Innehållsförteckning för #120 från Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

I still remember my first robot: ‘Tyres’, named after the cyclist in Spaced. To this day, he's a good bot! Building a robot from scratch is one of the most rewarding Raspberry Pi projects. So many people tell us that building a robot sounds incredibly complex. But it's really not as hard as you first think. Take one Raspberry Pi (or Pico), add a couple of motors, mix in a couple of wheels, and whizz it all up with a battery, and you will have a tin box whirring around the room in no time. Of course, you can take it from there, and modern robot parts can become incredibly detailed. We've built all manner of walking, dancing, scuttling, and grabbing robots. All are controlled by code. Raspberry Pi is…

MAKER John Calhoun John started programming on a Mac, wrote shareware and commercial games, and worked for Apple for 26 years, magpi.cc/systemsix You may have heard of John Calhoun. Aside from working as a software engineer for Apple for 26 years until he retired last autumn, he’s well-known for writing a string of games for the Apple Mac, among them the popular 1988 shareware title, Glider. More recently, he’s been causing a bit of a stir thanks to a different kind of fruit-related computer. By connecting a Raspberry Pi 3 to a 5.83-inch e-ink display, he’s created a fresh spin on a classic Mac, called SystemsSix - a modern homage to the System 6 operating system released 31 years ago. Dubbed a “desk accessory”, it displays the local weather, a…

MAKER Richard Kirby A test manager at a company that is working to automate London Underground's railways. magpi.cc/tubedash There’s been a huge project, going back several years, to automate part of the London Underground’s railways. As you might expect, a system like this is very complex and very large, so things can go wrong. Richard Kirby, a test manager for the work, created a way to monitor the status of the network. “My project is a large Transport for London (TfL) dashboard that provides the status of each line from the TfL Open Data site,” Richard tells us. “It regularly queries the site and updates each line’s state. A line’s state is depicted by individual NeoPixel multicolour LEDs which shine through a printed TfL map via an individually drilled hole…

MAKER PJ Evans PJ is a writer, software engineer, and general tinkerer, He believes no robot is finished until it has googly eyes. twitter.com/mrpjevans Raspberry Pi computers have often been the controller of choice for robot builders. Its small size, combined with the power of Raspberry Pi OS, makes it an ideal choice for simple ‘buggy’ projects and complex machine-learning autonomous builds alike. By combining Raspberry Pi with a battery, you can make untethered robots that can be controlled by Bluetooth, wireless LAN, or radio. There are literally thousands of options out there, so getting started can be intimidating. We’ve hand-picked some great beginner kits, and will walk you through them over the next few issues, starting with the CamJam EduKit #3. 01 Get to know your kit The CamJam EduKit…

MAKER Stephen Smith Stephen is a retired software developer who has written three books on ARM assembly language programming. He is a member of Sunshine Coast Search and Rescue and enjoys mountain biking, hiking, and running, He is also a member of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society (scwes.ca). magpi.cc/stephensmith Raspberry Pi Pico contains a wealth of integrated hardware that is normally accessed via the Pico’s SDK, but what is the magic software that controls the hardware? We don’t need to learn any new instructions to access the hardware, because all the access is via special memory addresses. These memory addresses are connected to the hardware, rather than to memory, and writing to these addresses either configures the hardware or transfers data to the hardware. Similarly, if you read…

INTERVIEW > Name Matt Richardson | > Occupation Community engagement manager > Community role Raspberry Pi liaison | > Twitter @MattRichardson If you’ve ever been to an event in the US where Raspberry Pi was officially there, whether hosting the event or just with a stall, chances are you’ve met Matt Richardson. His work spreading Raspberry Pi around North America has been huge. Now though, he has a new job, albeit still with Raspberry Pi. He’s a maker at heart, however. “Before Raspberry Pi came about, I stumbled on the maker community because Arduino projects were starting to surface in the technology blogs that I read at the time,” Matt tells us. “People were making cool stuff, and it inspired a ton of ideas for things I wanted to make.…

