Raspberry Pi Roundup - get started with physical computing, a synthesizer and a blinky tote bag

Physical computing for beginners

US-based Raspberry Pi Certified Educator Amanda Haughs has been very busy developing resources involving the Raspberry Pi. Her latest set of resources are a series of Task Cards that aim to get children into physical computing using Scratch. The cards, which cover both Scratch 1.4 and Scratch 2.0 are available to browse and download here. I’ve also just noticed that there are Python GPIO Zero versions available too! These are outstanding resources – very colourful, very clear and just what is needed in the classroom and for workshops. Nice job, Amanda! Other resources and her personal education experiences can be found on her blog. These are all evolving resources, so check back occasionally to download the newest ones!

Synthesizer

Music artist otem rellik (Toby Hendricks) previously created a live performance music looper. This time, he’s focused on creating a touch-sensitive musical instrument and beneath the hood is a Raspberry Pi. You can see it in action above and hopefully he’ll do a tear-down of it at some future date. Thanks Adafruit for spotting the video!

Tote Bag

Educator Amanda Haughs wanted to use the Raspberry Pi Zero in a wearable project and incorporate the use of her grandmother’s embroidery machine. She had the idea of a tote bag and, with a bit of sewing and some wiring-up, together with some GPIO Zero code, she created the Pi Tote. It features an embroidered Pi logo and multiple LEDs that pulse via GPIO Zero with PWM. You can read all about how she did it here and see a video of the finished product below: