Tag:
automation
- While we mostly deal in pretty technologically advanced stuff here at Pi Towers, we are huge fans of the printed word too. It’s great to hear, then, that the Raspberry Pi has been helping booksellers to keep bibliophiles like us supplied with all the reading matter they could wish for. Jeff Podolski, IT and network … Continue reading →
- We’re a small organisation full of makers, and I think at least two of us own a hand loom for weaving textiles. (One of the reasons I enjoy the TV show Vikings so much is the casual looming that’s going on as backdrop in many of the indoor scenes – the textile sort, not the impending-doom … Continue reading →
- The recent update to the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) API allows makers to incorporate hands-free functionality into their builds, a feature previously missing from all but the official Amazon Echo and Dot models. While adverts for the Echo represent owners calling out to Alexa with a request or question — “Alexa, what is the time?”, … Continue reading →
- Have you ever dreamed about having your own theme music? That perfect song that reflects your mood as you enter a room, drawing the attention of others towards you? I know I have. Though that might be due to my desire to live in a Disney movie, or maybe just because I spent three years … Continue reading →
- What do you imagine the future of farming to look like? The FarmBot team, located along the California coast in San Luis Obispo, is exploring just that. The team has set out to create humanity’s first open-source CNC farming machine to put the power of polycrop farming into the smallest of spaces. No Title No … Continue reading →
- Tom Bennet grows Nepenthes, tropical carnivorous plants that I know by the name of pitcher plants. To stay healthy they need a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment, and Tom ensures this by housing them in a terrarium controlled by a Raspberry Pi 3 and Energenie’s Pi-Mote starter kit, which provides an easy way to control mains … Continue reading →
- Regular readers with an interest in poultry will be all agog to find out what we’re posting about today; yesterday’s post covered a chicken coop with automated doors, and we promised more chickens today. (AND TOMORROW! It’s all chickens all the way down at Pi Towers this week.) Darren Steele, a Pi owner from Lancashire, was … Continue reading →
- Skinner boxes are a kind of apparatus used for conditioning and training animals in scientific studies. You’ll almost certainly have read about them or seen them on TV: an animal is rewarded with a treat for pressing a button; or trained to respond to a patter of lights or other stimuli (like shapes, music and other … Continue reading →
- I had mail from Jürgen Huber at Logi.cals, an Austrian software firm, who have been using a Raspberry Pi in a demo at trade fairs to show off logi.CAD 3, their new, free, software tool for automation. It’s right up our street: they’ve made an automatic decanting machine. Decanting machines, usually operated by via a … Continue reading →
- The shelves in my living room are groaning under the weight of DVD boxed sets – and I just can’t bring myself to sit down and rip them all. All that waiting around! And it’s impossible to remember that you’re going to have to swap discs to and from a drive every hour or so. … Continue reading →