Innehållsförteckning för #142 från Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

This month the sun is shining on a couple of new Raspberry Pi productions. We've got Raspberry Pi Connect (page 12) and new Compute Module 4 boards with up to 16GB of RAM (page 14). Raspberry Pi 5 now has super-fast SSD storage, and PJ has celebrated by making an all-new media player (page 36). This one is much faster than its predecessor, and is perfect for video streaming, movie file playback, and high-quality audio. It truly is the best media player you can build. Because the sun has got its hat on, we've got a range of summer projects to share with you (page 72). Everything from bird smart bird feeders, machine learning cameras and tide and weather trackers, to portable computer backpacks. There's even a rain detector that…

MAKER magpi.cc/minidexedgit Dexed is a multi-format plug-in synth “closely modelled” on the Yamaha DX7 intended as a companion and tribute to the 1983 machine that inspired it. So reads the GitHub entry (magpi.cc/dexedgit), which provides multiple useful links indicating just how many directions the concept of this free multi-platform music maker has been extended by audio and electronics enthusiasts. Mini Dexed ports the concepts of the digital synthesiser to Python and Raspberry Pi, and is the brainchild of Simon Peter (aka Probono, magpi.cc/minidexedgit), who describes it as a ‘Dexed FM synthesiser similar to 8x DX7 (TX816/TX802) running on a bare-metal Raspberry Pi (without a Linux kernel or operating system)’ to produce eight tones. Voices can be programmed using a DX series editor using MIDI sysex. Emphasising the importance of Yamaha's…

MAKER @philkingeditor Last issue, we showed you how to use the CDP Studio software development tool and its Kinematics framework to record movements for a Raspberry Pi-based robotic arm – the myCobot 280 Pi from Elephant Robotics – that could then be played back to perform a ‘pick and place’ routine using the Adaptive Gripper add-on. This time we'll using the same setup, but controlling the arm manually using a Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuk. If you don't have the robot arm, you can still run the project by deploying it to a Raspberry Pi and viewing the movements in the on-screen arm visualiser. 01 Install the software If you haven't already done it for the previous tutorial, you'll need to install CDP Studio. On your PC, visit cdpstudio.com/getstarted and download…

In this tutorial, we've looked at creating a gamepad that's easy to understand and extend. However, if you're looking to build a high-performance gamepad, then there are lots of things that you need to take into account. Part placement is obviously a large part of it, as you need to be able to press buttons consistently and accurately. However, another part is the software. Our CircuitPython code could be improved, but ultimately, if you're looking for high performance, CircuitPython isn't the right choice. Fortunately, there is another option. GP2040-CE is a firmware for RP2040-based devices. You can configure it with details of what hardware is connected where. It understands more than just buttons, so you can add analogue inputs as well. There's documentation on the project website: hsmag.cc/GP2040-CE.…

Whether you're going away or planning a stay cation over the summer, one thing's for sure: these are the best months of the year for getting out and about. The better weather means you can enjoy your garden, consider having an adventure or spend some time sensibly soaking up the rays by the coast. But you don't necessarily have to abandon your Raspberry Pi. As we're about to see, our favourite computer can be used to create a host of useful projects that can give you more time to have a great time. Happy days await.…

INTERVIEW > Name Ken St. Cyr | > Occupation Software engineer > Community role Video maker | > URL whatskenmaking.com Retro game emulation has been improving by leaps and bounds over the last decade through various technologies, and one of those is Raspberry Pi. It brings huge power in a small form factor and is perfect for the hobby, and game preservation. Software engineer Ken St. Cyr runs a YouTube channel, called What's Ken Making, that's dedicated to modern retro gaming, which includes Raspberry Pi-powered devices. “My earliest gaming memory is split between playing Pitfall on my uncle's Coleco Vision and typing up BASIC games from a book into a TI-99/4A,” Ken tells us. “I also would go to my friend's house down the street to play his Atari VCS…

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. Remember to follow along at the hashtag #MagPiMonday!…

ASIC Engineering Director Tammy has worked with Raspberry Pi for nine years and is responsible for the tiny Raspberry Pi logo on the silicon. ASIC Technical Director Nick has been with Raspberry Pi for seven years and has worked on RP1 and RP-2040. Alongside building single-board computers and microcontroller boards, Raspberry Pi is heavily involved in silicon design. For nearly ten years now Raspberry Pi has been building an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) team in Cambridge to design and produce custom silicon chips for its products This intricate process involves designing integrated circuits on a silicon wafer. We sat down with Tammy Julyan, ASIC Engineering Director and Nick Francis, ASIC Technical Director to chat about Raspberry Pi's ASIC team, and how they go about designing silicon chips. It's a fascinating…

