Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #159

Editor Lucy Hattersley Andy Bryant just dropped a huge box of chocolate bars on the team and Lucy's main to-do this month is to go for more runs. rpimag.co Raspberry Pi started out with just 10,000 boards and an aim to encourage computer science take-up amongst students. Starting from humble beginnings, the little computer become a true British success story. Raspberry Pi now has a whole range of devices to choose from: there's a board for everyone. Choosing the right Raspberry Pi for your project can feel like being a kid in a sweet shop. This month, Ben's Christmas lights project is based around Raspberry Pi Pico, while KG's x86_64 emulation build uses Raspberry Pi 5. If you want to get started with GPIO, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 WH…

A new, smaller M.2 HAT+ Compact designed to fit in the official case was announced by Raspberry Pi on 22 October 2025. Writing on the blog, Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi CEO and co-founder said: “The Compact variant replaces the FPC cable and socket with a single flex-rigid PCB; this is the first time we've used this technology, and we're rather pleased with how it's turned out.” Express connection Raspberry Pi 5 was the first Raspberry Pi product to feature a PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect) interface. To save space, this was exposed on a small FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) connector. “Soon after launch, we saw a variety of third-party peripheral boards, as well as adapters to allow users to connect their own M.2 form-factor PCI Express cards,” said Upton. “When…

Maker Marco Gerber Software engineer Marco is an expert in cloud architecture and a Python coder, but a relative newcomer to Raspberry Pi. rpimag.co/heartheworldgit Swiss software engineer and cloud architecture specialist Marco Gerber enjoys getting hands-on with tech in his free time as well as at work. His expertise in machine learning led him to recognise the potential for a handheld AI device that could describe the surrounding environment and that could be particularly useful as an accessibility tool for people with hearing or visual impairments. His idea was to develop a “point and shoot” device that would provide an audio description of the user's surroundings. The result was the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W-based Hear The World device, which offers both text and spoken descriptions alongside haptic feedback. His idea…

Maker Andrew Menadue Works with embedded firmware by day and resurrects and recreates vintage calculators and computers for fun. rpimag.co/menadue When most people think of Casio, calculators and watches usually spring to mind. But, over nearly 80 years, this Japanese electronics company has developed many other devices including computers such as the Casio FX9000P. Powered by a Z80 processor and coming with built-in BASIC, the FX90009P is highly sought after, despite fetching high prices at auction. Many surviving units, however, require careful restoration. This didn't deter Andrew Menadue. “Being a big Casio fan, I decided to buy one, partly to see what it was like and partly to add to my collection,” he says. “I knew from the auction photos that vertical lines were appearing on the screen, but I was fairly…

Maker Ulderico Arcidiaco Ulde is the co-founder, CEO, and chief hardware engineer at Italy's Sfera Labs. sferalabs.cc In 1962, The Baltic, a 26 metre-long Norwegian tug, took to the oceans. Unlike today, boats of the 1960s were largely manually controlled. Little wonder because the most widely used computer was IBM's 1401: it had a 16,000-character core memory and weighed several hundred kilos. The 1401 was so expensive that most companies would generally rent one. The 1401 computer took 17 seconds just to boot up and lacked both software and interfaces needed to work in industrial, let alone marine, scenarios. Other early computers such as the renowned DEC PDP-1 would have been no more suitable or affordable to control a commercial craft. Yet by the time The Baltic tug had been in…

Maker Joyce Lin Joyce shares hands-on Raspberry Pi builds that teach the fundamentals of robotics. rpimag.co/fingerlock In an ideal world, we wouldn't need security devices but, if you have any valuables that you need to protect, you'd be in safe hands if you give Joyce Lin's project a try. She's created a robust lock that lets users scan their fingerprint to gain physical access to a box. Such is its versatility, it could also be used to unlock all sorts of items. “I was inspired to create the fingerprintcontrolled lock after using a fingerprint reader for my garage door,” she says. “I loved it so much that I started thinking of other ways to use the same sensor, like unlocking a physical box to store the souls of my enemies – or…