Raspberry Pi Roundup - 29th September 2016

The MagPi

It's time for issue 50! The MagPi comes of age and features a massive spread of the top 50 projects for the Raspberry Pi. Available to buy from us now!

Guitar

Martin Hertig took a guitar bag, hooked up an Arduino to the zips via conductive thread to make a MIDI controller and then added a Raspberry Pi into the mix to create his project, called Zippy. The Pi runs FluidSynth synthesizer software (as my Music Box does!) to play the sounds. One zip is for playing notes or chords, one controls vibrato and one changes the bar. You can see more photographs and a video on Martin’s blog.

Access point

Lady Ada over at Adafruit has updated their guide for turning a Raspberry Pi into an access point. Now working with the Raspberry Pi 3, the guide works with the latest Raspbian Jessie and uses either an external wi-fi dongle or the on-board wi-fi capabilities of the 3. Read the tutorial here.

Sleepy Head

Jamie Dixon has trouble getting his youngest child out of bed. So, he grabbed hold of an old electric hospital bed that could be triggered to go almost vertical. He hooked it up to a servo and a Raspberry Pi and wrote a program on the Windows 10 IOT operating system to control the servo. A simple web interface and a wireless router connected to the Pi lets him control the position of the sleeping surface. Ingenious! Read more here.

Face Tracking Fan

The Foundation have blogged this nice little project from Instructables user DevinL9.

He’s taken a Raspberry Pi, hooked it up to a servo and then used the servo to control the position of a small fan with a small webcam mounted on top. The webcam provides a video feed to the Pi which is programmed with OpenCV to detect a face and track it. The servo then turns so that the fan always points towards you. For those long, summer months it could be just the job! You can read the Instructable here.