Dec 112014
 
Swag from PiWars CamJam

I’m always a bit blown away by how nice people in the Raspberry Pi Community are. At PiWars last Saturday I was given no less than 5 presents. I quite often give away a few beta samples of potential products at CamJam, and this time was no exception. But I ended up receiving some stuff too, which was really nice. Three of the items were accessories that people had made for their HDMIPi. I’ll show you those three first… DIY corrugated cardboard HDMIPi stand + cheeky screwdriver from Andrew Scheller HDMIPuck Tim Richardson Button Covers […more…]

Dec 082014
 
CamJam PiWars

On Saturday was the first PiWars competition at Cambridge Raspberry Jam (#CamJam). It was an excellent event. I was one of the judges, which proved to be quite difficult, but a lot of fun. The whole day went very well, there were several competition events… Sumo – Robots trying to push each other beyond the boundary Obstacle course – negotiate a range of different obstacles, some of which were positively evil Speed test (straight line) Line following – following a twisty, turny course Golf – try to direct the ball into the hole as efficiently […more…]

Dec 062014
 
CamJam Edukit 2 Launches at PiWars

Today the CamJam Edukit 2 is being launched at the first Cambridge Raspberry Jam PiWars event. I’ll be judging the smallest robot and the best non-competing robot categories at PiWars, but today’s blog is about the kit. This is the second kit in the series, which adds some sensors (temperature, light and PIR) into the bundle. The full kit contents is shown and described below. What’s in the Kit? A 400 point bread board including dual power rails Immersable DS18B20 temperature sensor Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) Passive InfraRed (PIR) sensor Piezo buzzer 4 male-male blue […more…]

Nov 282014
 
The FLIRC case for Raspberry Pi B+

FLIRC have made a new enclosure for the Raspberry Pi B+, which is going on sale today. The Pi Hut is importing these to the UK and is the sole distributor for UK and EU. Priced at £13 including VAT, it’s an attractive case made of cast aluminium (painted). It has an integral heat-sink, and comes with a thermal pad you can use to ensure good thermal transfer. It weighs 95g. This is what it looks like… It seems to be targeted at media centre Pi owners, which is not surprising given what FLIRC is. […more…]

Nov 262014
 
Gert VGA 666 review and video

Aaron Shaw from Pi-Supply sent me one of his early Gert VGA 666 adaptors for testing and comment, so I thought I’d share my findings. I followed the diagram in Gert’s manual. It’s a fairly simple build, just 20 resistors and two connectors. It took about 20 minutes, being careful to get all the resistors in the right places. The hardest part was the stacking header. The final product will ship with a slightly shorter stacking header. This should be a bit easier to solder. To get it working on the Pi, you need to […more…]

Nov 212014
 
Raspberry Pi A+ Cases

In the 11 days since the Raspberry Pi A+ was launched, a few different case options have materialised. Here is a little video walkthrough of the options so far… Naked Pi – no case at all Altoids tin – yes the A+ actually fits in one (see the video) Cyntech/ModMyPi case – this is a B+ case, but the A+ fits in it too, albeit with plenty of room to spare A+ Pibow Royale Coupé – Pibow specially designed for the A+ 3d printed cases Mike Redrobe’s @RasPiTV @RPiSpy @climberhunt I just made a minimal […more…]

Nov 122014
 
Raspberry Pi A+ How Much Power Does It Need?

Two Raspberry Pi A+ arrived from Farnell yesterday, so I spent the afternoon doing some power measurements. I also made a comparison video showing power measurements for an A+, a B+ and an old model A Pi. As before, when I did a similar thing for the B+, I used my trusty eMeter. But this time I used it inline with an ISO-TECH IPS 3303D bench power supply (at 5.2V) to corroborate the readings. Methodology I wanted to see how much current each Pi would consume under four circumstances…. Idling in command line – low […more…]

Nov 102014
 
Raspberry Pi Model A+ Launched Today

Today, Raspberry Pi launches its new Raspberry Pi A+. Just like the model B was upgraded to B+, the model A now gets some love. So what’s it like? Essentially, it’s like a model B+ with the USB and networking end cut off. When I was at Raspberry Pi HQ a couple of weeks ago, I was allowed (under strict NDA and embargo) to shoot some photos and video. Here’s what it looks like… So What’s New & Different? The first three are the main changes – size, weight and cost. The rest are pretty […more…]

Nov 052014
 
Get_iplayer Raspberry Pi Update

Latest update here. This article is left intact for historical reasons. Last week there was a great hoo-ha as the BBC announced changes to iPlayer and the way it will work, going forward. Basically they removed the RSS program indexing system, which was used by quite a few smart TVs and also 3rd-party apps like Get_iplayer. Although this doesn’t stop Get_iplayer from downloading a file if you know the correct PID, it did break the functionality of finding the PID automatically with Get_iplayer. It also broke the PVR (personal video recorder) functionality. But within a […more…]

Oct 252014
 
A Visit to Pi Towers.

On Wednesday I went to Cambridge to visit the Raspberry Pi Headquarters, affectionately known as ‘Pi Towers’, to hang out for the day. I met and talked to pretty-much everybody during the day. ‘Everybody’ is now quite a lot of people. There must be about 20 people working at Pi Towers now. In May there was a large, unoccupied space on one side of the office. This time, that space was full of people working on computers. Raspberry Pi has recently hired a bunch of new engineering talent as a result of Broadcom closing down […more…]