Innehållsförteckning för #130 från Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

This month, for those who celebrate, is the Cambridge Beer Festival. The team at Raspberry Pi are all excited and ready to impart their craft-based brewing wisdom. Beer making may be an age-old art, but that doesn't mean it can't be brought into the modern age with a little Raspberry Pi smarts (page 32). We get that not everybody drinks, let alone wants to brew their own beer, so our second feature this month is Master Linux & Command Line (page 60). Learning the command line changes how you use computers forever, and I really can't recommend it enough for all technology enthusiasts. There are some amazing tutorials this month. Sean McManus has created Bedtime Stories (page 40) that uses ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion to create surreal dreamlike stories. Stewart…

Richard is a software engineer and hobbyist designer with a passion for astronomy, vintage electronics, and unusual form factor computers. magpi.cc/pifindergit MAKER When stargazing, amateur astronomers need to know what their telescope is looking at in the vast darkness of space, yet this is easier said than done. “Finding very small and dim objects in the night sky can be challenging, historically requiring paper charts and a good working knowledge of the constellations,” Richard Sutherland explains. There are, however, newer ways to determine a telescope's position and find objects. “There are computerised pointing systems that rely on rotary encoders mounted securely to a telescope mount,” Richard continues. “They monitor a telescope's movement and extrapolate where it is pointing from this information, but they can be difficult to add to a…

Carsten is a computer graphics researcher and lecturer. Since rediscovering computers of his childhood, he tries to convince Raspberry Pi boards to communicate with them. magpi.cc/radeu MAKER Considering Doom was once thought impossible on the Commodore Amiga, running it on an 8-bit Commodore 64 would appear to be sheer fantasy. But, thanks to the efforts of maker Carsten, such an achievement has become reality. Having previously created a multifunctional cartridge called Sidekick64 for various Commodore 8-bit computers which emulated memory expansions, sound devices, freezer carts and much more, Carsten saw that many people in the retro community still wanted a replacement for the official RAM Expansion Unit (REU) which was released in 1986 and discontinued four years later. For those unaware, the REU plugged into the C64's expansion port and…

Brewing beer is an ancient practice and not a huge amount has changed with it in thousands of years. Ingredients may have changed a bit, technology may have made it easier, but it's essentially the same process humans have been performing for most of recorded history. Thanks to this, we know a lot about what makes beer good, and part of that is sensing temperature and liquid density – things we can do with Raspberry Pi! This makes controlling your brew better, cheaper, and easier; just in time for those summer BBQs. Tools and ingredients Everything you need to start brewing Raspberry Pi You'll need a Raspberry Pi model with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – this includes Raspberry Pi 3, 3B+, 4, Zero W, and Zero 2 W. You'll be…

David is an engineer at Raspberry Pi with a special interest in camera software and algorithms, and image processing hardware. raspberrypi.com MAKER You'll Need RaspberryPi CameraModule RaspberryPiOS In The MagPi #129 we introduced libcamerastill which allows us to capture still images. But it also has many more options controlling how it captures images, and the file formats and available image encoders. We'll discover some of those in this tutorial. For now, we shall continue to assume that you have your keyboard and a monitor plugged directly into your Raspberry Pi. Capturing images at different resolutions By default, libcamera-still will capture images at the maximum available resolution supported by the camera. For the HQ Camera, for example, this means images that are 4056×3040 pixels in size. But it's easy to change…

@devinck Stock levels. It's been an issue for all of us for a while now. Cars, appliances, and anything that has some kind of electronics, especially microcontrollers, seem to have experienced a supply chain issue at some point over the last few years. But, then again, even paper towels or general commodities have been hard to come by at times. It's been a rough few years trying to acquire parts for your projects, but that seems to be getting a bit better. All is not lost, especially if you are looking for microcontrollers, rather than a single-board computer. Raspberry Pi started selling the RP2040 integrated circuits to manufacturers so they can continue to support, develop, and innovate in that ecosystem, and it's been great! And the most important spec: they…

ELECTRONIC HOURGLASS A Pico, MicroPython code, and the rotary encoder from Elecrow's Raspberry Pi Pico Starter Kit (magpi.cc/elecrowpicokit) are used to replicate a sand and glass hourglass. This satisfying project involves setting the time using the encoder and then measuring subsequent intervals. Results are displayed on a TM1637 4-digit LED. ► magpi.cc/picohourglass TRUNDLEBOT EDUCATIONAL ROBOT Deservedly winning Electromaker's PCB project design contest, this super robot provides an excellent introduction to programming with Pico and MicroPython and has both parts lists for DIY makers and alternatives if you want to focus on the code. Step-by-step guidance and readytouse code means a really rewarding build becomes achievable, even if you are new to coding. ► magpi.cc/trundlebot DRAWING FILLED CIRCLES AND TRIANGLES WITH MICROPYTHON Add a Waveshare screen to Raspberry Pi Pico, enter…