MAKER niemannross.com Warning! Water & Electricity Running water and electrical currents can seriously damage your beloved tech hardware! Follow Mark's lead and encase your plant irrigation device in a waterproof housing such as a sealed glass jar. magpi.cc/electricalsafety Automatic watering systems that tend to your plants’ irrigation needs cost only around £30 and work perfectly well. As maker Mark Niemann-Ross points out, they reliably turn on and off, sprinkling thirsty crops when the season demands. Unfortunately, they score far less highly for longevity: replacing a worn-out system every year or two soon becomes an uneconomical chore. Such a system can be made smarter with internet connectivity, but this adds roughly $100 to the cost, and the system invariably still falls foul of harsh winters. Mark's DIY irrigation project uses Raspberry…

MAKER Becky Stern is a content creator extraordinaire! During her six years as director of wearables at Adafruit she created, wrote, recorded, presented, and edited 140 videos showing other makers the possibilities of body-worn tech. Her enthusiasm for tech shines through in her current role at DigiKey, while her personal blog and extremely popular YouTube channel present such gems as Cat TV (magpi.cc/cattvyt), a self-explanatory project based on Raspberry Pi Zero and a Elecrow touchscreen. With such a busy companion, we're relieved to hear that Becky's feline friend is being entertained. Dress to impress Becky's interest in electronics began at art school. “I have no formal engineering background, but I did drop out of a PhD programme,” she explains. Becky was already working at Adafruit when Raspberry Pi came out…

Many on-line streaming services use Widevine, which is a browser-based anti-piracy system. This is not installed by default on Raspberry Pi, so services such as Netflix won't work. Luckily it can be installed simply, just follow this guide: magpi.cc/widevine. If you're using Kodi, try the unofficial plugin: magpi.cc/netflixkodi Netflix (also Disney+ etc) Movies & TV YouTube Videos The most popular video service in the world is obviously going to be a must-have for your media server. YouTube on Chromium works out of the box if you're using Raspberry Pi Desktop. If you want to use it with Kodi, the good news is a plug-in is available directly from the Kodi interface. Just head over to the Add-ons menu and search for ‘YouTube’. Qobuz Music Over the recent years, music file…

MAKER Data isn't just the name of an old android in Star Trek, it's also the heart of computer programming. The word simply means “an item of information” from its singular Latin “datum” (meaning “that which is given”). Programs largely revolve around data. Obtaining it from input (often from the keyboard and mouse), storing it, manipulating it, and then sending it back in the form of output (typically to the screen). Right down at the metal, everything is just electronically flipped on and off switches, but that is far too complex for everyday use so everything is abstracted up to a level where we can comfortably deal with it. And part of this is data segmented into different types: some of these will be familiar: strings and integers (numbers). Some…

MAKER Warning! Copyright! This feature discusses making backup copies of CD-ROMs and floppy disks. Please ensure that you have a licence to reproduce a disk before doing so. copyright.govmagpi.cc/copyright This month, we're going to rescue hard-toread media, from forensic disk imaging tools that attempt to recover data from your drive, bit-by-bit, to the important manual work of cleaning your disks and drives to restore deterioration and prevent further damage. We'll take a close look at recovering data from CDs and floppy disks, helpful physical and software tools, and even help you get equipped to recover data from Iomega's Zip disk superfloppy formats. Please note that none of the techniques detailed here are a substitute for professional disk recovery, and that attempting to read damaged floppy disk media can harm both…

This example should get you started in the world of game controllers, and there are loads that you can look at for inspiration: • The Arduino Esplora is now retired, but was one of the first hackable game controllers on the market: hsmag.cc/ArduinoEsplora • There's an online community at PCBWay's shared projects site that includes many game controllers, including: hsmag.cc/PicoGamepad • Gamepads come in many shapes. They're usually designed around ergonomics, but you can get a little creative. For example, this maker has built a batshaped controller: hsmag.cc/BatController…

INTRODUCTION TO OPEN SOURCE NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES This edX course from the Linux Foundation covers topics such as software-defined networking automating tasks, and open networking operating systems. ► magpi.cc/lfnetwork THE BITS AND BYTES OF COMPUTER NETWORKING Ideal for beginners, this Google course on Coursera offers 27 hours of learning, covering modern networking fundamentals and troubleshooting techniques. ► magpi.cc/bitsbytes SO YOU WANT TO BE A NETWORK ENGINEER? The video Lectures in this free Udemy course will give you a basic understanding of networking technologies and could set you on a new career path. ► magpi.cc/soyouwant…

THE FINAL WORD In the (fantastic) game Stardew Valley, you play out several years each split up into four distinct seasons lasting 28 days. It's a farming sim after all. On the last day of summer there's a nighttime event that ends with a load of glowing jellyfish swimming by before a message pop ups: “the glow of summer has faded, now… and the moonlight jellies carry on toward the great unknown”. I've never had any real melancholy for summer ending – aside from, I suppose, having to go back to school when I was a kid – but while reading the game's text I think I came close to understanding why people do. “That made me realise that a long exposure Raspberry Pi camera would have worked perfectly… just…

