Tag Archives: Video

Guest post from DesignSpark: Oxford Raspberry Jam

via Raspberry Pi

Here’s a guest post from our friend Pete Wood at RS Component’s community arm, DesignSpark. Pete is one of the organisers of the Oxford Raspberry Jams. This post was first published at www.designspark.com.

Raspberry Jams are now being held all over the world; I’ve been trying to go to about one a month, and am lucky enough to be in Tokyo for some press and meetings while the Tokyo Jam is on later this month. There’s a list of events in each month’s MagPi, and if you’re looking for something near you, it’s worth checking the events page on our forums. If you can’t find a Jam near your home, why not look into setting one up? There’s information on how to get started at the Raspberry Jam website, which Alan O’Donohoe tells me will be getting a redesign in the coming months.

Over to Pete!

This month’s Jam held at DesignSpark HQ in Oxford UK was our biggest turnout yet, with over 30 Pi Geeks crammed into the room!

Raspberry Pi Camera

I kicked off the event by showing the new Raspberry Pi camera module, which will be available from RS Components later in May. In the picture is a pre-production module, the production version is a couple of millimetres taller. The camera gives stunning HD video from a 5MP sensor at 30 FPS.

Digital Signage

Next up was one of my RS colleagues, Pete Milne, who showed us his Digital Signage application. Pete has connected up a network of Raspberry Pis to flat screen TVs here at the RS Oxford Offices and at our main facility in Corby, Northamptonshire. The Pis run a libreoffice slideshow in a continuous loop and display Health and Safety messages for RS employees. He’s been running these continuously for over 8 weeks without having to re-boot, so it’s very robust. The Pis runs without a keyboard or mouse and the content can be updated remotely over the network.

If you want to create your own Digital Signage Application, Pete has shared how to do it on GitHub. Just follow the INSTALL file for setup details.

Wii Controller Car

Oxford Raspberry Jam regular Alex Eames presented another cool little project using a Wii controller and Nunchuck. This one was for controlling a remote control car that has an on-board Raspberry Pi with Bluetooth dongle. It also allows the control of brake lights, headlights and indicators and also drives an aircraft propeller. Alex plans to build all this into the car itself, which would need to accommodate the Pi, the electronics hanging of the GPIO, some model aircraft batteries and the motor and fan. Alex, I think you need a bigger car… how about a Monster Truck?

You can read more about Alex’s project on his blog.

Giant Video Wall

Our next demo was one that has been featured on the Raspberry Pi site a few weeks ago for a Raspberry Pi powered video wall. Alex and Colin from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) have built this system in C and some Python Code. It has clever features like bezel compensation to accommodate different styles of screens. They showed a 4 screen setup, but have also run a 9+4 configuration. The software is scalable to any size or shape. Each screen needs a Pi, and one separate Pi is used as the master. This is a classic example showing that you can build your own video wall for a fraction of the price of a commercial solution that would certainly cost a lot more! Chaps, I can see a business opportunity here for screening big screen sporting events on a budget down my local pub. ;0) They expect to licence the software/design at some point. More details are available on their website.

Motion Detected Camera

Another Oxford Jam regular, Dave R, showed his Pi with a webcam motion detection system and linked to a DSLR. Dave created this for his bird table, to capture pictures of birds when they land on the table, I think I need to build a similar solution to stop my kids from stealing my Haribos…

Touch Screen Display

Paul had two projects to show. The first was a simple touch screen for the Pi to allow control and display. Paul was reading and displaying temperatures. The screens are semi-intelligent, storing screen images and having a sound output available. The screen images are loaded via a Windows app and USB connection. The Pi can then control the display of those images.

Sky Remote Controlled LED Lighting

The second demonstration was a programmable LED strip and infrared receiver, controlled by a Sky TV remote control. A simple Python script reads the codes from a remote control. He could the use this to flash the LEDs in various patterns and colours. The LEDs are driven by SPI and can be daisychained up to 1024 LEDs.

