UPDATED GUIDE: Running TensorFlow Lite Object Recognition on the Raspberry Pi 4 or Pi 5 @Raspberry_Pi @TensorFlow #MachineLearning #BrainCraft @circuitpython #circuitpython #AdafruitLearningSystem @Adafruit @MakerMelissa

The Running TensorFlow Lite Object Recognition on the Raspberry Pi 4 or Pi 5 guide has been updated to work with Raspberry Pi Bookworm and the new Raspberry Pi 5. It has also been updated to use a newer version of TensorFlow Lite, version 2.15.0.

Want to up your robotics game and give it the ability to detect objects? Maybe implement a security camera that can see and identify certain items? Now that the Raspberry Pi is fast enough to do machine learning, adding these features is fairly straightforward.

This guide will show you the steps to get TensorFlow 2 installed on your Raspberry Pi 4 and perform some object detection using the TensorFlow Lite Python Interpreter, which is faster than the full TensorFlow interpreter.

There are two main setup paths to choose from. The first option is with a PiTFT if you want to have a larger display. The second option is with the BrainCraft HAT, which has a built-in display and audio along several other components such as DotStar LEDs, a Joystick, and ports.

See this updated guide page now!

Raspberry Pi CEO talks about an impending stock IPO #RaspberryPi @ArsTechnica

The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make a stock market initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars Technica that, should an IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2 times.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.”

CEO Eben Upton confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News that Raspberry Pi had appointed bankers at London firms Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for “when the IPO market reopens.”

Given the company’s gradual recovery from pandemic supply chain shortages, and the success of the Raspberry Pi 5 launch, the company’s IPO will likely jump above $500 million, even with a listing in the UK rather than the more typical US IPO. Upton told The Register that “the business is in a much better place than it was last time we looked at it [an IPO in 2022].

“What Raspberry Pi [builds] are the products we want to buy, and then we sell them to people like us,” Upton said. “Certainly, while I’m involved in it, I can’t imagine an environment in which the hobbyists are not going to be incredibly important.”

Upton said there would be “no change” to the kinds of products Pi makes, and that makers are “culturally important to us.”

Read more on Ars Technica here.

The ultimate DIY digital clock, built inside a flash unit #Photography #RaspberryPi #CircuitPython @petapixel

Finnish photographer Petri Damstén has crafted a digital clock within a photography flash unit using a Raspberry Pi Pico W with a ST7735 display coded in CircuitPython.

The digital display fits into where the diffuser panel once was. It mimics the simple aesthetics seen when on camera lenses to perfection. At the top, in large, easy-to-see numbers is the time. Below that a graphic reminiscence of depth of field markings seen on lenses. This part is just for aesthetics, but it’s a nice touch.

“The idea of a camera-themed clock originated from my interest in photography. Another concept I had in mind was a Back to the Future DeLorean time machine-themed clock, but that might be a project for another day,” Damstén says in a blog post detailing the project

See the video below and more on PetaPixel. The project files are on GitHub.

How to emulate games on your Raspberry Pi #Gaming #RaspberryPi @xdadevelopers

Though Raspberry Pi boards can fit within the palm of your hands, these tiny computers pack enough horsepower to run a plethora of games. While you shouldn’t expect an ARM-based Raspberry Pi to run graphically demanding games that can tax even the most cutting-edge PCs, they’re quite capable when it comes to emulating games.

An emulator is a tool that allows a device to mimic the functionality of another system. Typically used for retro gaming, emulation lets users run games that don’t have official ports on modern hardware. If you’re new to emulation or aren’t familiar with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, installing emulators and adding ROMs can seem rather intimidating.

XDA Developers has a detailed guide on how to make an all-in-one emulation device out of your Raspberry Pi. The emulation packages covered:

1. Batocera
2. Lakka
3. Recalbox
4. RetroPie

Read all the details here.

Jamea Richmond-Edwards’ Ancient Future

Sugarcane Magazine shares how artist Jamea Richmond-Edwards draws from past and present to create her work.

In the article, What is Memory, science educator Kendra Cherry identifies memory as “the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information.” Conceptualizing and producing the monumental anchor pieces for Ancient Futures, Dark Night of the Soul and Lullaby for Shooting Star are the culmination of memories drawn into Richmond-Edward’s consciousness spanning “billions of years.”

