Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #117

Hopefully you’re enjoying the sunshine, because this month we’re taking Raspberry Pi outside to play. In this month’s magazine, we’re building a Raspberry Pi Smart Garden (page 40). So ask the robot to take care of your plants, fire up the smart barbecue and get cooking your food to perfection, while fooling around with Raspberry Pi-powered drones and RC robots. There are a couple of super-smart projects that combine cutting-edge AI with nature. Whether it’s detecting and getting rid of weeds on a farm (page 16) or building a bird feeder with image recognition (page 26). If your fingers are decidedly not-green, then PJ has put together an incredible audio special this month (page 68). It’s packed with advice for making your own multi-room music systems with Raspberry Pi. Blast…

As you will have noticed, it can be hard to buy a Raspberry Pi unit from stock at the moment. Several factors are contributing to this, and we thought it would be helpful to provide an update on what’s been happening since we last wrote about this in October 2021 (magpi.cc/supply). Supply Over the last six months, we’ve been working hard to get more Raspberry Pi products built and shipped to customers. Despite a variety of supplychain challenges, we’ve consistently been able to build around half a million of our single-board computers and Compute Module products each month. As we said in October, the 28nm BCM2711 part used on Raspberry Pi 4 and Compute Module 4 has been more readily available than the 40nm parts used on our older products.…

One of the things which we spend a lot of time thinking about at Raspberry Pi is security. Cyber-attacks and hacking are, sadly, constantly on the increase, and Raspberry Pi computers are as much a target as any other, just because there are so many of them out there nowadays! Over the years, we have gradually ramped up the security of Raspberry Pi OS; not in response to particular threats, but as a general precaution. There is always a balance to be struck, however, as security improvements usually carry a cost in terms of usability, and we have tried to keep the system as convenient to use as possible while having an acceptable level of security. Up until now, all installs of Raspberry Pi OS have had a default user…

Pinball machines have been around for decades. They were popular during the Depression in the 1930s, banned under US gambling laws for 34 years from 1942, developed flippers in 1947 and saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1990s. But, in all that time, the machines have had one thing in common: their sheer size and weight. That, however, didn’t stop Chris Dalke from trying to create a version of his own. “Years ago, I had a high school woodshop class with access to a CNC wood cutter,” he says. “I tried to make an electromechanical pinball machine but never finished because the project was too ambitious in scope for my skill set and budget at the time.” Even so, the desire to create a pinball machine remained strong so…

01 After creating a CAD render of the Pinball Machine around the size of a Raspberry Pi 4 and a HDMI screen, Chris laser-cut each of the enclosure pieces out of Baltic birch plywood. 02 Each of the wooden components were designed to interlock so that the enclosure could be assembled with as few screws as possible while also allowing easy access when required. 03 It may look like there’s ample room but getting all of the electronics inside the enclosure was tricky. Slats are cut into the side of the enclosure to allow players to hear the stereo sound.…

Spring has arrived in the northern hemisphere, along with the weeds that pop up ever more fervently each year. Picking off unwanted plants but leaving others behind requires knowledge and precision – exactly what machine learning is adept at. OWL (Open Weed Locator), developed at the University of Sydney, uses Raspberry Pi 4 to make managing agricultural sites with robots more efficient. It is “a green-on-brown weed detector that uses entirely off-the-shelf componentry, very simple green-detection algorithms and entirely 3D printable parts,” explain its makers. The Raspberry Pi 4-based OWL detection system can be mounted on a ruggedised vehicle or tractor and costs a mere $400. Precise planting Guy Coleman has extensive experience as an agricultural scientist, and began using Raspberry Pi five years ago as a means of exploring…