ChiPhone

Paul M and Annierei L, showed us their ChiPhone box. ChiPi is an Electronic messaging system for children allowing them to send and receive voice messages. They have designed a child friendly box with large buttons and microphone. With simple record and ‘To/play’ buttons it makes for an easy messaging system connected to the internet via WiFi. You can find out more about their project on their website.

Pi Keyword Cruncher

Pi Jam regular and Data Geek John finished off our live demos by showing us his Pi based RSS feed collector and keyword analysis tool. The Pi collects data from various RSS feeds every 30 minutes and stores the results in a MySQL database. The data is then used to monitor trends in keywords, which over time show either peaks of activity or trends of ‘chatter’ about specific topics. The advantage of John using his Raspberry Pi Instead of his 50W laptop, is that it the Pi only takes 2W and can be left on all the time. It also frees up his laptop to do other tasks.

RaspBMC Toddler In-Car Entertainment System

The final presentation of the evening from one of my Jam co-hosts Alex Gibson, who in true Hollywood awards winners style couldn’t attend in person so sent a video message! Alex’s video featured his project for a Pi based RaspBMC In-Car Toddler entertainment system. One of the most impressive bits was a headrest bracket he had printed out on his Raspberry Pi-based 3D printer.

Thanks to all those who showed their projects. Looking forward to the next event!

We have loads more excellent Raspberry Pi content on DesignSpark, check out our Raspberry Pi Design Centre.

Let’s go german with Arduino video Tutorials – auch auf Deutsch

via Arduino Blog

Arduino Esplora Video Tutorial

(Den Text auf Deutsch findet Ihr weiter unten)

Today we are announcing the first of a series of video tutorials in german created in collaboration with our friend Max, founder of MaxTechTV and published on Arduino channel on Youtube.

The tutorial of this month explains how to turn your Arduino Esplora into a customized computer gamepad to play any of your videogames. And it’s just the beginning to start the real fun of personalizing the controller: what about configuring it to start a special weapon with a shout using the microphone, included in the board? The options are endless! (here’s the tutorial in english)

For this example we configured the code to be suitable for SuperTuxKart, an open-source racing game we love to play during our breaks!

Enjoy the video below and share with us your new projects made with Esplora, or other Arduino boards, joining our official Flickr Group.

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Wir freuen uns heute das erste Video einer Reihe von Videotutorials auf deutsch veröffentlichen zu können. Die Tutorials werden in Zusammenarbeit mit unserem Freund Max, Gründer von MaxTechTV produziert und auf dem Arduino YouTube-Kanal veröffentlicht .

Das Tutorial des Monats April erklärt wie man den Arduino Esplora  in ein individuelles Gamepad für den Computer verwandeln kann, um jedes beliebige Videospiel damit zu steuern. Und das ist nur eine von vielen tollen Möglichkeiten den Controller zu personalisieren und anzupassen: Wie wäre es das eingebaute Mikrofon zu nutzen, um über einen Sprachbefehl eine ‘Special Weapon’ abzufeuern ? Die Möglichkeiten sind endlos! (Hier das Tutorial auf Englisch)

Für dieses Beispiel haben wir den Code angepasst, um damit das open-source Spiel SuperTuxKart zu steuern, ein Rennspiel, das wir auch gern mal in unseren Pausen spielen.
Viel Spaß mit dem Video! Ihr könnt Eure Projekte mit dem Esplora oder einem anderen Arduino Board in unserer offiziellen Flickr Gruppe teilen.

 

————————————————- Ankündigung

Du sprichst deutsch und möchtest uns dabei unterstützen einen Teil der Arduino Dokumentation in deine Sprache zu übersetzen? Wir haben schon angefangen und hier kann man unseren Fortschritt beobachten: http://arduino.cc/de/Main/Products.

Wenn Du uns helfen willst, schreibe Max (max @ maxtechtv.de) und er wird Dir erklären wie Du in das Gemeinschafts-Übersetzungsprojekt eingebunden werden kannst. Danke!

 

Equipping teens with hands-on approach to robots

via Arduino Blog

frank magazu

 

Hello, I am Frank Magazu. I am 16 years old and go to school in Pasco, Florida. I make robots with the Arduino and got interviewed by my school district. Here is a video of me. Thanks for helping me become proficient at robotics as well as electronics and programing in general.