Read more and check it out at MOCA North Miami if you’re nearby.

Homemade Breath of the Wild Guardian with Real Sentry Action #ArtTuesday

npentre decided that it wasn’t enough to build a Guardian sentry from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The maker decided to build a Guardian sentry that is a real sentry that can track humans, dogs, and other neighborhood creatures. Here’s more from hackaday:

The build relies on a Raspberry Pi kitted out with its usual camera for machine vision purposes. It uses the Viam robot toolkit, which runs a machine learning model to detect pets and humans on the camera feed. The guardian then tracks any pets or humans that show up by turning its head, and thus the camera, with a servo controlled by a PWM signal via the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. It’s all wrapped up in a nicely-decorated 3D printed model that really does look like something straight out of Breath of the Wild.

See more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Making an iPhone-shaped pwnagotchi AI WiFi password cracker #Raspberry Pi #RaspberryPiZero

Pwnagotchi is an A2C-based “AI” powered by bettercap and running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W that learns from its surrounding WiFi environment in order to maximize the crackable WPA key material it captures (either through passive sniffing or by performing deauthentication and association attacks). This material is collected on disk as PCAP files containing any form of handshake supported by hashcat, including full and half WPA handshakes as well as PMKIDs.

The Facelesstech blog was browsing the pwnagotchi discord server and saw someone mention having a pwnagotchi mounted in a phone holder in a car, which got them thinking about putting one into a phone case of some kind. The ipwnagotchi13 was born.

Hardware

• Raspberry pi zero W/zero W2
• Waveshare 2.13″ eink screen v3/v4
• Powerbank DIY PCB 5v boost+chargeing
• Lipo battery 604050
• 3 pin switch 3mm
• M2.5 hex bolts 6mm x4
• iPhone 13 case

It was a strange build to pull off because for one I didn’t even know if it would all fit into the iPhone 13 case and two I didn’t know if i would be able to wire it up the way I wanted it to. I think it’s far from perfect but it suits my needs.

Read more in the post here and see the video below.

Comparing ADCs on ESP32, Pico and Arduino #Arduino #ESP32 #RaspberryPi @monkmakes

After some inconsistent and unreliable results reading an analog input from an ESP32 board, Dr. Simon Monk decided to get scientific and do some experimenting.

Three boards were chosen: An ESP32, a Raspberry Pi Pico and the ATmega328p-based Arduino Uno R3.

I was particularly interested in three things:

• finding any dead-zones at each end of the analog input voltage range
• measuring the reproducibility of the readings
• linearity through the range

On looking at the documentation in MicroPython and learning that the analog readings for a Pico and ESP32 come at a massive 16 bit precision (a number between 0 and 65536) it’s easy think that their analog inputs are much better than the paltry 10 bits of an Arduino (0 to 1023 reading range). But this is to confuse precision with accuracy. It’s why pure megapixels is not the best way to judge a camera. So much depends on the lens.

So, if you are trying to get decent accuracy and reproducibility from your analog readings, then you probably want to take a set of readings and average them — or use an Arduino Uno R3!

See the whole test series in the excellent post here.

 

A PCIe Deep Dive: The Link Training and Status State Machine (LTSSM) #RaspberryPi #PCIe

The PCIe bus Link Training and Status State Machine (LTSSM) is a logic block that sits in the MAC layer of the PCIe stack. It configures the PHY and establishes the PCIe link by negotiating link width, speed, and equalization settings with the link partner. This is done primarily by exchanging Ordered Sets, easy-to-identify fixed-length packets of link configuration information transmitted on all lanes in parallel. The LTSSM must complete successfully before any real data can be exchanged over the PCIe link.

Although somewhat complex, the LTSSM is a normal logic state machine. The controller executes a specific set of actions based on the current state and its role as either a downstream-facing port (host/root complex) or upstream-facing port (device/endpoint). These actions might include:

• Detecting the presence of receiver termination on its link partner.
• Transmitting Ordered Sets with specific link configuration information.
• Receiving Ordered Sets from its link partner.
• Comparing the information in received Ordered Sets to transmitted Ordered Sets.
• Counting Ordered Sets transmitted and/or received that meet specific requirements.
• Tracking how much time has elapsed in the state (for timeouts).
• Reading or writing bits in PCIe Configuration Space registers, for software interaction.

