Innehållsförteckning för #155 från Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

Editor Lucy is reminiscing about ‘Arms’ the poorly named robot arm she once built and stuck googly eyes on. rpimag.co My kind of fun isn't settling in to a TV binge, though many of my friends adore it. My happy place is here with my keyboard, diving into nerdy books, comics, or leaping into a video game! So, for someone like me, the thrill of crafting an Ultimate Home Media Centre, like the sensational one PJ has whipped up for us this month, is the pure joy of ‘building’ even more than the ‘playing’. Who wouldn't be utterly captivated by what it offers? Off-the-shelf systems often feel like they're playing catch-up. Some boxes might shy away from BBC Sounds with its HTML5 heart, YouTube comes and goes, and ITVX can…

Maker Eugene is an optimistic and open-minded tech enthusiast who produces great videos about his many Raspberry Pi builds. rpimag.co/itkacher Eugene Tkachenko is a confident YouTube presenter who demonstrates his many projects with enthusiasm and aplomb. He spotted Raspberry Pi's potential from the get-go, noting “boards for various needs and budgets, from affordable options for simple projects to boards capable of handling AI and heavy computations”. His first Raspberry Pi project, an underwater drone, appeared back in issue 80. With around 15 years experience as a developer and multiple Raspberry Pi builds to his name, Eugene set himself a new challenge: to design and assemble a fully 3D-printable remote control car using no aluminium, steel gears or fancy parts (rpimag.co/3dprintedcar). He chose Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W for his 3D-printed…

rpimag.co/DustCollector Not all power tools are created equal. Take the hand drill: it's brilliant. Cutting through wood, metal and masonry with ease, it recharges quickly, it makes a cool noise, and it gives you the perfect excuse to acquire a collection of drill bits that you absolutely need as if your life depends on it even though you might only use them once in a blue moon. In contrast, consider the vacuum cleaner: used to clean surfaces that will inevitably only get dusty again. Heavy, bulky, whiny, vacuum cleaners are not our favourite things. But Italian designer AK3D has come up with a way to make vacuum cleaners more appealing: by printing a range of attachments to connect them to a drill, creating a vacuum-drill hybrid. That's more like it.…

Maker PJ is a writer, software engineer, and one of those people who drones on about a director's ‘vision’, constantly pausing films to discuss the scene composition. mastodon.social/@mrpjevans Raspberry Pi as a media centre has been a classic project since day one. As new models have been released, the capabilities of this minuscule device have increased exponentially. From a humble audio player to a fully capable video streamer, we are now in the era of the Raspberry Pi as a serious 4K media device. The options for setting up such a system are many, and things can get complicated. So here's a reference guide for setting up a great media system that is subscriptionfree and, with a bit of configuration, can be accessed anywhere in the world. A perfect pairing…

Maker Ian's been working in tech and video games magazines for far longer than is healthy. As well as Raspberry Pi, he also writes about Macs, retro gaming/computing, and anything else that pays. @ijosborne Now we've been over the basics of RISC OS on Raspberry Pi, let's take a look at how to set up email. The easiest way to use email on your RISC OS Raspberry Pi is to open the !NetSurf web browser and point it at your email service's web client. This is the case for web-based email services such as Google Mail or Apple iCloud, but also for your ISP's webmail service. After all, if you only occasionally need to use email from your RISC OS Raspberry Pi, setting up a dedicated email client is hardly…

Maker Lucy is editor of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine and just wants a tricorder: sensing, recording, and computing. rpimag.co During the Astro Pi mission, a pair of Raspberry Pi computers with Sense HATs attached captured and logged a range of data about life on board the International Space Station. In this activity, you will use a Raspberry Pi, a Sense HAT, and some Python code to create your own data-logging tool, which you can use to capture interesting data and perform experiments at home. Using the sensors, we can measure the following conditions: Temperature Humidity Pressure Orientation Acceleration Magnetic field Colour and brightness (V2 Sense HAT only) First, we'll write a short script to get data from the Sense HAT and output it to the screen. Open the Thonny editor…

There's nothing quite like a project that moves. As well as putting them in robots, you can use motors to create physical movement in all sorts of projects, ranging from a CNC drawing machine to a guitar tuner or a plant rotator. To control motors with a Raspberry Pi computer or Pico microcontroller, you'll need a driver board equipped with an ‘H-bridge’ that enables the direction of rotation to be reversed. We take a look at some of the best ones around, from the basic to the more elaborate, and with a range of maximum power outputs. Drivers can also be used to control stepper motors, which rotate in small steps for very precise movement – which is why they're used in machines such as 3D printers. You need two…

