Issue #14 — Pneumatic

Hi everyone

It’s been a busy week – there’s been lots going on all over. We’ve had LinuxCon, including Eben’s keynote and the celebration marking 22 years since Linus Torvalds announced his “just a hobby” project and released the first version of the free operating system. We’ve also got an action packed newsletter of links for you.

On Tuesday evening Ben gave a presentation at the Geek2Geek Berlin Tech Talk event which focused on ‘Hardware Hacks’. Oddly, the event took place in a furniture showroom and he presented standing in front of a double bed. He explained the purpose of the Raspberry Pi, the Foundation’s intentions in education and the demonstrated the maker community’s achievements. Ben’s talk was followed by one from another Englishman, Sam Carlisle, who spoke passionately about Read/Write Society and the importance of device freedom, much of which related to the successes of the Raspberry Pi. Ben then gave the same talk again when he was prompted to speak at the Linux Works Group at youth club E-LOK where he continued to advocate the Pi and evangelise its importance in education. The slides are available here.

We found a particularly interesting project link this week – a keen father who built a pneumatic transport system for his kids to send their teeth directly to the tooth fairy. The link is below and includes a video, write-up and the code! We’ve also been closely following the tweets of Dave Akerman, who’s currently in Spain and has been sending more Pis in to space to take pictures of the Earth. Amazing stuff – we can’t get enough of it!

Ben & Ryan

Picture of the week

Eben Upton: Our goals for Raspberry Pi: programmable, fun, robust, cheap.

This week Eben spoke at LinuxCon, telling the Raspberry Pi story and expressed the motivation for the foundation starting up as well as showing examples of projects that came out of the maker community in the last 18 months.

News

• Eben's LinuxCon Keynote (raspberrypi.org)
  Eben's Raspberry Pi presentation at LinuxCon
• Google Creative Labs Launches 'Coder' (googlecreativelab.github.io)
  'Coder' turns the Raspberry Pi into a basic web development platform
• Raspberry Pi Lifts Premier Farnell (yorkshirepost.co.uk)
  Strong sales of the Raspberry Pi boosted half year sales at Farnell
• Arduino Compatible Add-On Board (geeky-gadgets.com)
  element14's chipKIT expansion board allows users to program Arduino applications
• NOOBS v1.3 Beta Testing (raspberrypi.org)
  Test the latest version of the NOOBS SD card image loader

Projects

• Machine to Transport Kids’ Teeth to the Tooth Fairy (makezine.com)
  A pneumatic transport system for kids to send teeth to the tooth fairy
• Moisture Sensor to Monitor Your Plants (adafruit.com)
  Building a moisture sensor you can monitor remotely or on an LCD screen
• Raspberry Pi and SQLite3 and a Web Server (desert-home.com)
  Some notes from the field, involving monitoring your home using SQLite and PHP
• Internet Controlled Cat Laser Toy (github.com)
  How to create a laser toy for your cat which is controlled over the web
• PiCon - GUI Configuration Manager (lifehacker.com)
  PiCon is a GUI for setting up the configuration of your Pi
• Back To The Future Doc Brown Costume (raspberrypi.org)
  Carl Monk explains how he made a BTTF style DeLorean Time Travel Display
• DIY Home Alarm System (medium.com)
  Convert a simple webcam to a digital peephole viewer with motion detection

Articles & more

• Electronics Weekly Visits the Pi Factory (raspberrypi.org)
  Video showing Pi production in action at the factory in Pencoed
• LOHAN Test Flight Launch (theregister.co.uk)
  Dave Akerman and the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator in Spain
• Take Over Your Robot House (theregister.co.uk)
  RaZberry snaps onto a Pi, capable of integrating a home automation network
• PiCube (digitalsignagetoday.com)
  New free Raspberry Pi based media player plays back full-HD video

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Contact & Submissions

This newsletter is curated by @ben_nuttall. Tweet links to @rpf_weekly or email weekly [at] raspberrypi.org