Feature

10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

TEN AMAZING
RASPBERRY PI
PROJECTS

The 25 computer is celebrating its rst

anniversary heres to a years worth of
magnicent, unique and exciting achievements
As portable computing
goes, the Raspberry Pi
could hardly be bettered.
Small enough to slip inside a
pocket, it can go anywhere
and everywhere with you. Yet
to use the Pi as a standard
Linux machine kind of misses the point or, at
the very least, the opportunities afforded by
this small-form-factor, high-spec wonder.
Over the past year, this inexpensive
machine, produced as an educational
plaything, has taken centre stage for a

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whole host of projects. Some have satised

a craving for fun; others for exploration and
indulgence. More still have satised the
current trend for performing real-world
tasks at the lowest possible price. The Pi
is the recession buster with the potential
to empower a future generation (as one
schoolboy emphatically showed).
Here we present ten of those projects.
Each of them, we believe, encapsulates all
that is good about the Pi, making great use
of two things: the machine itself, with its
tiny credit card size; but above all, the bold

imagination of the creators. And the balls

to keep going to realise those dreams, of
course, but that would be three things.
Over the next few pages, the creators of
these projects talk us through their projects.
You will nd the majority of the source code
on our cover disc and we'll also tell you where
you can nd tutorial instructions, where
available, to allow you to replicate them. But
more than all of this, we hope it provides you
with inspiration for your own projects. You
never know you may see your creation here
in a year's time.

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birthday
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feature

sPecial

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Feature

10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

The Raspberry Pi
Supercomputer
Take some Lego and 64
Pis for a delicious slice of
processing power

With 64 raspberry pis

and more than 1,000
pieces of lego, this is
a supercomputer in
more ways than one

Since the ultimate aim of the Raspberry Pi is to encourage

children to experiment with computers and understand their
inner joy, the supercomputer project built by computational
engineers at the University of Southampton could not be a
better example of the magical things being done with this
miniature marvel.
The creation by Professor Simon Cox and his team cost
less than 2,500 to build, excluding the switches, but it also
had a special ingredient: Prof Coxs six-year-old son, James.
It was while playing around with a Pi with his son that the
supercomputer expert decided it would be an interesting
experiment to buy 64 of the machines and produce
something rather spectacular. And it was the young boy who
provided specialist support on Lego and system testing,
providing an eye-catching aspect to the entire project.

The supercomputer
runs raspbian oS,
which is based on
Debian and optimised
for raspberry pi

Maker profile: Prof Simon Cox

Simon Cox is professor of Computational Methods at
the University of Southampton. His research is about
applying and developing high-performance computing and
big data to tackle problems in science and engineering.
The university of has a powerful 12,000-core intel-based
supercomputer which cost millions of pounds.

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There is 1TB of Class 10

SD card memory on
iridis-pi, which is named
after the University of
Southamptons 12,000-core
iridis supercomputer

it has 192W total electric

power draw, ~4 Gflops
of CpU power and ~1500
Gflops of GpU graphics
compute power

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The thing about the raspberry

pi is that suddenly things can
be done that come within the
budget of a school so you could
actually have term-long projects
and a whole class involved

lego features highly in the project, but so does research.

although the supercomputer uses an ordinary downloadable
system image from the raspberry pi website, the performance
and various other parts of the rmware and drivers have been
improved by a factor of 50 or more

Running off a single 13 amp mains socket and using MPI

to communicate between nodes using Ethernet, it offers a
staggering amount of power when you consider the low cost.
Prof Cox had been impressed straight away by how great
the Pi was for playing around with electronics using the GPIO
connectors. The fact you could turn LEDs on and off and

link a little Python computer program to a bar graph LED

caught the imagination of myself and my son who built a
Lego case for it, he tells us.
So he waited for a large supply of Pis to became available.
We then had to decide on the network switches. My
background researching supercomputers and IT meant I
knew you could spend a lot of money on switches. We begged,
stole and borrowed some old switches that were being
decommissioned from our computing service, which meant
we could link them together. I got some power over Ethernet
switches from another project I was working on.
James used his design skills to build the racking out of
little plastic bricks before testing it using Python and Scratch.
But one of the most time-consuming processes was getting
all of the images set up. Prof Cox found it was one thing to
download one image on to one SD card, but quite another
doing 64 of them.
The Pi, for the rst time, has meant you can assemble a
supercomputer for a couple of thousand of pounds. And if you
take just four of the units, suddenly you are at 100 and that
means that large-scale supercomputing, or the principle of it,
can be seen in schools. That's very special.

