Raspberry Pi Roundup - 5th October 2015

Lava!

Recently, Martin O’Hanlon attended PyCon UK. During the conference, he ran workshops using Minecraft Pi Edition during which participants could create a game called “LavaTrap”. The end result of the game is that you have to avoid the lava by walking onto blocks which are slowly disappearing! Martin has blogged about the workshop and made his materials available online as a downloadable worksheet.

Crane Pong

Here’s a nice bit of silliness for you. A German crane manufacturer asked “hwhardsoft” to create a game that used the company’s crane controllers. So, that’s what they did – the created a Pong game using Python and then adapted the control boards for use with the Pi. They added an ATMEGA chip to do the analog to digital conversion and voila, Crane Pong!

Thanks to Hackaday for this one.

MagPi

The latest issue of The MagPi is out and it looks to be a good one. The central feature is a “building a robot” special which aims to get you up-and-running for £50. We recently announced the third CamJam EduKit which is a cheap robotics kit for under £20. It will be available soon from The Pi Hut.

There are also features on making a web-powered plant waterer, using the Piano HAT, using the SenseHAT and, of course, a review of the new touch screen (for some reason, I can’t see that being a bad review…). Plenty of other stuff in there as well. You can now buy it from Tesco as well as WHSmith in the UK. In the USA it’s available in Barnes & Noble and MicroCenter. You can also, of course, download it for free in electronic form from The MagPi website.