Innehållsförteckning för #127 från Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

Every March we ask the Raspberry Pi community to join us in our #MonthOfMaking (page 68). This year, Rob has asked some of the biggest names in the maker community for advice on building incredible things with computers. The result is a wonderful feature that is packed with advice. Armed with a little knowledge, your Raspberry Pi can become lots of big things! This month, the team also shared 50 Hacks & Hints (page 34). These are our favourite tips for making with small computers, and they will make a huge difference to your builds. This issue is packed with the best builds, expert advice, and enough inspiration to get you determined to make that project. Don't forget to show us what you make. Lucy is the editor of The…

01 DesertEyeRobotics.com details the hardware needed to create your own surveillance robot, along with CAD STL files. You need a Raspberry Pi 4, two DC motors, stepper motor, jumper wires, and a motor controller – and, optionally, a Desert Eye PCB. 02 Complete construction and house it in a suitable chassis, then download and install the VIAM control software: magpi.cc/viamsetup. The VIAM app (app.viam.com) is used to connect and control the robot. It also has links to the documentation for more detailed instructions. 03 Once you've connected everything and installed VIAM, press the button on the PCB to turn the robot on. It will connect automatically to the VIAM server, ready for you to control your robot.…

MAKER magpi.cc/alexair Alex Shakespeare relishes the opportunity to fly anywhere and just has to have the window seat. Therefore, clearly, the only reasonable thing to do was to build his very own passenger jet plane experience, named ‘Alex Air’, but on terra firma. As a collector of aeronautical odds and ends, all he needed were some authentic plane seats (purchased from eBay), a plane window, and a few other flying-related gizmos. With the help of a Raspberry Pi Zero, Alex set about creating a truly unique and distinctive addition to his home. First class upgrade Apart from the seats, and various aesthetic aircraft appendages, there are two key sections to the Alternative Flight Simulator that help provide an authentic passenger experience. Firstly, Alex has constructed a ‘flight selector panel’ that…

Dual monitor setup With a Raspberry Pi 4 or 400, you can connect two monitors. 01 With the power off, connect two micro-HDMI to HDMI cables to the micro-HDMI ports on Raspberry Pi. Note that on Raspberry Pi 4, the primary display port is marked ‘HDMI0’, next to the power input; on Raspberry Pi 400, it's the one next to the microSD card slot. Connect each of the full-size HDMI ends of the cables to an HDMI input on one of your monitors/TVs. Turn on the displays and then the Raspberry Pi. When it boots up, a desktop should appear on each monitor. 02 The primary display, with a taskbar at the top, should be on the left-hand monitor. If not, go to Preferences > Screen Configuration to open a…

The MagPi #79 We introduced #MonthOfMaking in The MagPi #79 with eleven projects you could try out. magpi.cc/79 The MagPi #91 In The MagPi #91, we showed how to document and share your projects with the community. magpi.cc/91 The MagPi #103 We explored other forms of making in The MagPi #103, including wearables, embroidery, and upcycling. magpi.cc/103 The MagPi #115 Microcontroller Madness was the theme last year, showing you how to make great things with a Raspberry Pi Pico. magpi.cc/115…

Q: How did you get into retro gaming? A: When I started, it was just ‘gaming’, thanks! My family won an MSX in a raffle when I was seven, and my mum, an IT worker, taught me how to program in BASIC. Then she borrowed an XT from work until we saved up enough for our own 286. I kept using PCs and picked up other computers and consoles cheaply as they went out of fashion. I vividly remember going on eBay as a teen in the late 1990s and sending envelopes of dollars off to the US in exchange for giant boxes of remaindered classic DOS games that reached me on a very slow boat, with very cheap postage. Q:What kind of projects do retro gaming enthusiasts work on?…

CODE CLUB Code Club offers lots of fun project ideas, with full instructions for both makers and anyone helping them achieve their creative goals. Look out for items labelled as part of the Physical Computing Curriculum. ► magpi.cc/codeclubprojects PROJECT ARTHUR Project Arthur combines paper-building with Raspberry Pi Zero W tech to track the International Space Station and light up when it's overhead. A bonus is that it's named after the satellite dish at Goonhilly in Cornwall, site of the recent space satellite launch attempt. ► apollo50.co.uk MARIA AWARD-WINNING HUMAN Something to catch the eye of manga fans and other cool customers, Maria is a pseudoholographic personal assistant to give Alexa a run for her money. As well as being a quirky but engaging Raspberry Pi project, Maria's features can be…

Great news folks! As the world starts to get a little more open, Raspberry Jams and events are making their way back to physical spaces, and this includes the venerable Camjam (camjam.me) on Saturday 22 April. The MagPi regular Brian Corteil has taken the reigns for its return and promises that “There will be a series of talks, organised workshops for both the Raspberry Pi and Pico, plus a ‘show and tell’ area for people to show off their projects. We are fully inclusive of technology: if your project is based around an Arduino, micro:bit, or something else, we would still love to see it!” It's being held at Makespace, a fantastic community workshop in Cambridge, and kids enter free. Find out more info at the Eventbrite page here: magpi.cc/camjam23.…

