Tag Archives: Your Projects

What was your first Raspberry Pi project?

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Quick and simple blog post today: what was your first Raspberry Pi project? Or, if you’ve yet to enter the world of Raspberry Pi ownership, what would you like to do with your Raspberry Pi once you get one?

Answer in the comments below, or on Twitter using #MyFirstRaspberryPi. Photos aren’t necessary, but always welcome (of the project, not of, like, you and your mates in Ibiza circa 2001).

Share your story to receive ten imaginary house points (of absolutely no practical use, but immense emotional value) and a great sense of achievement looking at how far you’ve come.

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Citizen science traffic monitoring with Raspberry Pi

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Homes in Madrid, Dublin, Cardiff, Ljubljana, and Leuven are participating in the Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport (WeCount) project, a European Commission–funded research project investigating sustainable economic growth.

1,500 Raspberry Pi traffic sensors will be distributed to homes in the five cities to gather data on traffic conditions. Every hour, the devices will upload information to publically accessible cloud storage. The team behind WeCount says:

Following this approach, we will be able to quantify local road transport (cars, heavy goods vehicles, active travel modes, and speed), produce scientific knowledge in the field of mobility and environmental pollution, and co-design informed solutions to tackle a variety of road transport challenges.

“With air pollution being blamed for 500,000 premature deaths across the continent in 2018,” states a BBC News article about the project, “the experts running the survey hope their results can be used to make cities healthier places to live.” Says the WeCount team:

[T]he project will provide cost-effective data for local authorities, at a far greater temporal and spatial scale than what would be possible in classic traffic counting campaigns, thereby opening up new opportunities for transportation policy making and research.

Find more information about the WeCount project on the BBC News website and on the the CORDIS website.

Raspberry Pi makes the ideal brain

The small form factor and low cost of Raspberry Pi mean it’s the ideal brain for citizen science projects across the globe, including our own Raspberry Pi Oracle Weather Station.

Build Your Own weather station kit assembled

While the original Oracle Weather Station programme involved only school groups from across the world, we’ve published freely accessible online guides to building your own Raspberry Pi weather station, and to uploading weather data to the Initial State platform.

Penguin Watch

Another wonderful Raspberry Pi–powered citizen science project is Penguin Watch, which asks the public to, you guessed it, watch penguins. Time-lapse footage — obtained in the Antarctic by Raspberry Pi Camera Modules connected to Raspberry Pi Zeros — is uploaded to the Penguin Watch website, and anyone in the world can go online to highlight penguins in the footage, helping the research team to monitor the penguin population in these locations.

Setting up. Credit: Alasdair Davies, ZSL

Penguin Watch is highly addictive and it’s for a great cause, so be sure to check it out.

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TechWiser’s giant Raspberry Pi AirPod speaker (and more)

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YouTube is a haven for awesome Raspberry Pi projects, and we often spend time scanning through the platform’s wares for hidden gems. One such hidden gem is this video from TechWiser, in which they showcase some of their favourite Raspberry Pi projects:

Cool Raspberry Pi 4 Projects We Use At TechWiser

Here are some of the best projects we use at TechWiser office.

From installing PiHole in the office, to upgrading a cupboard with RFID recognition for keyless entry, TechWiser has the whole ‘incorporating Raspberry Pi into everything’ thing down to a fine art.

But it’s not all just about practicality. Does anyone really need a giant Apple AirPod? No. But, does the idea of a giant Apple AirPod sound cool? You betcha!

And their YouTube button that flashes whenever they earn a new subscriber is rather lovely too. I wonder if they noticed it flash when Raspberry Pi subscribed to their channel?

TechWiser’s YouTube channel contains a plethora of Raspberry Pi and tech tutorials and reviews, and you should definitely check them out.

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Connect your Raspberry Pi 4 to an iPad Pro

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Have you ever considered attaching your Raspberry Pi 4 to an Apple iPad Pro? How would you do it, and why would you want to? Here’s YouTuber Tech Craft to explain why Raspberry Pi 4 is their favourite iPad Pro accessory, and why you may want to consider using yours in the same way.

We’ve set the video to start at Tech Craft’s explanation.

My Favourite iPad Pro Accessory: The Raspberry Pi 4

The Raspberry Pi 4 is my favourite accessory to use with the iPad Pro. In this video, learn more about what the Pi can do, what gear you need to get running with one, how to connect it to your iPad and what you’ll find it useful for.