The project
started when prof
Simon Cox and his
son, James, began to
play with a pi

TrY iT YoUrSelf
The Kit:

64 raspberry pis Model B/256MB = 1,475.20

64 kingston Ultimate X 16GB Class 10
(SD10G2/16GB) = 622.72
64 metres of CaT 5e (misc colours) = 90.88
64 micro-USB power supply adaptors, UK, 1.2A
= 244.48
Since the drivers for the pi's video card are open source,
the potential to use that video chip for processing opens up
24 gigaops of general-purpose computer performance

The Knowhow:

www.soton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi

Plus items that were in the lab:

3 Netgear ProSafe 24-port smart

switches with poe / 192W total 4 Sfp
(GS724Tp) = 269.99 each
DrayTek Vigor 2820N router
keyboard
Monitor
Mouse
HDMI-to-monitor cable
3 CaT 5e cables to connect the
switches together

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Feature

10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

Picade
arcade
cabinet
No need to stand

around in arcades
bring the action
to your home
Games have often been said to be a key driver of technology
and so we were extremely excited to see the Picade project
when it emerged on Kickstarter. Created by Jonathan
Williamson and Paul Beech, it looks like a mini, retro-style
cabinet and comes in kit form. All people need is a screwdriver,
a pair of pliers and an hour of time to put it together.
The idea had been in our heads for a while, says Jonathan.
Paul and I have been through a number of startups and we
had frequently seen a JAMMA cabinet in the office. It seemed
the thing to have. We thought that only people with too much
money or time on their hands were getting enjoyment out of
them, so we decided it would be good to build one ourselves.
The pair have been interested in technology for a long time
and the Picade has been an accumulation of knowledge. From
reading about joysticks to monitors, all of those ideas have
come together. Weve also benefited from Kickstarter and
globalisation, says Paul. Having the Pi was amazing.
As if to underline just how the project has turned heads, Ian
Stewart, the founder of Sheffields Gremlin Graphics a games

There are those little specialist

niche markets. The raspberry pi lets
you do things which were previously
very expensive if you are prepared to
get your hands dirty and hack a bit
Maker profile: Jonathan Williamson and Paul Beech
paul is a designer, hacker and maker. He designed the
raspberry pi logo and is the brand and design lead for
the foundation. Jon is a software guy and electronics
hobbyist. He is the co-founder and technical lead for
Netcopy (a digital archiving solution).

22 www.linuxuser.co.uk

n Ian Stewart from Gremlin Graphics stepped forward and

allowed his old games to be available on the Picade

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Jon and paul say

the exciting stuff with
the pi is 3D and new
games like Minecraft

There is no prot margin on this project. It is

something the pair just wanted to build

developer big in the Eighties and early Nineties has allowed

the use of the rms old-school games. This means we can
provide a games machine that can be used straight away, says
Paul. And when you look at the Pi Store, the Picade suddenly
becomes a great way to play legal games.
Jonathan is excited about the future. Its the 3D games
which I am loving, he enthuses. It will show off the Pi as a
great gaming machine. However, there have been some
problems encountered by the pair. Screens, says Paul. There
are tons of models out there and some of these are 3mm in
width. You cant believe how thin they are. We had to look at
how easy they are to mount, and separating wheat from the
chaff. There is always a delay in stock too and we have to get
on with other stuff while waiting for things to appear. Trying to
get quality parts on time is difcult. A lot of components have
to come from the East, such as arcade joysticks. But its been
brilliant to work on.