You can read about how LTSSM is used in PCIe in Shane Colton’s post here.

VHS Cassette Video Recorder

This new build from Alan Boris has a super fun retro-look.

Here’s more via Hackster.io:

The VHS cassette was a popular video recording medium for decades but is rarely used today. When I needed a simple composite video player/recorder for a recent project, I decided to see if I could build my own that fit inside the space of a VHS cassette. Using a Raspberry Pi and a handful of parts, I was able to make it work.

Adafruit Weekly Editorial Round-Up: Floppy Disk archiver and emulator prototype, Sound Reactive Rapunzel Hair, Updated Learn guides and more!

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ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

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We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.

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BLOG

Floppy Disk archiver and emulator, prototype is in!

We had a quest to do some floppy projects back in 2022 but our eyes were bigger than our BOM – many components we designed into this floppy interface board were not available… but now we’re back and it’s time to make the bestest floppy archiver/writer/emulator(?) – video.

Read more!

More BLOG:

• Bantam Tools Acquires Evil Mad Scientist to Accelerate Development of Next Generation Art and Handwriting Machines
• The Adafruit IoT Monthly Newsletter for February 2024 is out next Thursday, Subscribe Now!
• 8 Raspberry Pi attachments radically expand its powers
• How to Stream Video from Raspberry Pi Camera to Computer #PiDay #RaspberryPi

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LEARN

Sound Reactive Rapunzel Hair

Check out the latest guide from Erin St Blaine: make a light-up Rapunzel wig that reacts to sounds and lights up when the wearer makes a noise. This is based on Rapunzel’s glowing hair from the Disney Tangled movie, where the main character’s hair glows when she sings a special song, giving her magic healing powers. Making kids feel like magical princesses is always worthwhile.

Check out the full guide!

More LEARN

• 1D Chomper Tabletop Arcade Game
• Updated Guide: Capturing Images with CircuitPython
• Updated Guide: Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense
• MEMENTO Wireless Remote with TouchOSC

Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!

DIY Garage Door Indicator @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

If you have a garage, you may, at times, become haunted by the feeling that the garage door is open. Here’s a project that will exorcise that ghost. See more from Instructables:

The purpose of this project is to implement a remote-controlled indicator (located inside the house) to show the status of a shed or garage door, either by reusing the infrastructure that an existing alarm system provides (as described below), or using another suitable receiver (pointers below). No more door left open!

See project!

8 Raspberry Pi attachments radically expand its powers #PiDay #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi @PCWorld

PCWorld highlights 8 Raspberry Pi attachments which radically expand its powers.

Want to use your Raspberry Pi for Lego Mindstorm, AI research, handheld gaming, and more? Above is the Adafruit Braincraft HAT for machine learning.

Check out these “HAT” expansion modules, the details are in PCWorld.

The online PCIe database for Raspberry Pi CM4 and Pi 5 #PCIe #PiDay #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi @jeffGeerling

Jeff Geerling has developed an online database of devices that have been tested on the PCIe bus of the Raspberry Pi CM4 and Raspberry Pi 5 computers.

The Raspberry Pi has PCI Express! There are some quirks to getting certain devices working with 64-bit Arm (arm64), so Jeff Geerling started testing PCIe devices on the Compute Module 4 and Pi 5, and is centralizing the resources on this site. Many experiences are documented on Jeff Geerling’s YouTube channel!

This project is maintained on GitHub; suggest new cards to test or share your own experiences there.

See the database here.

How to Stream Video from Raspberry Pi Camera to Computer #PiDay #RaspberryPi

Handy tutorial from Mahmood M. Shilleh up on Hackster.io:

Learn how to set up a Flask App on your Raspberry Pi and create a live video feed that you can access on your local network.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Four Raspberry Pi 5 projects to make good use of its power #RaspberryPi

The Raspberry Pi 5 is a single board computer that has seen a significant boost to performance this generation. With support for PCIe devices, massive overclocking headroom, a physical on / off switch and an active cooling option, Notebook Check presents 4 projects to get folks started with a new Raspberry Pi.

