Raspberry Pi Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 27, 2023

• The Pironman Raspberry Pi Case

  All of these features come in a case that looks like it was designed to look like a tiny gaming PC case. The case even comes with a tower cooler and RGB fan to keep everything cool under load.

• Meet Hannah Makes | #MagPiMonday

  Hannah ended up buying a 3D printer and an electronics kit and jumped in the deep end, staying up late to figure out how to get them all working.

  “I wrote a column about the crazy projects I came up with, like teabag-dunking robots, and shoes that call you an Uber when you click your heels together three times,” Hannah continues. “As time went on, I became so obsessed with making that I ended up switching careers to find a job that involved less writing and more building. Now I get to work in a giant workshop full of machines (my favourite is probably the giant 7-axis robot arm), and wonderful, talented people that I get to learn from.”

• LED matrix album cover art display

  The LED matrix in question is a 32×32 1024-pixel Cosmic Unicorn from Pimoroni, who also provided the small speaker and Pico W used in this project.

• Take part in the UK Bebras Challenge 2023 for schools

  Bebras is a free, annual challenge that helps schools introduce computational thinking to their students aged 6 to 18. No programming is involved.

• This Pico-powered belt pulls you north

  The smartphone is in charge of detecting where north is, removing the need for an extra magnetic sensor. That same smartphone also powers the entire setup, so you don’t need an additional battery. Blinry printed individual enclosures to house each motor and clip them onto the belt.

  The motors here are eight coin vibration motors (like those pictured below). The Raspberry Pi Pico can’t support the current for all of them, so Blinry commandeered a transistor array chip called the ULN2803a.

• Raspberry Pi Monitors Traffic with AI for Urban Planning and More

  The Pi in this project is working with BrainChip’s Akida Dev Kit. It has everything Naveem needed to capture images from a video traffic feed for the AI system to evaluate. Data can be stored later or made available in real time. Naveem suggests this could be useful for businesses and government agencies that need to monitor traffic patterns.

• Pylon-guided mower | #MagPiMonday

  Here’s a robot that takes grass and weed cutting to the next level… literally. This #MagPiMonday, Nicola King wonders at the weed assassin that is Roktrack, the pylon-guided mower.

• Can a Raspberry Pi swim?

  On closer inspection, we learnt that this Raspberry Pi wasn’t trying to go for a swim in water, but in mineral oil. It also seemed not to be drowning at all, but rather doing pretty well under the circumstances. The thing about mineral oil is that while it looks just like water at a glance, it isn’t electrically conductive. This makes it fun to play with.