Thank you Frank! You made our day with your email. Keep up with the great work you and your professor are doing to inspire more people in getting involved in diy robots.

 

Ambilight-alike

via Raspberry Pi

Watch the video first. We’ll talk about it under the jump.

So, then. Philips have this lovely (and expensive) technology called Ambilight, which extends the lighting environment of what you’re watching on TV into your living room. It’s better watched than described, so if you haven’t hit play on the video above yet, please do!

I saw one of the original demos of this at CES a few years ago. It’s now consumer technology that you can buy in your local department store, and it’s a really impressive, and surprisingly immersive and effective piece of technology. But if, like me, you’re not in a hurry to replace the TV you spent a packet on, you’ll have made a sad decision to live without the flashing neon of CSI inveigling its way into the corners of your living room; and the fires of R’hllor, the Red God, will make no impression on your ceilings. Because this stuff costs money, and we’re all much too busy spending that on new binocular microscopes.

Oscar Andersson has made a Raspberry Pi-powered ambient lighting fix which I can’t distinguish from the Philips product – as you’ll see from the video above, it’s a lovely piece of work, and most importantly, it’s very affordable. You’ll find more pictures, more video and build instructions, using Adafruit’s Occidentalis distro (which is all about the hardware hacking) at Oscar’s Facebook page.

So many projects, so little time. This is the third thing I’ve blogged or stuck on Facebook this week that I want to make. Let us know if you make your own version – we’d love to hear how you get on! (Incidentally, the day someone makes a video demo that doesn’t reference Avatar is the day we at the Foundation cheer up dramatically.)

 

Video wall

via Raspberry Pi

“What’s innovative about a video wall?” I hear you cry. “We’ve all seen them. Big…walls of video. Been done for years.”

We’ve said many times that the single most innovative thing about the Raspberry Pi is its price. $25 or $35 gets you something that would have cost you four or five times that amount before the Pi arrived on the market. This means that you can save large sums of money in some applications, especially in applications where you need to buy a lot of separate devices. A video wall requires one device per screen, and another to drive them all together. I’ve seen video wall solutions being run with all kinds of devices at the back end; previously one of the cheapest ways to do this was to buy a Playstation for each of your screens – obviously a much more expensive (and power-hungry – you’re spinning a lot of hard drives all day to get the result you want) way to get what you’re after.

Plus, of course, our HD video capability’s really great.

So Alex Goodyear at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy has put together a really elegant video wall, supported by a group of Raspberry Pis. Energy consumption and cost are both reduced enormously, making video walls like this much more accessible to enterprises which don’t have huge funds, like museums, schools, shops, galleries and offices.

You can use different sizes and orientations of screen in the same set-up here; you can use the screens to show one large moving image or many small ones; you can display static content like photos or web pages alongside moving content on the same wall.

Read more about what Alex has come up with at CCFE – we’re looking forward to seeing more of these in the wild!

How to make something like “Makey Makey” using Arduino

via Arduino Blog

Makey Makey with Arduino

Many people asked Alpesh Vitha how to create something like Makey Makey using Arduino and he created this cool video, together with Mowgli, to share with all of us how to use an Arduino Leonardo to accomplish the task. He lives in Kolkata and  runs a company called “Inventify” to popularize Arduino and science in Indian schools especially those with less resources. Enjoy the video tutorial !

 

 

 

Make a voice call with Arduino Gsm Shield & more examples!

via Arduino Blog

Arduino Gsm Shield

Some days ago we launched our new product, the Arduino Gsm Shield, together with an intro video explaining how to make the first steps into the creation of interaction with it.
Today we’re publishing another video with a second step-by-step tutorial by David:

 

 

And we want to share some more because last year at the Malmo University K3 during the second year in Interaction Design BA, David Cuartielles and Tony Olsson run a course where students had to work on a project with state of the art of technology using wireless communication as a main mode of operation.