1. Retro Gaming Powerhouse
2. Media Center
3. Network Attached Storage
4. Home Server

See all the details in the article here.

Using Science to Understand Art #ArtTuesday

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a strange idea: use science to help children understand art. Manhattan’s Met has created a 3,600 square foot play space with installations where kids can learn about the materials used to make fine art. Here’s more from NPR:

Not only is science used to help conserve precious objects, she said, but it’s also used to better understand the art itself. “Say an art object comes in. You can’t just look at it and say it’s made of clay. It kind of looks that way. But it was made 500 years ago. You don’t know what they mix to make the substance. ”

Because science is so important to the contemporary understanding of art, the museum decided to turn its former library space on the ground floor — most often used for the Met’s beloved story time — into the 81st Street Studio, a place where children could interact with basic materials. Currently, the studio is focused on wood.

Learn more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Wakulla River Receipt Map

Aaron Koelker’s Wakulla River map was designed to be printed on 6 feet of thermal receipt paper! Check out how that went for Aaron over on AaronKoelker.com, via flowingdata

Check out the video here

Toughbook’s gotta Raspberry Pi inside! #Raspberrypi

John Warren shared this build on Youtube!

This is an old CF-18 Panasonic Toughbook with new stuff inside – a Raspberry Pi 4B, a laptop screen, an LCD controller, a Bluetooth audio receiver etc etc.

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Raspberry Pi is now manufacturing 70,000 Pi 5s per week, surging to 90,000 next month #RaspberryPi #PiDay @Raspberry_Pi @TomsHardware

Raspberry Pi Ltd is currently producing 70,000 Raspberry Pi 5 boards a week with plans to scale up to as many as 90,000 units per week in the near future.

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton shared the promising news with Tom’s Hardware, along with the picture above, which he says he took during a recent factory visit. It shows dozens of panels filled with completed Raspberry Pi 5 boards that are about to be tested and packed for shipping. Each panel in the picture  contains nine individual Pi boards

Read more on Tom’s Hardware.

A Raspberry Pi Pico Ham transmitter #RaspberryPi @TomsHardware

Jon Dawson has created a Ham radio transmitter with a Raspberry Pi Pico. Dawson can transmit single-sideband, AM, FM, and even CW. It has a supported range of between 500 KHz and 30 MHz.

The software for this Raspberry Pi project was created from scratch by Dawson and is written in both Python and C++.

See the video below and more on Tom’s Hardware and GitHub.

What I learned from using a Raspberry Pi 5 as my main computer for two weeks #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi @ArsTechnica

Andrew Cunningham wanted to take another crack at trying to use a Pi as an everyday general-purpose desktop computer. The Raspberry Pi operating system has always included many of the tools needed to do this, including a lightweight desktop environment and web browser options.

To my surprise, the Pi actually did fine! Not great, but fine. I listened to music. I researched and wrote a few articles. I paid some bills. I installed Audacity (a nearly year-old version, but a functioning native app, at least) and edited, exported, and uploaded some podcasts with files with three or four audio tracks in them. I SSH’d into the Pi 4 as I configured it to take the place of my Pi 3 as a general-purpose network-service box. I bought a few things. I took a couple of Zoom calls. I chatted with friends and coworkers.

In other words, I did manage to use the Pi as a general-purpose multi-monitor computer, and I got by fine for a few days.

Check out his results in the article here.

The Building: An Installation at the Liberty Science Center #ArtTuesday

Leonardo Erlich has recreated a brownstone from his hometown of Brooklyn at Jersey City’s Liberty Science Center. The Building is an interactive installation that seems to flip gravity, allowing visitors to do their best Spider-Man impression. Here’s more from 6sqft:

Erlich’s The Building is a site-specific installment inspired by a New York City apartment buulding, complete with a deli on the ground floor. The art piece is an optical illusion, allowing visitors, or “spect-actors” as Erlich calls them, to hang off balconies and appear as if they are hovering high above the ground.

“Much of my work, including the Bâtiment series—and, by extension, The Building —finds its basis in questions I have about the way we perceive reality,” Erlich said in a statement. “I’m excited to be showing this piece at the Liberty Science Center, because art, the way I conceive of it, exists to pose questions about our understanding of the world; in many ways science achieves what we know it to the same way — by asking those very same questions.”

