Raspberry Pi Roundup - 13th September 2016

Awesome Automated Solenoids

Kristian Lauszus took a course about image analysis in which students were asked to create a project to do the analysis. They were allowed to use OpenCV but none of the in-built filters – everything had to be done from scratch. Kristian’s project focused (literally) on a smartphone screen playing a simple game. In two columns, humans and zombies move downwards to the bottom of the screen. Zombies need to be taken out using screen taps and humans must be left alone. The project took photographs of the screen and then used image filtering techniques to remove everything but green. A set of solenoids were then programmed to “touch” the screen to remove the zombies. It’s a hell of a project – and you can read more on Kristian’s blog. He has published his paper, in which there is much more technical detail here (PDF) and all the code and documentation is on his GitHub account.

The MagPi

Out just a couple of weeks ago, the new issue of Raspberry Pi magazine The MagPi features a beginners guide, an Apollo software special and a round-up of community projects. There are also several tutorials and reviews of add-on boards and books. You can download it for free or purchase a paper copy from our online store.

Office Manager

Rachel Gregory, over at IoT company Initial State, has published an excellent tutorial that takes you through the steps required to write a “who’s at home/who’s in the office” service. The tutorial uses a Raspberry Pi Zero (any Pi will work) to detect devices connected to a wifi network. It then does a look-up against lists of people and MAC addresses to determine who is connected. The results are streamed to Initial State where a dashboard is created. It’s an excellent example of using services, scripting and programming together and while it’s not perfect – what happens if someone forgets their phone? – it’s a cool little Internet of Things project. Take a look at the tutorial here.