio tracks each, each track using a channel usually reserved for left or right audio output.

A full breakdown of the project can be seen in the video above, with more information available on Devon’s website, including the link to the GitHub repo.

And you can see the final project in action too! Watch a video of Sara Dittrich’s installation below, and find more of her work on her website.

These Blobs

Poem written and recorded by Daniel Sofaer, speakers, conduit, clay, spray paint, electrical components; 4′ x 4′ x 5′ ft.

 

Trying to connect an old, dial-up–compatible computer to modern-day broadband internet can be a chore. The new tutorial by Doge Microsystems walks you through the process of using a Raspberry Pi to bridge the gap.

The Sound of dial-up Internet

I was bored so I wanted to see if I could get free dial up internet so I found that NetZero still has free service so I put in the number and heard the glorious sound of the Dial-up. Remind me of years gone. Unfortunately I was not able to make a connection.

Dial-up internet

Ah, there really is nothing quite like it: listen to the sweet sound of dial-up internet in the video above and reminisce about the days of yore that you spent waiting for your computer to connect and trying to convince other members of your household to not use the landline for a few hours.

But older computers have fallen behind these times of ever faster broadband and ever more powerful processors, and getting your beloved vintage computer online isn’t as easy as it once was.

For one thing, does anyone even have a landline anymore?

Enter Doge Microsystems, who save the day with their Linux-based dial-up server, the perfect tool for connecting computers of yesteryear to today’s broadband using a Raspberry Pi.

Disclaimer: I’m going to pre-empt a specific topic of conversation in the comment section by declaring that, no, I don’t like the words ‘vintage’, ‘retro’, and yesteryear’ any more than you do. But we all need to accept that the times, they are a-changing, OK? We’re all in this together. Let’s continue.

Building a Raspberry Pi dial-in server

For the build, you’ll need a hardware modem — any model should work, as long as it presents as a serial device to the operating system. You’ll also need a Linux device such as a Raspberry Pi, a client device with a modem, and ‘some form of telephony connection to link the two modems’, described by Doge Microsystems as one of the following:

We need a way to connect our ISP modem to clients. There are many ways to approach this:

• Use the actual PSTN (i.e. real phone lines)
• Use a PBX to provide local connectivity
• Build your own circuity (not covered here, as it would require extra configuration)
• Build a fake PSTN using VoIP ATAs and a software PBX

I’ve gone with the fourth option. Here’s the breakdown:

• Asterisk — a VoIP PBX — is configured on the dial-in server to accept connections from two SIP client accounts and route calls between them
• A Linksys PAP2T ATA — which supports two phone lines — is set up as both of those SIP clients connected to the PBX
• The ISP-side modem is connected to the first line, and the client device to the second line

Doge Microsystems explains how to set up everything, including the Linux device, on the wiki for the project. Have a look for yourself if you want to try out the dial-up server first-hand.

The sound of dial-up

For funsies, I asked our Twitter followers how they would write down the sound of a dial-up internet connection. Check them out.

Alex on Twitter

@Raspberry_Pi dialtone, (phone beeps), rachh racchh rachh rechhhhhhh reccchhhhhh rechhhh, DEE-DONG-DEE-DONG-DI, BachhhhhhhhhhhhBACHHHHBACHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Build a mini version of one of history’s most iconic personal computers with Lorenzo ‘Tin Cat’ Herrera and his Commodore PET Mini, which is based on the Commodore PET model 8032.

Commodore PET Mini Retrowave intro

3D Print your own Commodore PET Mini retro computer with a Raspberry Pi and Retropie for retro gaming or retro emulation. Fully documented DIY project: https://commodorepetmini.com The Commodore PET is one of the most iconic-looking computer of the 70’s, it reminds us of an era of frenetic innovation, harsh competition and bold design choices that shaped the computer industry as we know it today.

Commodore PET — a (very) brief history

Presented to the world in 1977, the Commodore PET represents a truly iconic piece of computer history: it was the first personal computer sold to the general public. With a built-in keyboard, screen, and cassette deck, and an introductory price of US$795 — roughly $3287 today — it offered everything a home computer user needed. And it beat the Apple II to market by a few months, despite Jobs and Wozniak offering to sell their Apple II technology to Commodore in September 1976.

Commodore was also the first company to license Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC, and in the 1980s the Commodore became a staple in many school classrooms, bringing about a surge in the numbers of future computer engineers — a few of which now work in the Raspberry Pi Trading office.

The Commodore PET model was discontinued in 1982, then resurrected briefly in 1986, before finally stepping aside to make way for the popular Commodore 128, 1571, and 1581 models.

Redesigning a mini PET

Based on the Commodore PET model 8032, Lorenzo Herrera’s 3D-printable remake allows users to fit an entire computer — the Raspberry Pi — inside a miniature iconic shell. Lorenzo designed this case to house a working screen, and once you connect the Pi to a Bluetooth keyboard, your Commodore PET Mini will be fully functional as well as stylish and cute as a button.