Unseasonably early As August is nearly here, I’ve been starting to sort out my Halloween plans. Would it be too early to send my WIPs and other bits and pieces to you on MagPi Monday? Arin via email Absolutely not - we love to see how projects get built, and it’s a good idea to get them started early. On the internet especially, Halloween starts in early August for many, so it would not be out of place. We’ll also be doing our annual Halloween feature and post-October roundup, so anyone else making a Halloween project should also send us photos via email, Facebook, or on Twitter. We’d love to see! Pico Stock I was excited to hear about Raspberry Pi Pico W when I read about it last issue.…

MAKER Martin Spendiff & Vanessa Bradley Martin is a mathematical modeller who left the UK for Switzerland, and a fan of FOSS and tech that serves users, rather than the people who made it, Vanessa is new to coding and a constant source of weird and good ideas. veeb.ch Readers may remember a fantastic Teasmade project that we featured back in The MagPi issue #114 (magpi.cc/114), made by Swiss-based team Martin Spendiff and Vanessa Bradley. Well, while browsing their YouTube channel, we noticed that - in a new upcycling project - they have taken a vintage railway clock and transformed it with a Pico. Naturally, we wanted to know what made it tick. Old timer “We bought a railway station clock from a flea market and were a bit crestfallen…

MAKER James Brown James lives in Wellington, New Zealand, has a background in games and graphics programming, and creates interactive exhibitions. @ancientjames @mastodon.social Alert! CRT This project uses a CRT television. Be careful of high voltages when working with CRT screens. magpi.cc/crt There’s “something wonderfully unsettling” about being stared at by your own disembodied eye, comments master of understatement James Brown. James came up with the idea for his VK-Pocket Camcorder while working on the face-tracking feature for an interactive exhibit, and realised one of the debug tools was showing parts of his face as it detected them. “I had a little viewfinder CRT salvaged from a junk shop camcorder, so I decided to wrap up that experience in a little self-contained gizmo, and style it after the Voight-Kampff machine…

MAKER Ricardo de Azambuja An electrical engineer with a PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence who describes himself as a Mad Scientist. He works as a research associate at MISTLab.ca. magpi.cc/cognifly Warning! Drone Safety Be careful when working with drones, especially those with spinning blades. Fly safely and responsibly and follow local laws and regulations. magpi.cc/dronesafety Gravity may not be the strongest force in the universe, but it is something that we contend with on a daily basis. When you’re trying to get off and stay off the ground, though, it gets even trickier. Weight is incredibly important, and usually that means you can do less in the air. Ricardo de Azambuja found a way around it for his quadcopter. “The CogniFly is an open-source, collisionresilient, under-250 g…

Designing a robot from scratch involves having a clear vision of what you’d like your creation to be able to do, and breaking down into discrete functions how it’s going to achieve each stage. In many cases, you’ll find robot kits available that can achieve some or all of what you’d like to accomplish and may be able to adapt to your needs onceyou’ve seen how they operate. Working through the assembly process and learning to control a commercially bought kit is useful and rewarding in its own right, and will give you the confidence to go on and design your robot. Helpfully, many robot kits are Raspberry Pi-based (or have a Raspberry Pi component) and come with, or can be powered by, a Raspberry Pi. There are now Pico…

MAKER Phil King Long-time contributor to The MagPi, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. @philkingeditor A pair of binoculars is useful for watching birds in your garden, but, as every birder knows, their calls and sounds are another key way of identifying species. That’s where BirdNET-Pi comes in. Based on the BirdNET research project, Patrick McGuire’s impressive piece of software runs on Raspberry Pi and is very easy to set up. Plug in a USB mic (or other mic using a USB adapter) and it’ll listen 24/7, extracting bird songs and sounds, and analysing them to identify bird species in real-time. All detections and audio recordings are catalogued automatically in a database, so you can check through them via a generated web server, which…

 ‘New year, new you’ usually applies to the calendar New Year, but there’s no reason not to use a new school year as an excuse to update your at-home workspace in preparation for the learning ahead. Especially when it comes to getting yourself set up to code and make at home. If you’re really keen, you can get a bit of a head start on the computing homework as well. Let’s get some kit in and learn how to use it. Essential kit Electronics you can keep at home Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kit | From £110 / $132 An all-in-one Raspberry Pi starter kit, with a keyboard, mouse, power supply, cables, and a special Beginner’s Guide book. magpi.cc/desktopkit Discovery Kit for Raspberry Pi Pico | £12 / $14 An…

