Raspberry Pi Roundup - 18th April 2016

Privacy

25-year old Dries Depoorter has used a Raspberry Pi to monitor a webcam installed at an intersection in Fredericton, Canada. It uses image processing algorithms to determine if people are crossing the road illegally (jaywalking) and then allows visitors to an art gallery to decide whether to report them (with a screenshot) to the police. Depoorter specialises in artwork that deals with intrusion into privacy, and this exhibit fits right in. Kudos to him for using BIG RED BUTTONS for the trigger mechanism which fires off the police-bound email. You can read a bit more (and see captured photographs) here along with some other non-Pi invasion-of-privacy artworks.

Access point

Phil Martin has worked out how to activate AP mode on the built-in wifi module on the Raspberry Pi 3. Using some standard Linux software, he has written a tutorial that takes you through the activation, allow the Pi to give out IP addresses to connecting devices and then set up IPv4 forwarding. Great stuff – this will come in really useful for those wanting to connect to their Pi headlessly. Read how he did it here.

ChromiumOS

ChromiumOS, which is similar to ChromeOS, is available to install on the Raspberry Pi. Gus over at Pi My Life Up has written a tutorial that will help you download and write the image to an SD card so you can try it out for yourself. For best results, use a Raspberry Pi 2 or, preferably, 3. Read how to do it here.

Minecraft screenshots

Martin O’Hanlon has blogged about a utility called raspi2png which “Andrew from Melbourne” has written which allows you to take screenshots, including from Minecraft Pi Edition. Instructions on how to use it can be found over atStuff About Code.