Raspberry Pi Roundup - 3rd August 2015

Pigeons!

Robert Threet is a pigeon racer from Evansville, Indiana. He has added to the high-tech equipment used for recording pigeon arrivals (RFID tags – very swish) – a Raspberry Pi with a motion detector that triggers the attached Pi camera to take a photograph. Read more about Robert and his efforts over on the Raspberry Pi Foundation blog.

Tooth Fairy

Jeff Highsmith, who previously created the wonderful Mission Control Desk and bedroom Apollo Mission has been hard at work again. This time he’s installed a hatch in each of his children’s bedrooms which give access to a pair of tubes into which they can put their fallen-out teeth. A vacuum cleaner in the loft is then controlled by a Raspberry Pi, which is itself triggered using an iPhone app. The vacuum sucks the capsule containing the tube up and away to the tooth fairy’s magical tree house. It’s a great piece of work and just shows what you can do if you’ve got imagination and time to spend. Read more over at Make.

Laser Harp

David Pride announced on Twitter that he has created a DIY laser harp. He uses a 50mW laser with a stepper motor to create beams of light and then LDR sensors detect beam breaks and the Pi plays a corresponding midi note. The whole thing is tied in to a RasPiO Duino board. I hold the Duino in very high esteem and this is the first time we’ve seen something this big and fantastical! Hopefully he’ll provide more details in a future blog. Take a look at the video on YouTube.