Raspberry Pi Roundup - 22nd June 2015

Brainwave

Albert has created a game called ‘Flappy Bird’ using Python & the Pygame library. You control a ‘flying brain’ and try to avoid obstacles placed in your way. The control mechanism is a headset which senses your level of concentration and then moves the brain up and down in response. The headset is wired to an Arduino which sends the readings to a Raspberry Pi. You are literally controlling the game by using your mind! It’s very impressive and extremely cool. Alex Eames of RasPi.TV has made a video in which he interviews Albert, has the project explained to him and then shows a demo play-through of the game. Take a look here.

Realtime

Eric Grossman over at PubNub has written an interesting tutorial which uses an ultrasonic distance sensor. The sensor detects motion by taking constant readings and then uses the PubNub service to ‘subscribe’ to any alerts generated. Read more here. You can buy an ultrasonic distance sensor from The Pi Hut for £2 (plus postage).

Lasers!

Dave Young wanted to stop his dog from jumping up and taking food off the kitchen work surfaces (I can sympathise!) when he wasn’t in the room. So, he hooked up a laser detector circuit to a Raspberry Pi and programmed the Pi to play a recording of his voice to tell the dog off when the laser beam is broken. The recordings are randomised so that the dog doesn’t keep hearing the same thing and a photo is taken using a camera module. Read more here, including full instructions. Watch a video of Dave explaining his project here.