See more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

u-blox using a Raspberry Pi to improve GNSS positioning services

uBlox has developed a how-to guide for the implementation of an open source system that uses a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B in combination with a Septentrio Module to obtain uBlox’s Pointperfect corrections for precise GNSS positioning.

PointPerfect is an advanced GNSS augmentation data service designed from the ground up to be accurate, reliable, and immediately available. The service answers the fast-growing demand for high precision GNSS solutions including autonomous vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), service robots, machinery automation, micro-mobility, and other advanced navigation applications. Emerging automotive applications include automated driving (AD) and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), lane-accurate navigation, and telematics.

Communications uses MQTT. ‘Glue Code’ is written in C++ that makes use of several libraries to integrate this service in the Raspberry Pi 4 + Mosaic-Go setup.

See more in the guide on GitHub.

HackSpace Magazine Issue 74: Best Maker Tech @HackSpaceMag @Raspberry_Pi

HackSpace Magazine Issue 74 – Best Maker Tech

This issue we present to you the best maker tech around – a superb selection of toys to delight, inspire and generally improve your making.

• 3D printing a selection of skulls (trust us – it’s for Science)
• Fight for your right to repair with the mighty Jude Pullen
• Explore weird and wonderful PCB substrates in KiCad
• Use an Arduino and a few peristaltic pumps to mix the perfect Long Island iced tea

Read more, download PDF, buy now, subscribe.

Free Pico W for subscribers and guaranteed Raspberry Pi 5 reservation

Running a Pi Under Water #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Tom’s Hardware shares how HZO waterproofed a Raspberry Pi.

Take most electronics, let alone bare circuit boards, drop them into water and they are destroyed forever. Some phones and smartwatches are water resistant, but you certainly wouldn’t expect a single-board computer to operate while submerged. At CES, a company called HZO demonstrated the effects of its waterproofing process by running a Raspberry Pi 4 in a tank of water, connecting it to both USB Type-C power and micro HDMI video out, which was going to a not-submerged monitor.

Read more.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

The Raspberry Pi 5 is a $80 Gaming Beast #piday #raspberrypi

The Pi 4 was, reportedly, pretty good at emulation; generally maxing out at N64 and Dreamcast. The Pi 5 ramps up the capabilities a few generations. Modern Vintage runs through emulation on Game Cube, Wii, PS2 and more.

4 years after the release of the Pi4, here comes the all-new Raspberry PI 5. This new iteration of the Raspberry Pi promises more power in a size that’s as compact as ever, while still keeping the price affordable. Powered by a quad-core Broadcom ARMV8 Cortex A76 processor clocked at 2.4 GHz, the Pi5 is claimed to be 250% faster than a Pi 4. In todays episode we take a closer look at the performance of the Pi 5 with modern emulators including Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast and more!

All tests were run with the Bookworm OS running RetroPie except for AetherSX2 which was run using Debian OS.

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

How to Check if You’re Running Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit or 64-bit @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

Raspberry Pi 2’s, and all Raspberry Pis before them, use a 32-bit processor, so they can only run a 32-bit operating system. Raspberry Pis that followed can run either a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. So if you’re using anything more recent than a Raspberry Pi 2, you may have forgotten what operating system you’re running. Here’s a simple way to determine your operating system from Pi My Life Up:

Not all software for the Raspberry Pi can run on both 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems. This means you might have to know what version of the operating system you are using on your system from time to time…. It is super simple if you are using a Raspberry Pi 2 or older, as they only have a 32-bit processor. Which means you will only be using the 32-bit release.

On the Raspberry Pi 3 and newer, you can run either a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. If you installed this operating system a few months ago, you may have forgotten which version you installed.

See more!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Neon Museum, Las Vegas #ArtTuesday

Las Vegas is defined by Neon Lights (or is it vice versa?). Great find from the Kids Should See This. Mellow virtual tour shared by Eric Minh Swenson Art:

The Neon Museum in Las Vegas is a vibrant rejuvenation of the city’s luminous relics and pop culture history. Born from the vividly named “Neon Boneyard,” the storage yard of the Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO), the gaudy neon glitz of the Las Vegas Strip eventually found refuge in this desert sanctuary after each was discarded along with the zeitgeist of bygone eras.

See more!