TrY iT YoUrSelf

The creators noticed

lots of startups had
JaMMa cabinets in
the break room and
associated them with
people with a lot of
money. picade opens up
cabinets to the masses

finding quality parts

was hard. a lot of
components had to come
from the far east

Getting a quality screen

was important for Jon
and Paul. Delays in stock
caused problems

Both paul and Jon have

accumulated knowledge
of items from joysticks to
monitors following years
of reading and research

The Kit:

Cabinet panels and fasteners

lCD panel mount with protective overlay
lCD panel and driver board with inputs (at least 8 for the picade
Mini and 12 for the picade)
Amplier and speakers
3.5mm stereo panel-mounted headphone socket
Panel-mounted video input socket (allows you to use your Picade
as a second display for your computer or laptop)
A proper arcade stick
illuminated microswitch arcade buttons (at least 4 on the picade
Mini and 6 on the picade)
all other required components and cables
The Knowhow: www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/picadethe-arcade-cabinet-kit-for-your-raspberry-p

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10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

Maker:
Tom reeS

Lego remotecontrolled car

A Pi-powered
self-contained
remote-controlled
car guided by an
Xbox controller

Very often what you didnt have in your

childhood inspires you in adulthood. That was
the case with the Lego remote-controlled car
created by Tom Rees using the Raspberry Pi.
Having always wanted a remote-controlled car
when he was young, the desire never left him.
And thanks to the power of the Pi, he was
also able to go one better. Rather than build
something controlled on a long tether to a
computer or via Wi-Fi from a laptop, Tom could
integrate the computer into the car itself. This
means it became a real remote-controlled car
comprising just the vehicle and the controller.
The original plan was to build an RC Lego
DeLorean, but all he could produce was an
ugly white box. He then came up with different
prototypes, most of which looked nothing like
a car and were essentially motors, servos and
LEDs attached to Technic towers. I remember
the very rst thing I built was a pair of LEDs
which were turned on and off by the Xbox
controller, he says. Its important to begin

The steering is
controlled via a hightorque 180-degree
Towerpro servo and a
lego gear is attached
with superglue

Tom wanted a simple

and robust chassis
design, so Technic
clip joints and axles
are used through
everything. Servos
and motors need
to be held together
tightly and two
motors are required

with the simplest possible proof-of-concept to

show all parts of the system working.
To even begin to prototype, jumper wires,
breadboards, a multimeter and lots of batteries
were needed, plus a selection of resistors,
capacitors, LEDs and a soldering iron. Once
Tom had all the necessary supplies, he just
decided to dive in. He learned as he went along.
I had plenty of disasters, he admits. The
cheap inductors I used in the 5V power regulator

i think the thing that has really encouraged me is

if you actually look at the number of these things
where the pi is a tool, it is not the pi that is really the
hit, it is the thing around it that is really the piece of
inventive genius
The car is controlled via a wireless
Xbox 360 controller. Software on the
pi translates the controller buttons
into motor speed, motor direction
and steering rotation

all the hardware lives on

the car. There is no need for a
laptop issuing commands over
Wi-fi. This is the simple chassis

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although Tom says he

could go on for years
building larger and
more complex vehicles
with increased power,
four-wheel drive,
weaponry, cameras,
caterpillar treads,
he is keen to invent
something new

Tom suffered dodgy

5V regulators
and overloaded
components. He
also found that the
cheap micro-USB
cable going into the
pi could barely carry
half an amp and had
to be replaced

kept catching re because the Pi consumes

so much current. Smoke pouring out of the
Lego Technic holes is pretty terrifying.
Trickiest of all was powering the electronics
aboard the car. The Raspberry Pi has strict
tolerances on its 5V input, and it will consume
well over 1 amp when the Microsoft USB
peripheral is attached, he says. But he is more
than pleased with the result.
Most stunning has been the reaction to
this project. I knew I wanted to do something
original with my Pi, to push the envelope very
slightly, and be a little more imaginative than
another internet-controlled LEDs project. Its
seen a great reaction and Im very pleased to
see some projects inspired by this one.
extra electronics
are needed on top
of the lego and the
raspberry pi. The
Cobbler breakout
kit from adafruit
broke out the
power, Gpio, i2C
and Spi pins from
the 26-pin header
onto a solderless
breadboard