RASPBERRY PI PICO WITH MICROPYTHON Kevin McAleer has put together 16 free YouTube lessons focused on how to get the most from MicroPython and use Pico's GPIO pin connections to work with servos, temperature sensors, lights, and I2C. Dive straight into MP projects using his easy-to-follow instructions, friendly delivery, and clear component lists. ► mNagpi.ee/gpiomastery PICOINVADERS James, from Print ‘N Play, takes you through setting up your Pico with MicroPython to code a Space Invaders-type video game. Adding an SSD, battery pack and OLED screen, plus a potentiometer, even makes the whole thing portable. ► magpi.cc/picoinvaders RASPBERRY PI PICO GETTING STARTED WITH MICROPYTHON REPL (ON WINDOWS) This Core Electronics video guide is admirably clear and shows you all you need to know to start using MicroPython on Pico, from initial…

Monday emails This is my entry for #MagPiMonday. As I don't have Twitter, or the like, I need to email it to you. It is my Pico experiment board that I have just made bigger. It is based on my small board that I made for my 12 Projects of Codemas advent calendar I received last year. If it is good enough to make it in, it would make my year. Moss via email We welcome any kind of entry for #MagPiMonday, especially if it's as cool as this. You can email us at magpi@raspberrypi.com or, Rob directly, at rob@raspberrypi.com. We love to see them! Weather build I'm interested in building a Raspberry Pi-based weather station that can collect and transmit data to a central server. I'd like to be…

Ah, the good old days of computing. The 1980s were a vibrant time, and the computer revolution was just starting to spin. This month, thanks to the MCM/70 Reproduction (page 14), I've been reminded of the astonishing amount of variety in retro computing. Before this month, I'd never even heard of the MCM/70 and it's wonderful to encounter it, thanks to the efforts of Canadian Raspberry Pi maker Michael Gardi. It reminds me that each country, and often each region within a country, had its own computing startups, and their products reflected the unique cultural and technological idiosyncrasies of the time and place. Around the world The MCM/70, produced by the Canadian company Micro Computer Machines, holds a special place in the annals of computing history as one of the…

Will and India work at multidisciplinary design agency Kakapo Labs, which Will set up as “an incubator for exploring new ideas.” magpi.cc/chatgptgumball MAKER A regular fixture in the security software PR calendar is the annual survey that finds 70-plus percent of people quizzed by complete strangers at a train station are more than happy to hand over their essential passwords and memorable information in return for nothing more than a winning smile and perhaps a bar of chocolate. Despite these alarmist news items gaining media coverage every single year for more than a decade, we punters just don't seem to wise up to such confidence tricks. Tech entrepreneurs Kakapo Labs set about a more benign riff, on the idea that Joe Public loves a bit of flattery, using clever verbal…

A retired software developer, living in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with his wife, who appreciates having the time to make whatever the heck he damn well feels like! magpi.cc/mgardiyt MAKER Michael Gardi's reproductions of classic computers have featured in The MagPi‘s pages on several occasions. A proud Canadian, he enjoys spotlighting “Canada's contributions to the personal computer revolution.” Confident that he “had a pretty good handle on all of the machines available in the 1960s and 1970s”, he was somewhat flabbergasted when he came across the MCM/70, a “beautiful and innovative” Canadian-built personal computer that he'd never heard of. Even more so because it was conceived and made in Kingston, Ontario, very near to where Michael lives. Hardware challenges Keen to build his own repro version, Michael began to source components.…

MAKER Oliver is a student who knows Autun and his work from a stay in Germany. He was inspired by an article in The MagPi. Autun is co-ordinator for the scientific use of the deep sea robots and camera systems for the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany. awi.de Way back in issue 74 (magpi.cc/74), we wrote about PiCam Marine, little monitoring devices for cold water coral deployed by submarine. We like to think the projects we publish in the magazine can act as inspiration, and this one did… “A couple of years ago, we started designing and using Raspberry Pi-based camera systems for under-sea research work,” Dr Autun Parser tells us. He's a research scientist for the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research.…

Author of Mission Python, Web Design in Easy Steps, and Raspberry Pi For Dummies (with Mike Cook). Get free chapters at Sean's website. sean.co.uk MAKER You'll Need ChatGPTaccountand API key PimoroniHyperPixelSquare (optional) Externalspeakers(optional) Once upon a time there were two artificial intelligences, who were famed throughout the land. ChatGPT was an inventive storyteller, while Stable Diffusion was an ace illustrator. Together, they made up children's stories, which Raspberry Pi read aloud while showing the pictures. Listeners could put themselves, or their friends, in the stories, and decide where they should take place. Sometimes the stories were strange, and the pictures even more so. But as an art experiment, Bedtime Stories was a revelation. Anyone spying on the code could discover how to use ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion to create text…

MAKER KG is a writer, developer, and software preservationist. magpi.cc/owlbear You'll Need llamacpp AlpacaLLMmodel Last month, we built a chatbot interface using OpenAI's gpt-3.5-turbo model. This is effective, but there are numerous problems in using OpenAI's models. Despite the ‘OpenAI’ moniker, the company is highly proprietary, and most users aren't allowed to download a copy of the model to use on their own hardware, or even to examine the source code or training data. It's a black box, and this is an intentional decision on OpenAI's part. So now we've got to grips with using and prompting the most popular AI chatbot, it's time to go open source. 01 Open-source LLM resources Once you escape OpenAI's walled garden, you'll have a wealth of choices when it comes to LLMs (Large Language…

