Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #132

Raspberry Pi makes it incredibly easy to build your own Universal Media Player (page 36). There are many reasons to skip a shop-bought box and build your own: obviously, it's cheaper to buy a Raspberry Pi than an expensive media player. But, crucially, it's also better. Our media player runs whatever streaming services you want, both paid-for and free. You can also add a hard drive or network drive, and stream any media you own. You can even play retro games. Much more importantly: it's rewarding on both a practical and an intellectual level. You'll learn how all of this stuff works! We're keen on making and learning here at The MagPi. Citizen Science is an area where you can use Raspberry Pi to make a difference (page 58). From…

A senior experience and interaction designer based in Amsterdam, currently designing real and speculative futures at oio.studio. bjoernkarmann.dk MAKER Talented designer and artist Bjørn Karmann likes to push boundaries, and is heavily inspired by nature and “intelligences”, as he explains. “I find intelligences, whether natural or digital, extremely fascinating. As a designer and artist, I try to use intelligence as part of my process – finding parallels or inspiration from both worlds can help us understand that there is much more to the world that we think or can see.” In particular, with the emergence of more AI tools that generate images, he's recently become interested in how AI ‘sees’ the world. “I found my self imagining these images as synthetic dreams of a being we can't understand,” he shares.…

01 Bjørn is physically present in his chosen location, and his camera begins to collect the relevant data that it needs to create the eventual image. 02 The viewfinder displays a real-time description of Bjørn's location, picking up on key pieces of information including the weather, the temperature, the time, and notable landmarks that are close by. 03 Bjørn adjusts his three dials, including the radius of the area he wants included. Pressing the red ‘trigger’ button, the camera creates its version of its surroundings, complete with, in this case, shadows, people, and greenery.…

MAKER Ken – aka ByteWelder – is a software developer who thanks his wife for being supportive of his crazy hobbies. magpi.cc/decktility When Ken Van Hoeylandt was growing up, computers were big, bulky machines. But by the time he was a teenager in the 1990s, they were shrinking fast, leaving Ken desperate to get his hands on some of them. “I was attracted to the idea of being able to carry a computer with me all the time,” he says. “I owned a Palm III and wrote some simple software for it, eventually giving it internet access over a serial cable at home. Later, I upgraded to a Sharp HC-4500; a Windows CE handheld PC with a colour screen and more capabilities.” Over the years, Ken's passion for handhelds has…

Microsystem engineer Yuksel impressed people so much with his Raspberry Pi Lego microscope, he has since set up a company developing 3D microscopes: microqubic.com. magpi.cc/monalisa MAKER Big, brash ideas and enormous displays gain attention, whereas tiny but significant products can be far harder to convey. After helping develop a crucial microfluidic-based biosensor system for use in microscopic research at IBM Zurich (magpi.cc/precisiondiagnostics), microsystem engineer, and keen YouTuber, Yuksel Temiz and Polytechnique Montréal researchers hit on the idea of using an iconic artwork to show off its possibilities. The Mona Lisa Fluid Painting project showcases a new microfluidic architecture that allows local and highly parallel dissolution of biochemical reagents in volumes as low as two nanolitres per spot. The image was created from just five microlitres of water ‘painted’ on a…

01 Microscopic channels to hold 10,000 drops of dried fluorescent chemicals were etched onto a 2×2 cm chip. Eight shades were used to create the Mona Lisa image. 02 A Raspberry Pi HQ Camera was mounted on a tripod, a microscope filter attached, and the whole setup trained on the microscopic chip. Many camera recording checks were made because there would be no second chances. 03 Filming began as liquid was slowly but steadily introduced in a controlled manner, where it dissolved the spotted dyes. The effect was visible for a few hours before diffusion caused the colours to bleed into each other and the spectacle was over.…