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Light painting
with the Pi
Artistic images that
simply astound are
possible with the
power of Pi
There is seldom a more stunning effect than
light painting. It uses long exposure times with
lights in motion to produce amazing images.
When Phil Burgess wanted to produce a
machine that could create effective artistic
images, he had a hunch that the Raspberry Pi
would be able to streamline the process, not
least because of the memory it could provide
for the project.
The concept had been stewing for months,
but no existing device made for a really
satisfactory solution, Phil says, and by that
he meant something that could be shared
and easily built by others. The open source
electronic prototyping platform Arduino
was considered and Phil says it could
handle the core task but it requires a ton of
The bike. Other than having

the basic concept already, there

was no planning: Phil just went
straight into implementation,
which took about two days

an arduino could handle the core task, but required a ton of preprocessing
and staging of the image data in ash storage. Another thought by Phil
was to use his laptop and fTDi chip, but that machine is rather precious to
him and he was not eager to strap it on a bike. The Pi was a middle ground
the horsepower and programming ease of the laptop, but the throwaway
inexpensive nature of it. As you can see, the results are astounding.

preprocessing and staging of the image data

in ash storage. The Pi could handle this and
because it is inexpensive, it got over the worry of
getting it damaged.
So far we have created the prototype, Phil
tells us. The next version will be smaller and
lighter with a proper battery pack. At the time I
was just scrambling among parts in the garage
and relied on an enormous camping inverter to
quickly solve the problem at hand. Things went
well too. All the hardware and software was
amazingly co-operative and everything fell into
place, Phil adds.
The trickiest part of the project was
the documentation. Explaining things as
concisely as possible, cleaning up the code to
be presentable, providing clear diagrams and
such is always hard, comments Phil. Good
documentation can elevate even a modest
project into something desirable, but no

amount of coolness in a project can cover for

a lousy explanation.
And there were other considerations. A
5V DC power supply was needed because
the LED strip draws so much more power
than the micro-USB connector can provide.
A 26-pin IDC cable was sacriced to create a
purpose-built cable between the Raspberry
Pi GPIO header, LED strip and power supply in
order to make the whole project more robust.
Phil also says Python warrants a mention:
My rst attempts at communicating with
the LED strip were in C, but if this project
was to be shared, C with makeles and extra
libraries and such would add complexity. In
48 hours, starting with zero Python exposure,
it was possible to get this not just working,
but actually pretty well optimised as I got a
better handle on the language. And its all in
one source le, easily shared.

TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit:

Phil just scrambled among parts in the

garage and relied on an enormous camping

inverter to get these effects

Raspberry Pi = 25
Adafruit Pi Cobbler breakout kit = $7.95
Digital RGB LED weatherproof strip 32 LED = $29.95
4-pin JST SM receptacle cable = $1.50
4-pin JST SM plug cable = $1.50
5V 10A switching power supply = $25
5V 2A (2000mA) switching power supply = $9.95
Female DC power adaptor: 2.1mm jack to screw terminal block = $2
Plus a bike and mounting hardware (PVC pipe, hula hoop, zip ties)
The Code: Weve included the code on the cover disc
The Knowhow: learn.adafruit.com/light-painting-withraspberry-pi

MAKER PROFILE:
Phil BurGeSS
a Californian living in the
San Francisco Bay area,
Phil Burgesss roots in
art and technology go
back many decades.
The light painting demo is the
latest in a progression of LED
projects inspired by artist/engineer
Bill Bell in the 1980s. Today Phil
develops kits and tutorials for
Adafruit Industries, a rm at the
centre of the open source and
maker movements.

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Feature

10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

the one-button
audio player

Music to a grandmas ears

its the easy-to-use audio player
Michael Clemenss idea for his Raspberry
Pi project came less out of hobbyism and
more out of a solution to a very personal
problem. His wifes grandmother is visually
impaired and the couple nd it difcult to
keep her entertained. Listening to television
is not ideal and she struggles to operate
her CD player.

TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit:

Raspberry Pi = 40
ModMyPi enclosure = 12
1 button = 2
2 resistors (330 ohm, 10 kilo-ohm) = few cents
1 blue LED = few cents
1 (slow) 8GB SD card = 8
Some wire = few cents
A pair of speakers he already had them, rough
cost about 30
The Code: Weve inluded the code on the disc
The Knowhow: blogs.fsfe.org/clemens/
2012/10/30/the-one-button-audiobook-player

With her 90th birthday approaching, Michael

sought a solution: to build an audiobook player
that was inexpensive and easy to operate, with
as few buttons as possible. It also needed to be
open source. The Raspberry Pi was the answer.
The idea came quick, but planning it
through and building it was kind of fragmented
because my work includes travelling, he
says. When I knew what I wanted, I soldered
the button and LED to a board that could be
connected via the GPIO pins and then I used
a little Python coding and conguration of
standard Linux software for the rest. Being no
good coder or expert in electronics, this was the
simplest way to achieve my goals.
The sound quality can crack when you play or
resume an MP3. But, Michael says, that is a
known problem in the Raspberry Pi community.
The quality of the device itself is quite solid,
but Im thinking about building a new, large
enclosure out of wood for the player together
with the speakers.

time-lapse photography
with Pysnap

The competition-winning CLI tool

created by a talented schoolboy
It was a contest for young programmers,
but few would have expected to see quality
of the type produced by 12-year-old Aaron
Hill, who ran away with rst prize in the
under-13 category.

TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit:

PySnap software
USB camera
The Code: Aarons code is on the disc
The Knowhow: www.raspberrypi.org/
archives/2544

26 www.linuxuser.co.uk

His success? Amazing software that turns a

Raspberry Pi computer into a time-lapse camera.
By connecting a USB camera to a Pi and running
the software, it is possible to ne-tune the
interval at which it takes pictures.
My aunt has a motion-sensing camera set
up in the woods near their hunting stand. That
triggered the idea, Aaron tells us. The rst
thing that I did was to nd out how I would get
the program to take the pictures I discovered a
command-line program called Streamer, which
was in the Debian and Ubuntu repos. I installed
it and, after playing around with it, decided that

The difcult part came in the automatic

mounting of the USB ash drive and the

process of deleting the old audiobook,
copying the new one and refreshing the
playlist of the music player daemon (MPD)
which Michael used to play the MP3s

As for how well the present was received,

Michael laughs. It was Christmas and she
was obviously confused about all the people
around her. On another day, we showed her
how to use it and she was very happy about it.

MAKER PROFILE:
miChael ClemenS
Fascinated by electronics and
mechanics from childhood, Michael
began work as an IT apprentice and
worked seven years as a UNIX and
database administrator before
becoming an IT security consultant.

MAKER PROFILE:
aaron hill
Aaron Hill is a 12-yearold schoolboy who
loves to program and
is very knowledgeable
about computers.

I would use it for my project. Next, I started

writing the actual code. I started off with just
adding the option to choose different time
intervals: seconds, minutes and hours. Later
I got the idea to allow taking of pictures on a
specic day, and a specic time.
One feature he initially liked but ended up
discarding was having the program print out
text one character at a time, instead of all at
once. The effect wasnt very noticeable with
a fast speed, and irritating to the user if it was
slower, he says. And although he didnt have
the GUI ready in time for the content, there was
enough to prove that Aaron was very much on
to a good thing.

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Pi-Face - the
digital interface

SPeciAL

The interface has

been designed to
take some abuse
since its targeted
at beginners

Let the Raspberry Pi be the

hub to your digital life
Being able to control the real world using a
computer is the sort of thing that we wanted
back in the mid-Eighties when watching
Back To The Future. There have been lots of
solutions for this issue, but none has been as
cost effective and wide open as the Pi-Face
Digital Interface created by scientists at
Manchester University.
Id been working on getting more people
interested in computing for a few years,
explains Dr Andrew Robinson, the brains
behind the device. I was really excited to hear
Raspberry Pi was coming along, but worried
that people wouldnt know what to do with it.
I saw the interface as a missing link, to allow
people to put the Raspberry Pi where they

The pi-face is credit

card sized and it
stacks on top of
raspberry pi. it
is buffered to
protect the pi
wouldnt put a PC and connect it up to the world.
So I designed Pi-Face to be ready for when the
Raspberry Pi came out, and planned some fun
activities like the twittering chicken.
The rst design was published on
15 December 2011 and the interface board is the
same size as the Raspberry Pi. It slots onto the
GPIO pins and has screw terminals so its very
easy to connect up switches to sense things and
lights/motors for the Raspberry Pi to control.
Its very easy to program in Scratch or Python
too. Its not just about the interface, either. The
project is also about creating the fun activities
and tutorials to support using the Raspberry Pi.
It took four prototypes to get right, says Dr
Robinson. The rst one has a yellow wire tacked