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Make your own LED Neon Signs:

• LED Neon Signs with NeoPixels

• Neon LED Signs

• LED Neon Selfie Spot

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Tech Noir Paintings from Taylor Schultek @ArtTuesday

Tech noir was coined by James Cameron, and used as a name for the club featured in the classic tech-noir film, The Terminator.  Taylor Schultek has brought tech noir into the 21st century with his painting series called Catlyst. Here’s more from JUXTAPOZ:

Drawing inspiration from 1960’s and 1970’s military defense research programs dealing with the exploration of both computer technology and psychic abilities, Taylor Schultek researched the early development of the internet, satellites and digital photography as well as parapsychological programs including MK Ultra and Project Stargate. Seeing that both sides of these government-funded programs essentially sought out the same results in different manners, the artist developed a world in which technology and the paranormal are interrelated…. Schultek has set these new paintings in a tech-noir world where the online realm is consuming the physical world.

See more!

Anne Eunson Knit a Fence

I was recently looking for a cardigan pattern on ravelry so of course hours later I found myself gobsmacked by Anne Eunson’s lace fence pattern and now I can’t stop wondering what else could be achieved with knitting. Anne’s imagination and skill are so inspiring! I mean, look at the size of those needles!

Don’t miss this Fiberchats interview with Anne on YouTube, follow Anne on instagram or read more about the project from KDD & Co

Learn how to hack the Brother KH-930e knitting machine in the Adafruit Learning System

Make a Plant with Plantarium

Flowingdata shared Plantarium, which allows users to create their own custom digital plants in browser. Check it out on GitHub too!

FlippyDrive FIRST LOOK! Solderless Modchip For GameCube! #piday #raspberrypi

Tiny optical drive emulator for the GameCube that lets you play games from an sd card. A custom pcb featuring a RP2040 chip. One particularly clever aspect is the origami-like ribbon cable used for installation.

FlippyDrive is the creation of ChrisPVille and Trevor Rudolph.

Video by Macho Nacho Producttions:

The Gamecube just got an all new Optical Drive Emulator, and it’s called the Flippy Drive! It’s unlike any optical drive emulator we’ve seen before because usually an ODE will replace the optical drive. In the case of the Flippy Drive, you can keep it! So you can play both your physical library of games and load them off of an SD card. Additionally instead of using Swiss, the team developed their own custom software called Cube Boot which has a User Interface with a beautiful looking aesthetic, almost like Nintnedo designed it themselves! Anyway, let’s take a look!

Learn more! You can see more details on Flippy Drive and from Tom’s Hardware

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Air Drums With the Raspberry Pi Pico @Raspberry_Pi #PiDay #RaspberryPi

No matter how good you are at air guitar, you’re never going to conjure the sound of an electric arpeggio without some sort of material. But imagine if you could. And imagine if we’re not talking about air guitar, but air drums? That’s just what Ang, Devin, and Kaiyuan have conjured up. Here’s more from Hackaday:

Drum kits are excellent fun and a terrific way to learn a sense of rhythm. They’re also huge and unwieldy. In contrast, air drums can be altogether more compact, if lacking the same impact as the real thing. In any case, students [Ang], [Devin] and [Kaiyuan] decided to build a set of air drums themselves for their ECE 4760 microcontroller class at Cornell.

As per the current crop of ECE4760 projects, the build relies on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller as the brains of the operation. The Pico is charged with reading the output of MPU6050 inertial measurement units mounted to a pair of drum sticks. The kick pedal itself simply uses a button instead.

See project!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

How to Send Data to AWS DynamoDB from Raspberry Pi Pico W #piday #raspberrypi

Handy guide from Mahmood M. Shilleh up on Hackster.io.

Learn how to send sensor data to AWS DynamoDB in MicroPython using the Pico W with IoT Core and MQTT. Harness the power of AWS!

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

Over the air firmware updates for Raspberry Pi Pico W #RaspberryPi #OTA #WiFi @usedbytes

picowota implements a bootloader for the Raspberry Pi Pico W which allows upload of program code over WiFi (Over The Air, OTA).

The easiest way to use it is to include the code repository as a submodule in the application which will update over WiFi.

There’s an example project using picowota at https://github.com/usedbytes/picowota_blink

See more on GitHub.