MAKER magpi.cc/audiophilepi Audio streamers don't come cheap. You could easily spend between £500 and £1,000 for a decent high-end model. But, as Alan Boris has found, there's a far less expensive alternative that won't look out of place in a standard audio system. By snapping up an old FM radio stereo tuner - a Sony ST-JX411 dating back to 1991 - and making use of a Raspberry Pi 4, he's been able to create his own, modern network music streamer that can be controlled by buttons on the front panel. As someone interested in giving old tech a new lease of life, the idea came naturally. “I was inspired by the many high quality network audio streaming devices sold by the major stereo component brands such as Sony, Cambridge Audio,…

MAKER Remote and wireless technology has come a long way in the last decade or so. With the explosion of drones with cameras, and the continual shrinking of camera tech thanks largely to mobile phones, RC planes have been able to take advantage of the trend too. Maker Wojciech Domski wanted to take it a little further, and decided to overlay data on the picture being sent back. “It is all about telemetry and tracking what is happening to the plane during flight,” Wojciech told us. “For example, the current battery voltage. It is a pretty good indicator of how much power you have left and, thanks to it, you can estimate the remaining flight time.” Pico Power While looking for OSD (on screen display) devices that would fit his…

Raspberry Pi 5 Yes, it sounds obvious but the latest iteration of Raspberry Pi is perfect for video performance up to 4K. magpi.cc/raspberrypi5 £58 Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVME Case Argon's latest for the Raspberry Pi 5 features M.2 SSD support, active cooling and an IR receiver. magpi.cc/argononev3m2 £46 Argon IR Remote Pair your Argon case with this elegant IR controller and you don't have to leave the sofa. magpi.cc/argonremote £9 52Pi NVDAC Audio quality your priority? This twoin-one HAT gives you an M.2 SSD and a high-quality DAC. magpi.cc/52pinvdac £29 Raspberry Pi TV HAT Did you know you can watch overthe-air digital broadcasts? Just add this HAT! magpi.cc/tvhat £21 Mini Bluetooth Keyboard If you fancy browsing the web or chatting from your chair, get a wire-free mini keyboard. magpi.cc/minikeyb £13…

Tag all the things The key to a neat media library is to tag everything. Tags are metadata encoded in the media file itself that tells the media library things like titles, artists, genres and track numbers. Without properly tagged files, you may find things hard to find and out of order. Try magpi.cc/kid3. What's in a name? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Many media libraries will make assumptions based on the filename of your media. For example, Plex likes music files to start with the track number (e.g. “01 Help.flac”) and will correctly order them. TV Show filenames should contain the season and episode in the format “s01e02”. Use the scraper Platforms such as Kodi and Plex have built in ‘scrapers’ or ‘agents’ that will look at…

MAKER freelance.halfacree.co.uk Key to the accessibility of coding on Raspberry Pi is Scratch, a visual programming language developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Rather than using text-based instructions, Scratch has you build your program using blocks – pre-written chunks of code disguised as colour-coded jigsaw pieces. Scratch is a great first language for budding coders of any age, and you can use it to create everything from simple games and animations through to complex interactive robotics projects. Scratch 3 loads like any other program on Raspberry Pi: open the Raspberry Pi menu, move the cursor to the Programming section, and click on Scratch 3. After a few seconds, the Scratch 3 user interface will display. You may see a message about data collection: you can click Yes if…

It's often cheaperto get boards made using leaded solder. However, this might be a false economy. Leaded solder is harmful to both your health and the health of our planet. In the case of a games controller – something that you're going to hold in your hand time and again – it's more important than usual to opt for lead-free solder. Even if only a tiny amount gets on your hands each time you use it, that will still add up over the course of the controller's life, and could have negative effects on your health.…

“On your travels this Summer, you may yearn to have your Raspberry Pi close to hand” Raspberry Pi Backpack nichotashacault.com When you're out and about on your travels this Summer, you may yearn to have your Raspberry Pi close to hand. If that's the case then this project literally has your back, allowing you to take your favourite computer on any adventure you desire. Created by Nicholas Hacault, it incorporates a seven-inch screen into a backpack that's linked to a Raspberry Pi. Operated using a wireless keyboard and mouse, and juiced via a 30,000 mAh portable power bank, it could even include a walking animation connected to an accelerometer. And since Raspberry Pi devices are small, there's plenty of room for all of your other stuff too. Recovery Kit Version…

DEBIAN REFERENCE Since Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian Linux, the networking section of this ontine reference manuat is ideat for teaming a host of usefut commands. ► magpi.cc/debianrefnetwork LINUX KERNEL The networking section of the Linux Kernet documentation is packed with usefut info on att aspects of Linux networking, from AF_XDP to XFRM. ► magpi.cc/kernelnetworking RASPBERRY PI FORUMS If you're having networking issues with your Raspberry Pi, the ‘Networking and servers’ section of the official forums is a good place to go for help. ► magpi.cc/etworkingforum…