Raspberry Pi Roundup - 17th April 2015

Environmental simulation

Poopi and Piter have created a “paludarium” – an enclosed biodome in which environmental conditions are simulated – which contains both land-based and water-based lifeforms.

The paludarium is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and 4 ATmega 168P chips and has the following equipment hooked up:

• 6 independent sections of halogen lights
• 27 independently-controlled 1W LEDs for various effects
• 3 independent 3W RGB LEDs for ambient colour effects
• 3 independent 3W LEDs for thunder and moon simulation
• 3 independent 10W LEDs for aquarium lighting
• 2 independent fans for wind simulation
• 3 fog generators
• 2 independent solenoids for rain control
• Temperature monitoring

It really is a lovely project they’ve designed. See below for a video of it in action from simulated sunrise to sunset.

Picademy

The Foundation has just announced a new programme of Picademy training at a centre in Leeds. Picademy@Google will take place on the dates shown below at a pop-up space known as a “Digital Garage”:

• 21st – 22nd May 2015
• 8th – 9th June 2015
• 8th – 9th July 2015
• 4th – 5th August
• 5th – 6th October

Run by hand-picked community members and educators, these two-day sessions will be “a mix of hands-on making, project-based learning and general hacking”.

You can find out more details here and apply for a space on the courses here.

iBeacon

Michael duPont attended a hackathon at Universal Studios in March and helped to create a system whereby guests to the theme park could bypass ride queues by visiting certain checkpoints in a park area, thus completing ‘challenges’. This was accomplished using iBeacons. He has written an Instructable which takes you through the process of setting up a Pi as an iBeacon and then acting as the ‘gateway’ device for the system. Read it here.