Pimoroni | From £24 / $27 | pimoroni.com Based around the same RP2040 microcontroller chip as Raspberry Pi Pico, Pimoroni's Yukon modular ecosystem aims to make advanced robotics easier. The main host board can be equipped with up to six modules which can be swapped in and out as you need for projects – no soldering needed. You can buy a starter kit with some modules, and other extras, included. Modules available from Pimoroni include various motor and stepper controllers, along with those for LED strips, audio, and wireless communication (which Yukon doesn't have built in). There's even a ‘Proto’ module that you can customise for your own needs. When powered with 5V–17V via an XT30 input, such as with a LiPo battery, the Yukon can deliver a whole lot…

Name Brendan McGrath Occupation Graphic designer Community role YouTuber URL rpimag.co/paterp If you follow us on social media, or keep an eye on the #MakerMonday pages in the mag, Pater Practicus – real name Brendan McGrath – will be a familiar sight thanks to his various model train upgrades. He's also a rare maker that didn't grow up coding. “I've always been quite a practical person, but as a grown-up, inevitably a lot of that energy has been channelled into DIY and doing up our various flats and houses,” Brendan explains. “I'm not afraid to tackle most jobs – even if I've never done them before – and over the years I've taught myself skills such as plumbing and electrics, and even how to lay a parquet floor. “It is…

Maker Electronic and electrical engineer Pete works for Avanade, and has been an enthusiastic user of Raspberry Pi since its 2012 launch. rpimag.co/avanade Keen gardener King Charles III famously promoted the idea of talking to plants in a 1986 episode of children's TV show Blue Peter. This same idea could be found at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, where technology company Avanade embedded sensors in trees and used an app to prompt conversations about each tree's health. Alongside this, Avanade's Pete Gallagher created a bespoke Pollinator Camera, based on Raspberry Pi 5 and the Hailo AI accelerator, to photograph and detect the number of insects visiting the show garden each day. The Intelligent Garden won a Gold award for Best Construction at Chelsea Flower Show. Trees, please School children and…

Maker A Vietnamese engineer and hobby roboticist living in Florida, he began his Raspberry Pi journey in 2020. bentobot.tech If Pi Wars is anything to go by, the appeal of robot battling will always be strong. However, Pi Wars is, for many good reasons, non-destructive – maker Thomas Nguyen ignored all these reasons when he created the online sensation Bentobot. “[It's] the most accessible way to experience combat robotics,” Thomas says. “I built three combat robots and developed an application that lets people control them from anywhere in the world. I streamed twice weekly, hosting fights between players from India, Canada, the Netherlands, the US, and beyond. Players simply grab their phone or computer, sit on their couch, and pilot real robots in combat from wherever they are.” While making…

The PiPod is a throwback to a simpler time, before streaming, before automatic shuffle and having Beethoven's 9th interrupted by ads became the new norm. A time when you'd save up your money, go into town, buy a whole album on compact disc or vinyl, and study every aspect of the cover artwork on the long bus ride back before you got back to listen to it. The maker of this device is searching for a time when we listened to music properly, but also had the ability to carry thousands of songs with us on a mobile device. And so he created the PiPod: a portable music device that not only plays tunes, but also displays the artwork that album designers used to take such a lot of effort…

Maker A tech writer, programmer, and web developer with a long history in computers, who is also in music and art. about.me/RichardSmedley It's not a throwback to the past, but a quick and powerful way of getting your Raspberry Pi to do what you want, without all that repetitive strain injury-inducing menu chasing and icon clicking. The command-line interface was a great step up from manually toggling in your instructions in octal (base-8), using switches on the front of the machine! Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) brought friendly visual metaphor to the computer, losing some power and expressiveness. With Raspberry Pi, you can get the best of both worlds by knowing both: after reading through this guide, you'll soon be as comfortable at the command prompt as you are at your…

Maker Andrew is a specialist maker and fabricator, and is the owner of the Andrew Lewis Workshop. lewiswork.etsy.com QUICK TIP: Normally, the wrong punchdown tool won't fit in the wrong type of connector. A Krone tool won't fit into a 110 terminal, and vice versa. Used by engineers to connect network cables in sockets and patch panels Some tools are instantly recognisable to everybody. There are very few people in the world who wouldn't recognise a hammer or a screwdriver if they saw one. Other tools have a more limited field of recognition, and if someone recognises the tool, you can make a good guess about what sort of job or hobby they have. If someone recognises a punch-down tool, you can assume they've had experience with computer networking or…