The MagPi | THE FINAL WORD Artificial Intelligence is still in the news, and for good reason. There are incredible strides appearing in the world of computer-generated images, video and text. Generative art and video is based upon an opensource technology called Stable Diffusion, which can create any artwork you desire based on text prompts. You can test it out online at stablediffusionweb.com if you want to paint the cheese moon landing, or the distracted boyfriend meme by Picasso. The open-source Stable Diffusion 2 GitHub code is found at magpi.cc/stablediffusiongit. If you think artists have it bad, then spare a thought for your lonely writers. We're staring down the barrel of ChatGPT and Google's response, Bard. The creative mill As Rob pointed out last month (magpi.cc/126), ChatGPT's copy is generously…

Carter is an artist inventor, and automotive sensing engineer who runs a small YouTube channel documenting PC and robotics projects. carterhurd.com MAKER When Carter Hurd was approached by a company and asked to review one of its products, he accepted on one condition: that he wouldn't actually review it, but instead pull it apart. Given Carter is an engineer and inventor, this was perhaps to be expected. The result was a Bluetooth speaker that ended up being turned into an attractive miniature PC, powered by a Raspberry Pi computer (magpi.cc/minipc). “I have a YouTube channel (magpi.cc/carteryt), and a company called Divoom sent me a Bluetooth speaker to review,” Carter explains. “Unfortunately, I'm not a product reviewer, so I decided to make a project with it. Initially, I was hoping to…

MAKER botberg.eu How to start with Python or programming in general is a question that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been asking – and answering very well! – for over a decade now. When Bas op ten Berg was faced with this question, he went a slightly different route. “The Workshop Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer is a low-entry approach in starting learning to program Python with Raspberry Pi Pico,” Bas explains. “I created this workshop when I was requested for opportunities to entertain a team of non-technical colleges, and get them enthusiastic with a positive programming experience.” Specifically, Rudolph uses MicroPython. Bas was “astonished” by how quick and simple it was to create scripts for Pico and get them running, which seemingly served as inspiration for his programming experience.…

Dmytro Panin is a programmer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and he wrote his first line of code aged eight, He works for a large provider of nearshore software engineering services, magpi.cc/onlinegeigercounter MAKER Our initial contact with Dmytro Panin came in August 2021 when we looked at his Air Quality Traffic Light – a project designed to monitor the pollution in the atmosphere of his home city of Kyiv in Ukraine. Never did we ever imagine, little more than a year later, he would be seeking to detect dangerous levels of radiation in the air, but that's where he finds himself today. “The vast majority of the projects I build are created out of necessity,” he tells us. “This one, unfortunately, is no exception. With almost daily threats of a nuclear…

MAKER KG is a writer, developer and software preservationist. magpi.cc/hauntedowlbear You'll Need PicoSDK PicoExtras KilograhamsB-Em fork From schools to bedrooms, Acorn Computers’ BBC Micro helped to kick-start a revolution in software and hardware development. Its influence is imprinted on products ranging from the ubiquitous Arm processors to modern gaming blockbusters like Elite Dangerous. But emulating the BBC on modest hardware has traditionally been a chore. There are several excellent BBC emulators, and you can run most of them on Raspberry Pi, but only at the cost of major performance issues. That's no longer the case, thanks to Raspberry Pi Pico SDK architect Graham ‘kilograham’ Sanderson who's forked an optimised version of the B-Em emulator that'll run smoothly on both the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and Raspberry Pi SBCs. 01 Check your…

Coffee-drinking typewriter lover with a penchant for pencils and paint, Frequently found staring at the sea from the back of a camper-van. nikrawlinson.com MAKER You'll Need GalacticUnicorn ThonnyComeswithRaspberry Pi OS; download for other platforms from The Pomodoro technique is a simple system of effort and reward: work for 25 minutes and you get five minutes off. After every fourth block of work, you can rest for 20 minutes. That's it. But, if you're keeping track of those blocks with the timer on your phone, it's easy to miss a break – or to get so distracted actually playing with your phone that you get nothing done. In this tutorial, we'll solve both of those problems by using the stunning Galactic Unicorn to build a dedicated Pomodoro timer that automatically…

AUTHOR Dan Aldred price: £18/$20 magpi.cc/raspiforkids Although this book, published by No Starch, is ideal for getting youngsters to be creative with Raspberry Pi, there's every chance you'll also find something you want to build yourself – whether a radio receiver, a music box, or a wildlife tracker. There's a helpful introduction to Python programming too, which will be invaluable if coding is new to you or your offspring, or you're making the switch from Scratch or another visual coding method. The nicely laid out projects and accessible, but not too simple approach, give it cross-generational appeal, which sounds like the perfect excuse to buy it for the kids, although it's also an informative treat for you.…