Every Monday we ask the question: have you made something with a Raspberry Pi over the weekend? Every Monday, our followers send us amazing photos and videos of the things they’ve made. Here’s a selection of some of the awesome things we got sent this month - and remember to follow along at the hashtag #MagPiMonday!…

MAKER Daniele Giuliani Daniele's passion for technology began while tinkering with Raspberry Pi at school in Italy, and he now holds an MSc in Computer Science. magpi.cc/picomemcard Warning! Cut Safely This project uses a sharp knife to cut open the original memory card. Watch over children when using sharp knives. magpi.cc/knifesafety Software engineer Daniele Giuliani missed playing some of the games on his original PlayStation, but quickly discovered that boxed and unused PS memory cards are hard to find and far more expensive than they used to retail for. With no guarantee that used official cards - or counterfeit Chinese ones - will perform well, Daniele decided to put his coding skills to good use and create an alternative to Sony memory cards so he could continue playing his old…

MAKER Kian Ryan Kian tinkers with old computers and tries to build new things. Sometimes at the same time. kianryan.co.uk It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that The MagPi loves to see makers tinkering with retro tech. Bringing old machines back to life is humongous fun, allowing us to tap into nostalgia while seeing how far devices of a bygone age can be pushed in the modern world. With Kian Ryan’s latest project, a Psion 5MX personal digital assistant, popular in the late 1990s, has been turned into a portable Linux terminal, thanks to the addition of a Raspberry Pi Zero computer. The idea grew off the back of another project. “I was attempting to connect a RC2014 - a Z80-based homebrew computer - to the Psion and was having…

The CamJam EduKit #3 CamJam’s EduKit #3 is an absolute classic kit for anyone wanting to experiment with robots. The kit consists of a motor controller, two DC motors, a distance sensor, plus a ball castor for direction changes, red wheels, and all the jumper leads, connectors, and resistors that you need. magpi.cc/edukit3 “ CamJam's EduKit #3 is an absolute classic ” Kitronik Autonomous Robot Nifty turns and changes of direction are in the DNA of this Kitronik buggy platform, specially designed for Pico users. With piezo buzzers, lights, and line following capabilities, basing a robot around this buggy will have you absolutely bossing it over the competition. magpi.cc/kitronikpico You'll love SpiderPi SpiderPi If your idea of a robot runs around and scares small animals, you’ll love SpiderPi, a hulk…

MAKER PJ Evans PJ is a writer, tinkerer, and software engineer, His son made him write this tutorial and has been online ever since. twitter.com/mrpjevans Minecraft has been a feature of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem since the early days. Although the game is demanding on resources, a cut-down educational version became available and was very popular. As Minecraft has developed with new features, challenges, and mods, the 32-bit world was left behind -especially as the most recent release was 64-bit only, owing to the version of Java required. With the release of Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit, the little computer that can is back in the game with all the power of the latest Raspberry Pi 4 too. We’re going to show you how to build a Minecraft multiplayer server for…

Coding on Raspberry Pi 01 Set up Raspberry Pi Follow the instructions on magpi.cc/imager on how to download Raspberry Pi OS and get it installed on an SD card. Slot the SD card in and then hook your Raspberry Pi up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, before plugging in the power. During the initial setup, you’ll be asked to enter any wireless network details, create a new password, and update the system. Once that’s done, head to Raspberry Pi Configuration in the menu and make sure VNC is turned on in the interfaces tab - we’ll need that later. 02 IDE for you On Raspberry Pi, Thonny is the preferred Python Integrated Development Environment, or IDE. This is a code editor that helps you write a program, run it, and also…

@devinck Since the last time I wrote about a few of my favourite Tindie products, the company has seen an additional 100,000 orders shipped and 3000+ more products added, shipping to more than 160 countries around the world. If you are unfamiliar with Tindie, well then, I have a treat for you! Tindie is an online marketplace that features mostly the small DIY technology creators. It's a great place to find esoteric kits and components for making unique projects. I have ordered plenty of kits from Tindie and, so far, so good. In fact, I bought another kit while searching for products for this Best of Breed! The website is organised by topics like 3D printing, loT, robots, sound, camera, and of course DIY technology, which I thoroughly enjoy browsing…