Raspberry Pi Roundup - 25th January 2016

Nixie

Paul Parry from Bad Dog Designs took a 1930s Vickers combined voltmeter and ammeter, refurbished it, added the Nixie tubes and then added a Raspberry Pi which translated the data coming in from his solar panels into something usable by the tubes. It’s a great project and is as retro as you can get. Read more and see more photos on his website.

GPIO Zero

Ben Nuttall has written a blog post in which he first of all describes how the GPIO Zero library was sparked off in the first place, names some of the people behind it and, vitally, goes on to explain how to use it. There are some truly great features to this library, including built-in support for the analog-to-digital converter cheap MCP3008, support for most of the components that come as part of the CamJam EduKits and also a way to link two objects together so that the output from one component becomes the input for another. (He explains it better than I do, but think how useful it would be to link a potentiometer to an LED and you’re on the right track).

So, if you want to know how GPIO Zero was developed, or you’re curious as to what you can do with it, head over to Ben’s blog. It’s essential reading.

Self-drive

Zheng Wang has taken a model Range Rover and slapped a Raspberry Pi and camera module on top, along with a portable power supply. His aims were to build a system that would

• self-drive along a track
• detect stop signs and traffic lights
• avoid front collisions

Through a lot of image processing and detection, he has achieved his goals. You can read more about the project on his blog, including all the maths he had to do.

Remote SSH

Gary Newell over at Everyday Linux User has written a great tutorial on setting up and using SSH to connect to a Pi’s command line. He covers connections from Windows 10, Linux and Android (no love for the Mac, yet) including which apps to install from which source. Well worth reading if you want to do remote Pi operation.