You’ll need access to a 3D printer to build your own — all parts are listed on the project’s website. You can also purchase them as a kit directly from Lorenzo if you want to save time on sourcing your own.

3D-printing the Commodore PET

To build your own Commodore PET Mini, start by visiting its official website. And if you don’t own a 3D printer, search online for your nearest maker space or 3D printing service to get the parts made.

We’re definitely going to be building our own here at Raspberry Pi, and if you build one for yourself, or use a Raspberry Pi in any iconic computer rebuild, let us know.

Despite its apparent death 17 years ago, the Sega Dreamcast still has a hardcore group of developers behind it. We uncover their stories in this excerpt from Wireframe issue 7, available now.

In 1998, the release of the Dreamcast gave Sega an opportunity to turn around its fortunes in the home console market. The firm’s earlier system, the Saturn, though host to some beloved titles, was running a distant third in sales behind the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. The Dreamcast, by contrast, saw a successful launch and quickly became the go-to system for arcade-quality ports of fighting games, among other groundbreaking titles like Seaman and Crazy Taxi.

Unfortunately for fans, it wasn’t to last. The Dreamcast struggled to compete against the PlayStation 2, which launched in 2000, and at the end of March 2001, in the face of the imminent launch of the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft’s new Xbox, Dreamcast left the stage, and Sega abandoned the console market altogether.

None of this stopped a vibrant homebrew development scene springing up around the console in Sega’s place, and even years later, the Dreamcast remains a thriving venue for indie developers. Roel van Mastbergen codes for Senile Team, the developers of Intrepid Izzy, a puzzle platformer coming soon to the PC, PS4, and Dreamcast.

Of the port to Sega’s ageing console, van Mastbergen tells us, “I started this project with only the PC in mind. I’m more used to developing for older hardware, though, so I tend to write code with low CPU and RAM requirements by force of habit. At some point I decided to see if I could get it running on the Dreamcast, and I was happy to find that it ran almost perfectly on the first try.”

One of the pluses of the Dreamcast, van Mastbergen points out, is how easy it is to develop for. “There are free tools and sufficient documentation available, and you can run your own code on a standard Dreamcast without any hardware modifications or hacks.”

Games burned to CD will play in most models of unmodified Dreamcast, usually with no extra software required. While this doesn’t result in a huge market — the customer base for new Dreamcast games is difficult to measure but certainly small — it makes development for original hardware far more viable than on other systems, which often need expensive and difficult-to-install modchips.

Many of the games now being developed for the system are available as digital downloads, but the state of Dreamcast emulation lags behind that of its competitors, with no equivalent to the popular Dolphin and PCSX2 emulators for GameCube and PS2. All this makes boxed games on discs more viable than on other systems — and, in many cases, physical games can also become prized collectors’ items.

Kickstarting dreams

By now, you might be asking yourself what the point of developing for these old systems is — especially when creating games for PC is a much easier and potentially more profitable route to take. When it comes to crowdfunding, though, catering to a niche but dedicated audience can pay dividends.

Belgian developer Alice Team, creators of Alice Dreams Tournament, asked for €8000 in funding to complete its Dreamcast exclusive, which began development in 2006. It eventually raised €28,000 — more than treble its goal.

Intrepid Izzy didn’t quite reach such dizzying heights, only just meeting its €35,000 target, but van Mastbergen is clear it wouldn’t have been funded at all without the dedicated Dreamcast base. “The project has been under-funded since the beginning, which is slightly problematic,” van Mastbergen tells us. “Even so, it is true that the Dreamcast community is responsible for the lion’s share of the funding, which is a testament to how well-loved this system still is.”

You can read the rest of the feature in Wireframe issue 7, available in Tesco, WHSmith, and all good independent UK newsagents.

Or you can buy Wireframe directly from us – worldwide delivery is available. And if you’d like to own a handy digital version of the magazine, you can also download a free PDF.

Make sure to follow Wireframe on Twitter and Facebook for updates and exclusives, and for subscriptions, visit the Wireframe website to save 49% compared to newsstand pricing!

GPIO Zero is a zero-boilerplate Python library that makes physical computing with Python more accessible and helps people progress from zero to hero.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the release of GPIO Zero v1.5.0. It’s packed full of updates, including new features, bug fixes, and lots of improvements to the documentation.

Guido, the creator of Python, happened across the library recently, and he seemed to like it:

Guido van Rossum on Twitter

GPIOzero I love you! https://t.co/w3CnUGx3yO

Pin factories – take your pick

GPIO Zero started out as a friendly API on top of the RPi.GPIO library, but later we extended it to allow other pin libraries to be used. The pigpio library is supported, and that includes the ability to remotely control GPIO pins over the network, or on a Pi Zero over USB.