 

Having installed Raspbian on Raspberry Pi and configured the computer to use USB-C as an Ethernet connection (read Ben Hardill’s guide to find out how to do this), Tech Craft could select it as an Ethernet device in the iPad’s Settings menu.

So why would you want to connect your Raspberry Pi 4 to your iPad? For starters, using your iPad instead of a conventional HDMI monitor will free up desk space, and also allow you to edit your code on the move. And when you’ve connected the two devices like this, you don’t need a separate power lead for Raspberry Pi, because the iPad powers the computer. So this setup is perfect for train or plane journeys, or for that moment when your robot stops working at a Raspberry Jam, or for maker conventions.

You can also use Raspberry Pi as a bridge between your iPad and portable hard drive, for disk management.

Tech Craft uses the SSH client Blink to easily connect to their Raspberry Pi via its fixed IP address, and with Juno Connect, they connect to a running Jupyter instance on their Raspberry Pi to do data science work.

For more information on using Raspberry Pi with an iPad, make sure you watch the whole video. And, because you’re a lovely person, be sure to subscribe to Tech Craft for more videos, such as this one on how to connect wirelessly to your Raspberry Pi from any computer or tablet:

Mobile Raspberry Pi with ANY iPad. No USB-C needed.

Following on my from earlier video about pairing the Raspberry Pi 4 with the iPad Pro over USB-C, this video show how to pair any iPad (or iPhone, or Android tablet) with a Pi4 or a Pi3 over WiFi.

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Protect your veggies from hail with a Raspberry Pi Zero W

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Tired of losing vegetable crops to frequent summertime hail storms, Nick Rogness decided to build something to protect them. And the result is brilliant!

Digital Garden with hail protection

Tired of getting your garden destroyed by hail storms? I was, so I did something about it…maker style!

“I live in a part of the country where hail and severe weather are commonplace during the summer months,” Nick explains in his Hackster tutorial. “I was getting frustrated every year when my wife’s garden was get demolished by the nightly hail storms losing our entire haul of vegetable goodies!”

Nick drew up plans for a solution to his hail problem, incorporating liner actuators bolted to a 12ft × 12ft frame that surrounds the vegetable patch. When a storm is on the horizon, the actuators pull a heavy-duty tarp over the garden.

Nick connected two motor controllers to a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The Raspberry Pi then controls the actuators to pull the tarp, either when a manual rocker switch is flipped or when it’s told to do so via weather-controlled software.

“Software control of the garden was accomplished by using a Raspberry Pi and MQTT to communicate via Adafruit IO to reach the mobile app on my phone,” Nick explains. The whole build is powered by a 12V Marine deep-cycle battery that’s charged using a solar panel.

You can view the full tutorial on Hackster, including the code for the project.

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How to control multiple servo motors with Raspberry Pi

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In the latest Explaining Computers video, Christopher Barnatt explains how to use servo motors with Raspberry Pi. Using servos is a great introduction to the digital making side of computing; servos allow you to control the movement of all manner of project components with your Raspberry Pi and a motor controller attached to its GPIO pins.

Raspberry Pi Servo Motor Control

Control of SG90 servos in Python on a Raspberry Pi, including an explanation of PWM and how a servo differs from a motor. You can download the code from the video at: https://www.explainingcomputers.com/pi_servos_video.html The five-pack of SG90 servos used in this video was purchased on Amazon.co.uk here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H9VC698/ref=nosim?tag=explainin-21 with a similar product on Amazon.com here: https://amzn.to/2QHshx3 (affiliate links).

Servos and your Raspberry Pi

Christopher picked up his SG90 servo motors online, where you’ll find a variety of servo options. What type of servo you need depends on the project you want to create, so be sure to consider the weight and size of what you plan to move, and the speed at which you need to move it.

As the motor controller connects via GPIO, you can even use the tiny £5 Raspberry Pi Zero to control your servo, which makes adding movement to your projects an option even when you’re under tight space constraints.

Find out more

For other detailed computing videos, be sure to subscribe to the Explaining Computers YouTube channel.

And for more Raspberry Pi projects, check out the Raspberry Pi projects page.

Raspberry Pi projects PSA

We’re always looking for people to join our incredible community of translators to help us translate our free resources, including the free projects found on our projects page.

If you speak English and another language and would like to give a portion of your time to making our resources available to more people across the globe, sign up as a translator today.

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