The interface and

software is being
used all over the
world for robots and
a central heating
controller, for example
on because a connection got missed. It was a
bit like the early Raspberry Pis that also had
bits of wire tacked on by hand.
Apart form that, it has all gone rather
smoothly, however. The interface has
been designed to take some abuse since
its targeted at beginners, he adds. Weve
connected things up wrongly a few times, but
so far not seen any smoke! On the workshop
side of things, the children have really loved
it. We have a harder time when we run the
workshops for teachers! Still weve learned
from it.
pi-face integrates with

existing tools already prevalent

in the classroom, such as
Scratch and python. a range of
class activities are planned

Maker profile:
dr andreW
roBinSon

TrY iT YoUrSelf
The hardware architecture was altered

during the project so that it would work with

mobiles (with android and USB oTG) and
desktop pCs too. it works with raspberry pi
through Spi, but also through USB

The Kit: pi-face is available complete from farnell for

20, which is cheaper than buying the parts separately
piregistration.element14.com/signup.html
The Knowhow:

pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm

andrew robinson can

trace his rst interest
in electronics back
to making a model
lighthouse aged ve.
at the University of Manchester,
andrew did a phD in low power
processor architectures (which
included looking at ways to make
ARM processors more efcient).
While working in the group andrew
became interested in public
engagement, to get more people
interested in Computer Science.

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10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects

Pi in the sky - 40km

high photography
A record-breaking balloon
mission records stunning
near-space photos
Its hard to say what is more amazing the
photographs taken high up in space or Dave
Akermans Raspberry Pi/webcam/GPS/
hydrogen balloon combination which enabled
him to capture such magnificent shots.
Not only are they believed to be the highest
ever photographs transmitted live from
an amateur device, the ability to thrust a
Raspberry Pi into space is an amazing feat.
And it barely took Dave any time at all to figure
out, making it all the more extraordinary.
The idea to combine the Pi and a weather
balloon came after I took delivery of the
Pi, he tells us. I ordered it just because I
was curious, and didnt really have any use
planned for it. By then Id been flying weather
balloons with Arduino trackers for about a

Im just about
young enough to
be a space cadet. I
remember staying
up when I was a
kid to watch the
first shuttle launch. Dave
Akerman was sending down
images from 40 kilometres
up. That is wonderful

year, and thought that it would be fun to fly the Pi

instead. The Arduino is ideal as a basic tracker,
but the Pi does make it much easier to add
things like live picture downloads.
It took about an hour to wire up a radio
transmitter and GPS, and another hour to
port Daves Arduino code over to the Pi. At that
point he had a working Pi tracker and he was
keen to fly it just to be the first to do so. But the
weather remained poor and he couldnt launch
for two weeks. That gave him time to add some
more capability.
Adding a live image download was obvious,
since the Pi can interface very easily to a USB
webcam, Dave says. It was a couple of days
work to get that working. After that I had to
make a regulator so the tracker could run
from batteries.
He kept quiet about his project because he
wanted to do it before anyone else. He didnt
say when the launch was planned either. The
launch itself was fairly stressful as they
usually are but particularly this time because
it was a new tracker and the first time Id
transmitted live images, he admits. I had two
trackers to get ready, one as a backup, and a
friend added his payload with a GoPro camera.
So it was quite a complex launch and it made an
impressive sight as it went up.

n Above is the radio transmitter for sending

data back, while below it is the GPS receiver

n This is the power regulator to reduce the

battery voltage to 5V for the Pi. This became

warm and David now uses an improved version

n In the future, Dave wants to

use the forthcoming Pi camera:

That will mean I can record highdefinition images and video

MAker ProfIle:
Dave aKerman
David Akerman is a
high-altitude ballooning
enthusiast who hit
the headlines when he
tethered a raspberry
Pi, complete with a
webcam to photograph
its progress, to a
helium balloon.

