Raspberry Pi Roundup - 1st August 2016

Bats!

Martin Mander recently noticed that his back garden attracted bats. Inspired by this, he set about creating a camera that could see in the dark and take pictures of the bats as they came flying in. He repurposed a hand-held drill to provide power and added IR LEDs to illuminate the field of view. He used, of course, a Pi NoIR camera to take the footage. You can read more, and imitate his project, by viewing this Instructable.

Minecraft Book

The MagPi team has been at it again! Edited by The MagPi’s Russell Barnes and Rob Zwetsloot and with contributions from Sam Aaron, Boris Adryan, Martin O’Hanlon and Jasper & Ozzy Hayler-Goodall, their new Essentials book focuses on Minecraft Pi Edition. Covering all kinds of topics including using Python and NodeRED to hack the Minecraft world, this book is sure to appeal to anyone who wants to learn how to program through gaming.

You can download the PDF or buy it digitally from The MagPi website.

CubeSat

NASA has taken the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, developed their own host board, added a few other components, and created the Pi-Sat (the innards of which are displayed in the picture above). The Pi-Sat is being used in classrooms to teach students about these small satellites and to allow them to experiment with programming the ‘fake’ satellite to take readings and send data. Although the 3D-printed case (pictured below) for the Pi-Sat means that it is unlikely to ever actually make it into space, NASA hopes that to engage youngsters in this exciting industry. Read more here.

Pi Wars - Apply to enter!

The Pi Wars team are excited to announce that applications for Pi Wars 2017 are now being accepted. They had 140 teams (!) register their interest and they are expecting that competition for places at the event will be fierce!

If you would like to enter, please find the application form here.

More information about the event, which takes place on 1st-2nd April next year, can be found on the Pi Wars website.