EJ HILL – BRAKE RUN HELIX #ArtTuesday #MassMocha

Art that can take you for a ride. This exhibit by EJ Hill at MassMocha explores amusement parks as an intersection of ideas. This piece required quite a bit of actual engineering and maker know how.

In the month and a half leading up to the exhibition, Hill designed and constructed seven new sculptural works in the gallery in collaboration with MASS MoCA’s fabrication team. Assembled using recycled wood sourced from MASS MoCA’s wood shop and recycled neon works from Lite Brite Neon, each piece formally references parts of roller coasters and embodies the artist’s investigation into structuring and engineering joy. Upon entering the space, visitors must navigate through and around these structures, in effect participating in a choreography of joy. Indeed, Hill accomplished this by commissioning dancers and performers to activate the sculptures on several occasions.

Runs for about another month! EJ Hill: Break Run Helix continues at MASS MoCA (1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, Massachusetts) through February 11. The exhibition was curated by Alexandra Foradas, curator of Visual Art at MASS MoCA.

For his first solo museum show and largest exhibition to date, EJ Hill has created a massive installation that incorporates freestanding sculptures, paintings, a stage for performances, and a rideable sculptural installation inspired by the form and function of roller coasters. Hill’s practice focuses on everyday experiences that intermingle public struggle, endurance, trauma, and joy, whether within athletics, religion, the American education system, or amusement parks.

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Skewing American Mythology with Hugh Hayden #ArtTuesday

Hugh Hayden’s work looks at American mythology from a new perspective. “Huff and Puff,” above, is a slanted replica of Henry David Thoreau’s home in Walden Pond, recalling digitally skewed work, Here’s more from COLOSSAL:

Permanently installed at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusettes, the small wooden cabin is a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s home at Walden Pond. Slanted a surreal 20 degrees, the building skews what’s typically thought of as a birthplace of American self-reliance, environmental consciousness, and capitalist critique.

“‘Huff and A Puff’ is about perspective, not only in terms of its physical experience but also conceptually, given that for some people, the world is not so easy to live in,” the artist says. Given its angled construction, the cabin would be uncomfortable, if not impossible, to occupy without bending or contorting one’s body to fit.

See more!

Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei Chieh #ArtTues @makery_

Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei Chieh was in residence from September to November at Bitwäscherei hackerspace in Zürich. During his residency, Shih Wei Chieh advanced his current research work on dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC), a photoelectrochemical system inspired by plant photosynthesis which, when exposed to light, generates electricity. Cells of this type are sometimes referred to as Grätzel cells, in reference to their designer, Michael Grätzel of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne.

Makery wanted to know more about his background and new projects.

My background was interactive design in the early 2000s, while Arduino, Max/MSP, puredata, vvvv and Unity were still new. So my training was actually design, not art, however my school didn’t train us to become designers, they let us do whatever was creative.

I was developing a project focused on embroidering circuits using conductive threads back in 2011. This choice was motivated in part by my decision to join a residency program in Oaxaca in 2013, a town renowned for its rich textile culture. During one of my open studio days, I had the pleasure of meeting Leo and Clarissa, the creative minds behind Bandui Lab. This dynamic couple specializes in cartoon and toy design. They invited me to collaborate on their initiative, which seeks to preserve Aztec ancient culture by transforming mythology and folk traditions into wooden action figures. This experience inspires me that art projects can do much more outside of white cubes or winning art awards and give real impact to social projects. I feel like this might be the reason why I developed a nomadic habit to work while traveling with DIY tools, in-between different international art networks beyond my island home in Taiwan.

Read more in the article and Q&A here.

Making a Raspberry Pi 5 USB-C Gadget #RaspberryPi #USB @Raspberry_Pi

Following on from an older post about setting up a Raspberry Pi 4 as a USB-C Gadget, Ben provides the steps to do the same for the latest Pi 5 running on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm.

Raspberry PiOS Bookworm was released at the same time as the Pi5. Bookwork moves from using dhcpcd as it’s default network controller to using NetworkManager.

NetworkManager uses the nmcli tool to configure different network interfaces.

Since we now have 2 possible interfaces depending if the ECM or RNDIS driver is used by the host machine to connect.

See the commands to get this going in the post here.