28 www.linuxuser.co.uk

Try IT yourSelf
The Kit:

raspberry Pi = 25
NTX2 radio transmitter = 25
Webcam = 13
lassen IQ GPS receiver and
antenna = 30
1200g Hwoyee balloon = 70
Gas cylinder (Helium = 80)
Parachute = 30
6x energizer AA lithium = 8
yupiteru radio scanner = 80
radio aerial = 15
Plus polystyrene foam, duct tape,
nylon cord

The Knowhow:

www.daveakerman.com/?p=592
www.ukhas.org.uk

10 amazing Raspberry Pi projects 1 RasPi

biRthdAY
Top Raspberry Pi projects to amaze and inspire
st

FeAtuRe

SPeciAL

brew beer with brewPi

Relax with a cool beer (and maybe
a pie) thanks to the magic of the Pi

Elco Jacobs loves his beer. So much

so that he makes his own. What he has
found, however, is that a tasty brew can be
enhanced using the power of the Raspberry
Pi. This capability led to the forming of the
BrewPi project with three aims: to control
the temperature of his fermenting beers, log
temperature data into graphs and the ability
to slowly raise or lower the beer temperature.

MAKER PROFILE:
elCo JaCoBS
Elco Jacobs is a 26-year-old
from Eindhoven, the Netherlands,
studying electrical engineering at the
Technical University of Eindhoven.
He likes electronics, design, user
interaction and entrepreneurship.

Elco had experimented with analog

temperature sensors, which were noisy
and needed a lot of software ltering, so he
replaced them with more accurate digital
OneWire sensors. He also ditched oatingpoint ltering and used xed point. BrewPi
uses solid-state relays which are safe and
quiet. Elco also dropped the idea of a threebutton interface in favour of a rotary encoder
interface, which is much more intuitive.

Things like this

let me have
thermostatically
controlled beer
brewing!!

Retaliation-inspired
mobile missile launcher

This simple foam-missile project is a

great way to inspire young coders

This ofce missile launcher is an inventive use

of the Pi and while not original (the inspiration
came from https://github.com/codedance/
Retaliation#readme), the portable nature of
the Pi has proved a perfect t. The original
project had a few limitations, says Nathan
Byrd. Using a full computer for this project

TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit:

Raspberry Pi (initially he used an early 256M

revision with polyfuses) = 25
Dream Cheeky USB missile launcher = $34.99
(www.dreamcheeky.com/thunder-missile-launcher)
Powered USB hub = from 14
USB extenders, mounting hardware etc as needed
for environment
The Code: Youll nd everything on the DVD
The Knowhow: itr8r.tumblr.com/post/
31840231144/raspberry-pi-retaliation

requires one to be on all the time or at least

whenever there are people there to shoot
and greatly limits the placement of the missile
launcher. With the Raspberry Pi I could mount it
just about anywhere and leave it on all the time
without requiring a full computer.
Nathan bought the Pi to teach his 11-yearold son to program and familiarise him with
hardware. Retaliation worked in this regard
too: What 11-year-old, or adult for that matter,
doesnt love shooting foam missiles around the
house? Nathan had to order the missile launcher,
then nd the packages and software, before
testing and documenting the build. Hooking it up
without a powered USB hub proved a problem
so there was a bit of soldering involved (although
that is no longer the case with newer revisions of
the Raspberry Pi). And along the way they had to
shoot lots of foam missiles at each other.

The pi offered a great alternative for the

original Brewpi (called Uberfridge). The pi

replaced a Linksys WRT54G router ashed
with open source rmware and 16MB of RAM
running a python script and a web server, it
had logged data to a USB memory stick

TRY IT YOURSELF
The Kit:

SparkFun Inventors Kit for Arduino, a professional

kit for Arduino = 83
Raspberry Pi = 25
The Code: Elcos code is on the cover disc
The Knowhow: brewpi.com

MAKER PROFILE:
naThan BYrd
Nathan Byrd is a technical consultant
in software development with almost
20 years of experience in the eld. He
lives in Saint Louis, Missouri with his
wife and son. Other hobbies include
amateur photography and open
source software development.

While a powered USB hub can be used (and

is recommended), Nathan removed the need

for one by soldering across the polyfuses on
his early-model Pi (bit.ly/RDIJVe)

29 www.linuxuser.co.uk