Lighting an LED may be a simple beginner project for Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Pico coders, but that doesn't make it any less cool. There's so much you can do with an LED when it's connected to a computer. Here are just some of the ways a Raspberry Pi project focussed on lights has wowed us. PiHue Automated lights Control Phillips Hue-brand lights with this little Raspberry Pi hack, and take full control of the living room lighting. magpi.cc/pihue Sunrise Lamp SAD no more Waking up to natural sunlight is apparently a good thing for the body and, towards the end of the year, these kind of sunlamps become very welcome. magpi.cc/sunlamp Raspberry Pi Beret Stand clear, vehicle reversing This fancy-looking beret has some very clever code that lets…

INTERVIEW Name Brian Corteil > Occupation Electronic Security Systems Engineer > Community role Event organiser > URL camjam.me Brian Corteil has been in The MagPi many times – over the years we've both shared his projects as showcases or screenshots in #MagPiMonday, and he's even written a few articles. He's a long-term member of the community who has taken on a new role recently. “I am part of the team that has taking over organising CamJam from Mike Horne and Tim Richardson,” Brian tells us. “[They] organised the last couple of CamJams before 2020. Early this year, I had realized that it had been over three years since the last CamJam and I decided to it was time for CamJam to return, and the only way it would happen is…

Pico W MQTT automation Camilo Sanchez showed us his project of controlling a relay using MQTT and a Raspberry Pi Pico W, and it seemed quite neat. The idea of making this project started when arriving home from work, or elsewhere, in winter and waiting for the house to warm up,” Camilo tells us. “Although setting a timer on the thermostat control could be the solution, I wanted something fancy and efficient. So I decided to make my own boiler control. After researching on alternatives to port forwarding, MQTT met the requirements. So after this, it was time to test the MQTT API for MicroPython on Raspberry Pico W, where I was able to communicate with a cloud MQTT server system from Adafruit (Adafruit IO) using feeders(topics).” He also created…

17-year-old Fady is a “tech enthusiast, programmer and perfectionist” whose love for computing began when he learned Java at school. magpi.cc/vendingmachinegit MAKER If you can think of it, “you can probably do it on a Raspberry Pi,” believes 17-year-old Fady Faheem, who saw a broken vending machine for sale online and decided to give it a tech upgrade. Fady wanted to use his tech chops to benefit his community in Fort Worth, Texas, and the refurbished vending machine seemed an ideal gift to his local church – “the best place I knew” – which could do some micro fundraising too. The project has kick-started his career: “If I didn't do this, I wouldn't be where I am today, working as a software engineer at 17.” Feeling blessed Task one was…

Also known as Penguin Tutor. Maker and YouTuber that loves all things Raspberry Pi and Pico. Author of Learn Electronics with Raspberry Pi. penguintutor.com twitter.com/stewartwatkiss MAKER You'll Need 2 half-size breadboards 3 10 kΩ potentiometers 2 NeoPixels In the world of computers, data is stored as digital values with electronic switches that turn on and off. The real world is analogue, with different levels of brightness throughout the day or different temperatures. This tutorial will shows one of the ways of taking analogue values from the real world and converting them to a digital signal that a Pico microcontroller can understand. Knowing the value of the analogue inputs, these can then be converted into colour values which are used to light up NeoPixel LEDs. 01 Potentiometers Potentiometers are a type of…

FEATURE Linux and Raspberry Pi form a powerful combination and learning to use Linux, and especially the command-line interface (CLI), is a vital computing skill. In this feature, we're going to delve into the CLI. This is the text-based input and output system that sits underneath the more commonly used graphical user interface (GUI). Mastering the command line gives you increased control over your computer, allowing you to automate tasks, manipulate files with ease, and troubleshoot issues. Linux skills are always in high demand because they make such a valuable asset in the tech industry. Raspberry Pi serves as the perfect tool for navigating Linux and the command line. It is a low-cost computer and Raspberry Pi OS is built on top of a recent version of Debian Linux. Furthermore,…

Getting Started With MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico AUTHOR Raspberry Pi Press Price: £10 magpi.cc/picobook MicroPython is a version of the Python computer language optimised to run on microcontrollers such as Raspberry Pi Pico and other devices that use the RP2040. As the title implies, Raspberry Pi's very own guide to exploring MicroPython provides an ideal introduction to the programming language you are likely to use if you have Raspberry Pi Pico, Pico W, or any sort of RP2040 microcontroller. Rather than using a GUI, you program the microcontroller directly from another computer, like Raspberry Pi. So MicroPython is a case of typing in the code and letting it run. Specify input/output pins and MicroPython will control lights, send messages to an LCD matrix, produce on-screen images, or generate sounds.…