Maker Nicola is a freelance writer and sub-editor. There's a good reason why so many ancient and heritage crafts are still popular today, and she's all in! @holtonhandmade QUICK TIP You can use all sorts of paper for origami – the key characteristics needed though are suppleness, an ability to hold a fold well, and some degree of strength. Wrapping paper works a treat. Origami is an ancient Japanese art form, and the word itself stems from two words – ‘ori’ (from the root verb ‘oru’) means ‘to fold’ and ‘kami’ is one of the Japanese words for paper. The aim of the craft is to create something very beautiful from a flat two-dimensional sheet of paper. Equipped with knowledge of just a few basic folds, you can create some…

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. Follow along to #MakerMonday each week over on our various social media platforms!…

Just swapping the computing brains of an old project for something more modern can make the whole thing feel better, faster, more useful I'm always struck by the endless creativity that makers have. There's something new everywhere you look, and it's amazing. But there's another side to this, and that's that the old classics keep coming up again and again. Weather stations, greenhouse monitors, time-lapse cameras… they've all been done again and again. But somehow, each one is different. Just swapping out the computing brains of an old project for something more modern can make the whole thing feel better, faster, more useful. The original idea stays in place, the computer gets an upgrade, and suddenly the whole thing feels different. Even when you don't have new hardware to play…

Maker Johan is a student and passionate maker from Switzerland. He's always loved building things, and started working on the first prototype of BaBot as a high school project six years ago. ba-bot.com Have you ever seen a robot that can play catch? Well now you have. This is BaBot – a fully open-source robot built by architecture student Johan Link. And it's absolutely ingenious – there's no camera here to keep track of the ball, as you might think at first glance. Instead it uses a matrix of infrared LEDs and phototransistors to detect the position of the ball. The LEDs emit light, and the phototransistors measure what's being reflected – in a way, Johan has created a very simple version of an eye, with the photoresistors standing in…

Maker A long-time Raspberry Pi user and tinkerer, Phil is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on technology. philkingeditor.com YOU'LL NEED Raspberry Pi Pico (any model) with GPIO headers soldered on DF Mini Player microSD card Mini speaker (up to 3W) 2 × half-size breadboards (or one full-size) 6 × momentary push buttons 19 × pin-to-pin jumper wires Drum samples While the first ever drum machine is considered to be the Rhythmicon, developed by Leon Theremin (yes, he invented that instrument too) in the early 1930s, digital drum machines came to the fore in the 1980s with the likes of the Linn LM-1. The latter cost the equivalent of over $19,000 today, and yet we can now create a DIY drum machine using a $5 Raspberry Pi Pico.…

Maker PJ is a writer, software engineer, and very average roboticist. His robot arm enjoys teasing the cat. mastodon.social/@mrpjevans Ever buy a gadget? Does it get played with for a while then consigned to the shelf or cupboard? Upcycling old gizmos and sprinkling a little Raspberry Pi magic is one of our favourite things. Take the OWI-535 (rpimag.co/owi535) robot arm. This fun toy, with several points of articulation and a gripping claw, could be found in electronics shops under various brands. It's still widely available. Although a USB version is now on sale, we wanted to see if we could convert the original remote control version and make it Raspberry Pi powered. Even if you don't have this particular device, this should be a useful guide to motor control. How…

Maker Ben is a freelance writer and artist. Both occupations involve an abundance of LEDs. glowingart.co.uk Many electronics projects begin life on a breadboard. It's an easy way to test things out as you build your circuits. You can adjust, change, develop, and build things. However, what do you do when you want to make your projects permanent? You could leave it on a breadboard, but sooner or later, things will fall out. There is protoboard – PCB that's just made up of through-holes that you can solder components into. This can work, but it's a bit messy and it is awkward to use with surface-mount parts. The solution is to design your own PCB. This sounds like a complex process, but it can be surprisingly straightforward. PCB design tools…

Home automation made easy With more time on my hands than I know what to do with (and arthritis that's going to make simple tasks difficult in a few years), I thought I'd try my hand at automating a few bits around the house. The first things I thought I'd do is a device for opening and closing the curtains automatically. I'm working on a system that will close the curtains at a certain time each night, based on the expected sunset and sunrise times for where I live. But I reckon with a bit of thought I could just as easily use a sensor and do it when it's actually dark. After reading the last issue, I know I'm on to something. Oh, and after seeing the word written several…