Get in the spirit with this Christmas Resource Round-up from RaspberryPi.org.
It’s never too early for Christmas-themed resources — especially when you want to make the most of them in your school, Code Club or CoderDojo! So here’s the ever-wonderful Laura Sach with an introduction of our newest festive projects.
via RaspberryPi.org
Back in July, we collaborated with GCHQ to bring you two fantastic free resources: the first showed you how to build an OctaPi, a Raspberry Pi cluster computer. The second showed you how to use the cluster to learn about public key cryptography. Since then, we and GCHQ have been hard at work, and now we’re presenting two more exciting projects to make with your OctaPi!
These new free resources are at the Maker level of the Raspberry Pi Foundation Digital Making Curriculum — they are intended for learners with a fair amount of experience, introducing them to some intriguing new concepts.
Whilst both resources make use of the OctaPi in their final steps, you can work through the majority of the projects on any computer running Python 3.
Calculating Pi teaches you two ways of calculating the value of Pi with varying accuracy. Along the way, you’ll also learn how computers store numbers with a fractional part, why your computer can limit how accurate your calculation of Pi is, and how to distribute the calculation across the OctaPi cluster.
From rephus on instructables:
I recently moved from UK back to Spain to work remotely, and since then, I’ve been curious about how the weather is there, specially when talking with people on the other country. Is it raining today ? Is the sun gone already ?
To address that problem, I found a few live videos/webcams about london like earthtv or London Tower Bridge so I kept those videos on one of the tabs of my browser.
But, wouldn’t be cool to have it on a separate picture frame, always there, just like a normal picture, but live.
That’s why I built a slim picture frame from old recycled components. To see the Tower Bridge at day and at night.
Via Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A quest to help the systems software community work on very large supercomputers without having to actually test on them has spawned an affordable, scalable system using thousands of inexpensive Raspberry Pi nodes. It brings a powerful high-performance-computing testbed to system-software developers, researchers, and others who lack machine time on the world’s fastest supercomputers.
“It’s not like you can keep a petascale machine around for R&D work in scalable systems software,” said Gary Grider, leader of the High Performance Computing Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the Trinity supercomputer. “The Raspberry Pi modules let developers figure out how to write this software and get it to work reliably without having a dedicated testbed of the same size, which would cost a quarter billion dollars and use 25 megawatts of electricity.”
via Raspi.Tv
You’ve been left at home in charge of the laundry. It’s already washed and hanging out to dry on the line. But you were warned – on pain of death – to bring it in if it starts to rain. The trouble is, you’re totally into whatever it is you’re coding right now and you won’t even notice if it rains. You’ll be toast if it rains and the laundry gets wet. So which is it to be? Code or laundry? That was your choice – until now!
We’re going to use a simple raindrop sensor, a buzzer and a Pi to alert you when it rains. So you can get on with something useful instead of watching the weather.
You could also use an Arduino or Wemos, but a Pi will let us use GPIO Zero with Python and will be easier to extend later if we want to take it further (e.g. sending tweets etc.).
To get an alert when it starts to rain, we’re going to rig this sensor up to a Raspberry Pi and trigger a buzzer. You could also have it blink LEDs, send you an SMS or tweet a photo of the washing line and the sky. But we’re going with a buzzer for now.
See full project breakdown here!
From Average Man vs Raspberry Pi:
A quick tip for you today folks, to show you a few different ways to identify the Raspbian version you’re running on your Raspberry Pi.
I had to do a bit of troubleshooting recently as the latest version of Raspbian (Stretch) seemed to cause an issue with one of my SPI devices. My first step was to attempt to re-create the problem on an old version of Raspbian (Jessie), but I didn’t know which version each of my Pis were running.
After a few minutes of searching I found a range of different commands that all fetch information on your Raspbian version, and as always, I’m sharing what I learnt right here on my blog.
From poster rctho via Element 14 Raspberry Pi Community
I needed to extend the wifi range of my router with a minimal footprint in my apt. I didn’t want more peripherals plugged in all over my apt. I used a RPi0w for the wifi repeater and jammed it into a two gang receptacle box. Two usb ports (one is for console connection) and kill switch, or reset button in case the computer hangs. The console connection will also power the Pi in case the power goes out.
First i had to attach the antenna. I found tutorials online that looked easy enough at first but the pics were scaled about 1000% of the pi’s actual size. When i looked at the board and the size of the components i had to re-solder on, i was quickly discouraged. It doesn’t look the greatest, but it got it done and it works. That’s what matters.
Next i cut all the cords to size then soldered on the usb, micro usb, and pinout thingy. I used shrink tube and hot glue so that no wires are exposed. I used the internal circuit from a standard 5v transformer/ regulator commonly used to recharge a cell phone to hardwire the pi to my apt. it will act the same as if i plugged it in.
I used Leviton Qickports for the wall plate. two ports i drilled holes in for both the external antenna and reset button. Got all my components together. Time to assemble.
See full project breakdown here!
