Raspberry Pi Roundup - 9th September 2015

Pancreas

Seattle-based Dana Lewis suffers from Type 1 Diabetes, and has done since she was 14. One of the issues facing diabetics is that during the night, despite having all kinds of different monitoring equipment, it is all too easy for the sufferer to not be woken by the alarm, leading to them feeling unwell in the morning, or possibly even dying during the middle of the night. To solve this, Lewis and her then-fiance (now husband) Scott Leibrand concocted a monitoring system that would keep an eye on her glucose levels and then recommend an insulin dose to the injection device she wears. After prototyping the device, which they dubbed the DIY Pancreas, and requiring Lewis to press a button to administer the dose, they realised that they had an algorithm they could use that could learn from her habits and get the dose right 100% of the time. They used a Raspberry Pi to receive data from the monitor, control the algorithm and then issue commands to the insulin pump automatically, thus enabling Lewis to sleep soundly.

They are now supporting other diabetics who are seeking to ‘close the loop’ on their treatment.

Read more on this amazing project at Business Insider and take a look at their blog for the full story.

Clock

Here’s a nice little Instructable project to flex your robotics muscles. Anthony (who is really just a teddy bear – seriously!) has made a nice wall-clock with two hands that are powered by steppers which are controlled by this nice little 4tronix dual stepper board. Read the Instructable here.

MagPi

The new issue of The MagPi magazine has been published. It’s available in WHSmith’s in the UK and Barnes & Noble or MicroCenter in the USA. It’s also available for free in PDF format from The MagPi website and via Google Play and the Apple AppStore. View the magazine by visiting The MagPi website.

Ad-blocker

Jacob Salmela has created a new version of Raspbian called ‘Pi Hole’. The operating system has been designed to be a DNS-server which blocks ads for your entire network. All you need to do is download the image, install it on an SD card and then point your home devices’ DNS settings to it. It seems quite a sophisticated system with a proper web GUI. Please just remember that ads on many sites are only there so that they can afford to run, so white-list those sites that you like! A full guide to installing it is available on Lifehacker.