The Magpi | INTERVIEW Name Vanessa Bradley and Martin Spendiff Occupation Photography Community role Makers URL veeb.ch Have you ever just wanted to get away? Vanessa Bradley and Martin Spendiff did, and a decade ago they moved to Switzerland. After a few years of working in IT for big corporations, they then made another change to photography, with a side of making to go with it. “We've always been earlyadopters and interested in getting stuff to do new things that are a touch outside of the originally intended usecase,” the two tell us. “We also benefited from open-source tools when we were using Linux wa(aaaaa)y back in the 1990s, so we are keen to share what we do in case anyone finds it useful.” When did you first learn about…

New York-based Aviv loves designing robots and has turned this passion into a career as an industrial designer and engineer. magpi.cc/deserteyerobotics MAKER I magine a robot that could traverse the unforgiving sands of the desert in the darkness of night, covering many miles at a time and stopping at given waypoints to surveil. It could collect video at these stoppoints from a front-mounted controllable zoom camera equipped with infrared LEDs invisible to the naked eye, but illuminating for camera visibility. Then, it could beam this video data over an encrypted wirelessly connection to a distant location. Possible dangers surveilled, soldiers or explorers would be briefed on whether it was safe to proceed, potentially saving lives as well as time and money. This is the concept robot enthusiast and engineer Aviv…

Ronin is an embedded systems engineer who enjoys making robots and microprocessorbased projects. github.com/byronin MAKER The first indication that Ronin (aka byronin) would grow up to be an enthusiastic maker and technical engineer came at the age of to when he bought his first soldering iron; at 15 he built his first mini sumo robot, winning first prize in the very first competition he entered. An embedded systems engineer in his native Turkey, Ronin loves designing his own projects. Although his Raspberry Pi Proto Shield and Snake Game is his first appearance in The MagPi (and his first Pico project), his prodigious output means it's unlikely to be his last. Ronin built his first prototype circuit board six years ago and discovered Raspberry Pi a year later. He usually programs…

MAKER nicholashacault.com Portability is one of the great benefits of owning a small, yet powerful, computer such as Raspberry Pi. So long as you have a screen and keyboard to hand, you can pop one into your bag and take it on your travels. Or, as Nicholas Hacault has shown, you can actually make Raspberry Pi a feature of your bag and gain instant access to it wherever you go. Nicholas came up with the idea when he was looking for a way of transporting a Linux device. At first, he considered running a virtual machine on his laptop. “But that sounded like too easy a solution,” he says. “Since I was already bringing a bag to school, I figured that a backpack would be the perfect housing for my…

MAKER Also known as Penguin Tutor, Stewart is a maker and YouTuber who loves all things Raspberry Pi and Pico. Author of Learn Electronics with Raspberry Pi. twitter.com/stewartwatkiss You'll Need Breadboard Batteryholder LED 220 resistors Jumperwires PCBswitch In this project, you will learn how to create circuits on a breadboard, along with basic information you need to know when starting out with electronics. Find out how to work out which way the LED goes and follow the easy guide to find the right-value resistor. Add the switch and you have the basics of a first circuit. 01 Using a breadboard A prototyping breadboard is a way of creating electronic circuits by pushing components into the board. Using a breadboard is a great way to learn about electronics. You can use it…

It's that time of the year again – time for The MagPi community far and wide to make something and share their progress online. This collaborative build event can be joined by anyone and with any kind of project you wish! Features editor Rob will be sewing himself. This year, we thought we'd ask some expert makers about their specialty subject. Flip through to get inspired and maybe build your dream project this March. See y'all online.…

AUTHOR HackSpace Price: £10/$10 magpi.cc/wearableprojects magpi.cc/bookofmaking HackSpace magazine is devoted to all kinds of making and creativity with two pertinent books: Wearable Tech Projects and The Book of Making Volume 2. Although these don't focus exclusively on Raspberry Pi, each publication provides plenty of details and inspiration, along with GitHub code downloads so you can replicate each project, or adapt an idea to make it your own. Wearable Tech Projects invites you to make, sew, and wear items you've stitched and coded, including replica sci-fi costumes and bling-laden outerwear and jewellery.…

Top antenna tips I was interested to see your article on flight tracking. This is something I've been experimenting with for about four years. You mention, as a top tip, that antenna position is key. My experiments prove this. Having a clear line of sight, and a good antenna is very important to pick up ADS-B signals… with a general purpose discone antenna on my garden shed, with 5 m of cable between the antenna and the SDR. It manages to pick up less than 20 aircraft, with a maximum range of 120km to the north and 50km to the south. The screenshot [pictured] is using an ADS-B specific antenna, at rooftop height and with 1 m of cable between the antenna and SDR. The SDR is mounted in a…