As one of the tools, 30 students could experiment with early prototypes of the GSM shield  and they came out with different projects and ideas.  Here you can see one of the proposals that made it to the finals at a M2M contest arranged in Sweden by Tele2.

 

  • “Personal Safety” By: Cathrin Malmqvist & Karin Danielsson


We wanted to re-design the weareble safety alarms to make them more smooth, mobile and invisible. The idea is to apply the features of the safety alarm to something familiar like your watch or bracelet. The prototype is built with Arduino with a GSM-shield, an accelerometer, speakers and a microphone

Concept:

 

Working prototype:

 

 

Time lapse video, for art and for science

via Raspberry Pi

Dave Hunt (a familiar name in these parts) has been working on perfecting his Raspberry Pi-controlled camera time lapse rig. Before I go into any more detail, here’s some absolutely stupendous video resulting from his work on the setup. (I recommend you use HD when viewing this – and watch the video in a full-screen setting if you can.)

We’ve featured a few projects here which use the Pi to create time-lapse video, but Dave’s is the most sophisticated we’ve seen yet, adding features like a heater to evaporate dew from the lens and an ability to film rising or falling sequences. There are some great pictures documenting the build at his blog (we’re very impressed by the neatness of the construction work), along with some circuit diagrams and the Python you’ll need to create your own rig. Visit Dave’s site for a tutorial and discussion about construction.

We’re very encouraged to see so many artists using the Pi, in so many different ways; there have been a number of art installations featured here, and it’s really great to see the Pi driving the tools needed to create beautiful things. Computing is as much a creative discipline as it is a scientific one – that’s a message we at the Foundation are very keen to get through to kids, but it’s not one we’re seeing reflected in schools.

Science can be beautiful too, though. Over in the United States, SaratogaWeather has been using a static camera controlled by a Pi to take time-lapse video of the weather patterns over Mount Timpanogos, Utah. Dynamic systems like the formation of clouds are hard to appreciate and study at real-time speeds: but speed things up a bit, and patterns and structures become evident and much easier to analyse.

There’s a whole channel full of these videos, and cloud geeks like me will have great fun with them. I irritated everyone around by shouting “CAP AND BANNER!” at the top of my voice when I spotted one in another of these videos. (Once I nearly made Eben crash the car by screaming “Stop! KELVIN HELMHOLTZ!” while we were travelling at speed down the A14. I blame hanging out with fluid dynamicists. Kelvin Helmholtz instability produces a great and rather rare cloud formation, though – I’m still proud to have spotted one.)

What applications would you like to see time-lapse cameras being used for? Are you working on something yourself? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Raspberry Pi on CNN, Thursday 7pm GMT

via Raspberry Pi

We spent a few days with a camera crew from CNN last month, both here in Cambridge and at the factory in Wales. The bits of film they recorded and showed us while we were with them looked fantastic, and I’ve just been sent this trailer for the broadcast, which will be on Thursday: as you’ll see, it’s very polished, and we’re very excited about what the final result will look like. The piece will go into greater depth than previous CNN segments about the Pi, and it’ll give you a much better look at the factory operations than you’ve had before.

The film will be going out as part of Quest Means Business on Thursday evening, which begins at 7pm GMT. (That’s 8pm CET.) We hope you get time to watch it around your busy mince pie schedules!

CNN International is available in the UK on channels Sky 506, Virgin Media 607, Freesat 207 and TalkTalk 506.

Arduino: creation is child’s play [Wired Italia]

via Arduino Blog

Have a look at this wonderfully handcrafted 20-min webumentary about Arduino, made by Opificio Ciclope and produced by Wired Italia.

Nice format and nice look: good job.

The core of our story is the life of Massimo Banzi, and the region in which he was born: the Canavese area. In particular, the city of Ivrea, a veritable Mecca of Italian informatics, where Olivetti had its headquarters. The more we discovered their world, the more it became clear that this story was not only about silicon and circuits: it was about their shared excitement and their curiosity, like kids playing with their favorite toy.

(BTW, Massimo is not from Ivrea, but I guess Ivrea’s Mayor is going to give him and the Arduino Team the honorary citizenship)

via [Wired Italia]