Raspberry Pi Roundup featuring a (very) blinky NTP clock, a wireless IP camera and a headless Pi tutorial

NTP Clock

Alex Eames is currently running a Kickstarter to fund his latest project –RasPiO Inspiring. As part of the campaign (which is already funded!), he has shot a video of a project you can do with the driver board and an Inspiring LED circle. He’s placed the driver board on top of a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which gives him internet access, and then connected the driver board to the Inspiring circle. He’s then written some code that gets the current time from his Pi (which is correct, thanks to the wifi connectivity and a service called NTP) and then displays it using LEDs on the circle. Rather ingenious, and very blinky! He’s offering the kit that you can use to replicate the project for £30 (including the Zero W!) on the Kickstarter for delivery in September.

He’s blogged about the NTP clock project here and you can watch a quick walk-through video here:

Wireless IP camera

Matthew Wagner wanted to develop a wireless IP camera for both his work and to attach to his dog’s collar. So, he’s taken a Raspberry Pi Zero, a Pimoroni ZeroLipo and a RedBear IoT pHAT and soldered them altogether and added a Pi camera. (He does note that if you’ve got the new Pi Zero W that you don’t need the RedBear!) He’s documented the procedure, including the beginnings of the software, over on his blog. More tutorial parts will appear over the next few weeks, so keep an eye on his pages.

Headless Pi

Frederick Vandenbosch has written up a great guide to working headless with a Raspberry Pi (i.e. without a screen, keyboard or mouse plugged into the Pi itself). He’s focused on Raspbian Jessie Lite, but it will work with both flavours of the Pi’s favourite operating system, and with all flavours of Raspberry Pi, provided you’ve got wifi capability via on-board functionality or wifi dongle. He goes through the process of downloading and burning the image with Etcher and setting up ssh and a wifi connection. Read the tutorial here.