Raspberry Pi Roundup - a gardening project, a converted games console and a SenseHAT digital clock

By Michael HorneSep 28, 20170 comments

Gardening project

Les Pounder has blogged a gardening project over at Element 14. The project uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W for connectivity and a RasPiO Analog Zero to read an analog input: a soil moisture sensor. He has also connected up an I2C Flora UV sensor and even links up to Gmail to send you email alerts. Take a look here.

Out Run

Matt Brailsford (aka Circuitbeard) has taken an old motorised game, the Tomy Turnin’ Turbo Dashboard, embedded a Raspberry Pi inside and turned it into a fully-working Out Run games console. Here’s an excerpt from his blog post in which he describes the features:

Some key features are an integrated 3.5” TFT screen, fully usable steering wheel and gear shifter (dashboard turbo light comes on when in high gear), working ignition key for power, true MPH speed and rev counter displays, and a fuel gauge to represent the stage time remaining.

It’s a brilliant conversion and I’m well-impressed by the way that all the old controls work to control the game via the Pimoroni Picade PCB. I also really like the custom dashboard plate he’s worked up:

You can see the game in action below and read more about the build on his blog:

Digital Clock with SenseHAT

Here’s a quick tutorial to build a digital clock with your SenseHAT and your Raspberry Pi. The tutorial takes you through installing the necessary software and includes the code for the project. To make it start automatically on power-up, take a look at the instructions in my Paper Clip tutorial.