This also gave us the opportunity to create a “mock” pin factory, so that we could emulate the effect of pin changes without using real Raspberry Pi hardware. This is useful for prototyping without hardware, and for testing. Try it yourself!

As well as the pin factories we provide with the library (RPi.GPIO, pigpio, RPIO, and native), it’s also possible to write your own. So far, I’m aware of only one custom pin factory, and that has been written by the AIY team at Google, who created their own pin factory for the pins on the AIY Vision Kit. This means that you can connect devices to these pins, and use GPIO Zero to program them, despite the fact they’re not connected to the Pi’s own pins.

If you have lots of experience with RPi.GPIO, you might find this guide on migrating from RPi.GPIO to GPIO Zero handy.

Ultrasonic distance sensor

We had identified some issues with the results from the DistanceSensor class, and we dealt with them in two ways. Firstly, GPIO Zero co-author Dave Jones did some work under the hood of the pins API to use timing information provided by underlying drivers, so that timing events from pins will be considerably more accurate (see #655). Secondly, Dave found that RPi.GPIO would often miss edges during callbacks, which threw off the timing, so we now drop missed edges and get better accuracy as a result (see #719).

The best DistanceSensor results come when using pigpio as your pin factory, so we recommend changing to this if you want more accuracy, especially if you’re using (or deploying to) a Pi 1 or Pi Zero.

Connecting devices

A really neat feature of GPIO Zero is the ability to connect devices together easily. One way to do this is to use callback functions:

button.when_pressed = led.on
button.when_released = led.off

Another way is to set the source of one device to the values of another device:

led.source = button.values

In GPIO Zero v1.5, we’ve made connecting devices even easier. You can now use the following method to pair devices together:

led.source = button

Read more about this declarative style of programming in the source/values page in the docs. There are plenty of great examples of how you can create projects with these simple connections:

Testing

An important part of software development is automated testing. You write tests to check your code does what you want it to do, especially checking the edge cases. Then you write the code to implement the features you’ve written tests for. Then after every change you make, you run your old tests to make sure nothing got broken. We have tools for automating this (thanks pytest, tox, coverage, and Travis CI).

But how do you test a GPIO library? Well, most of the GPIO parts of our test suite use the mock pins interface, so we can test our API works as intended, abstracted from how the pins behave. And while Travis CI only runs tests with mock pins, we also do real testing on Raspberry Pi: there are additional tests that ensure the pins do what they’re supposed to. See the docs chapter on development to learn more about this process, and try it for yourself.

pinout

You may remember that the last major GPIO Zero release introduced the pinout command line tool. We’ve added some new art for the Pi 3A+ and 3B+:

pinout also now supports the -x (or --xyz) option, which opens the website pinout.xyz in your web browser.

Zero boilerplate for hardware

The goal of all this is to remove obstacles to physical computing, and Rachel Rayns has designed a wonderful board that makes a great companion to GPIO Zero for people who are learning. Available from The Pi Hut, the PLAY board provides croc-clip connectors for four GPIO pins, GND, and 3V3, along with a set of compatible components:

Since the board simply breaks out GPIO pins, there’s no special software required. You can use Scratch or Python (or anything else).

New contributors

This release welcomed seven new contributors to the project, including Claire Pollard from PiBorg and ModMyPi, who provided implementations for TonalBuzzer, PumpkinPi, and the JamHat. We also passed 1000 commits!

Watch your tone

As part of the work Claire did to add support for the Jam HAT, she created a new class for working with its buzzer, which works by setting the PWM frequency to emit a particular tone. I took what Claire provided and added some maths to it, then Dave created a whole Tones module to provide a musical API. You can play buzzy jingles, or you can build a theremin:

GPIO Zero theremin

from gpiozero import TonalBuzzer, DistanceSensor buzzer = TonalBuzzer(20) ds = DistanceSensor(14, 26) buzzer.source = ds

…or you can make a siren:

GPIO Zero TonalBuzzer sine wave

from gpiozero import TonalBuzzer from gpiozero.tools import sin_values buzzer = TonalBuzzer(20) buzzer.source = sin_values()

The Tones API is a really neat way of creating particular buzzer sounds and chaining them together to make tunes, using a variety of musical notations:

>>> from gpiozero.tones import Tone
>>> Tone(440.0)
>>> Tone(69)
>>> Tone('A4')

We all make mistakes

One of the important things about writing a library to help beginners is knowing when to expect mistakes, and providing help when you can. For example, if a user mistypes an attribute or just gets it wrong – for example, if they type button.pressed = foo instead of button.when_pressed = foo – they wouldn’t usually get an error; it would just set a new attribute. In GPIO Zero, though, we prevent new attributes from being created, so you’d get an error if you tried doing this. We provide an FAQ about this, and explain how to get around it if you really need to.

