Raspberry Pi Roundup - 6th June 2016

Zero OTG

Andrew Mulholland previously posted about using the Raspberry Pi Zero over USB OTG, i.e. programming a Zero over just a USB cable from another machine such as a laptop. Thanks to some improvements to the Raspbian operating system and a bit of as-yet-undiscovered functionality, Andrew has found a way to configure OTG without needing to plug the Zero into a monitor, keyboard etc. This is a marvellous thing and gives you a lot of options such as programming the GPIO from a laptop without any other equipment, save a USB cable. Read how to do it here.

Tower building

Tobias Kuhn has taken a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino Mega and 3 DC motors and built what he calls the “DeltaPicker”. It is a robot which operates on multiple axis and uses the Pi to do image capturing and processing to spot black and white plastic discs (like you might get in the game Othello). It then stacks the discs automatically. Take a look at the video above or go here to read slightly more.

Maps

A Boston-based college project team has worked together to build a map system for one of their halls. Fulton Hall in Boston College has a confusing layout so they took a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen and then worked on a user interface to allow people to see where they were. Read more here.