Similarly, it’s common to see people type button.when_pressed = foo() and actually call the function, which isn’t correct, and will usually have the effect of unsetting the callback (as the function returns None). Because this is valid, the user won’t get an error to call their attention to the mistake.

In this release, we’ve added a warning that you’ll see if you set a callback to None when it was previously None. Hopefully that will be useful to people who make this mistake, helping them quickly notice and rectify it.

Update now

Update your Raspberry Pi now to get the latest and greatest GPIO Zero goodness in your (operating) system:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-gpiozero python-gpiozero

Note: it’s currently syncing with the Raspbian repo, so if it’s not available for you yet, it will be soon.

What’s next?

We have plenty more suggestions to be working on. This year we’ll be working on SPI and I²C interfaces, including I²C expander chips. If you’d like to make more suggestions, or contribute yourself, find us over on GitHub.

Today, ESA Education and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are proud to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! In support of this occasion and to encourage young women to enter a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), CSA astronaut Jenni Sidey discusses why she believes computing and digital making skills are so important, and tells us about the role models that inspired her.

Jenni Sidey inspires young women in science with Astro Pi

Today, ESA Education and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are proud to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! In support of this occasion and to encourage young women to enter a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), CSA astronaut Jenni Sidey discusses why she believes computing and digital making skills are so important, and tells us about the role models that inspired her.

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!

The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is part of the United Nations’ plan to achieve their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. According to current UNESCO data, less than 30% of researchers in STEM are female and only 30% of young women are selecting STEM-related subjects in higher education

That’s why part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda is to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. And to help young women and girls develop their computing and digital making skills, we want to encourage their participation in the European Astro Pi Challenge!

The European Astro Pi Challenge

The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education programme run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation that offers students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space! The challenge is to write computer programs for one of two Astro Pi units — Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station.

Astro Pi’s Mission Zero is open until 20 March 2019, and this mission gives young people up to 14 years of age the chance to write a simple program to display a message to the astronauts on the ISS. No special equipment or prior coding skills are needed, and all participants that follow the mission rules are guaranteed to have their program run in space!

Take part in Mission Zero — in your language!

To help many more people take part in their native language, we’ve translated the Mission Zero resource, guidelines, and web page into 19 different languages! Head to our languages section to find your version of Mission Zero and take part.

If you have any questions regarding the European Astro Pi Challenge, email us at [email protected].

StereoPi allows users to attached two Camera Modules to their Raspberry Pi Compute Module — it’s a great tool for building stereoscopic cameras, 360º monitors, and virtual reality rigs.

StereoPi draft 1

No Description

My love for stereoscopic photography goes way back

My great-uncle Eric was a keen stereoscopic photographer and member of The Stereoscopic Society. Every memory I have of visiting him includes looking at his latest stereo creations through a pair of gorgeously antique-looking, wooden viewers. And I’ve since inherited the beautiful mahogany viewing cabinet that used to stand in his dining room.

Stereoscopic photography has always fascinated me. Two images that seem identical suddenly become, as if by magic, a three-dimensional wonder. As a child, I couldn’t make sense of it. And even now, while I do understand how it actually works, it remains magical in my mind — like fairies at the bottom of the garden. Or magnets.

So it’s no wonder that I was instantly taken with StereoPi when I stumbled across its crowdfunding campaign on Twitter. Having wanted to make a Pi-based stereoscopic camera ever since I joined the organisation, but not knowing how best to go about it, I thought this new board seemed ideal for me.

The StereoPi board

Despite its name, StereoPi is more than just a stereoscopic camera board. How to attach two Camera Modules to a Raspberry Pi is a question people ask us frequently and for various projects, from home security systems to robots, cameras, and VR.

The board attaches to any version of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, including the newly released CM3+, and you can use it in conjunction with Raspbian to control it via the Python module picamera.

StereoPi stereoscopic livestream over 4G

StereoPi stereoscopic livestream over 4G. Project site: http://StereoPi.com

When it comes to what you can do with StereoPi, the possibilities are almost endless: mount two wide-angle lenses for 360º recording, build a VR rig to test out virtual reality games, or, as I plan to do, build a stereoscopic camera!

It’s on Crowd Supply now!

StereoPi is currently available to back on Crowd Supply, and purchase options start from $69. At 69% funded with 30 days still to go, we have faith that the StereoPi project will reach its goal and make its way into the world of impressive Raspberry Pi add-ons.

Raspberry Pi Store – NOW OPEN #RPiStore

We opened a store! Visit us in the Grand Arcade, Cambridge, UK, and follow #RPiStore for more photos and funtimes!

Raspberry Pi Store
First Floor
Grand Arcade
Cambridge

OPEN FROM 9am

#RPiStore

 

For more information, visit the Raspberry Pi Store webpage.