Raspberry Pi Roundup - new products, online training, Pi Wars news and a refit of an old projector

New products

At The Pi Hut, we’ve just launched a selection of new products. All designed by Raspberry Pi alumni Rachel Rayns, these are our own unique products, and hopefully there will be even more over time. So, here they are:

• ZeroView Mini – a smaller version of the ZeroView attach-your-camera-to-a-window board – £5.
• Status Board pHAT – a Zero-form-factor board containing 3 white strips that you can write on with a dry-wipe marker and accompanying red and green LEDs to indicate the status of each item – £5.
• Status Board Pro – a larger version of the Status Board pHAT with 5 dry-wipe strips and LEDs as well as space for tactile buttons (available separately) on the end of each strip – £6.

These are all in addition to the fabulous Christmas Tree pre-order which is coming to an end soon (15th October)!

Object-Orientated Python

Raspberry Pi has announced that Laura Sach has developed a new online training course. The course is on object-orientated Python and is sure to appeal to both techies and educators (or both!) alike. Here’s some info about what the course covers:

The course will introduce you to the principles of object-oriented programming in Python, showing you how to create objects, functions, methods, and classes. You’ll use what you learn to create your own text-based adventure game. You will have the chance to share your code with other learners, and to see theirs. If you’re an educator, you’ll also be able to develop ideas for using object-oriented programming in your classroom.

The course started recently and you can sign up here. See the video above for a short presentation about the course.

Pi Wars venue and date confirmed

Myself and Tim are delighted to announce that Pi Wars 2018 will take place at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory (William Gates Building) on 21st-22nd April. This is the venue that we have used for the last two events and we are over-the-moon to be able to return there. Many, many thanks are due to the staff and academics at the Lab, without whom we would not have been able to make the booking.

To find out more about the competition, head over to the Pi Wars website. Subscribe to our mailing list to be kept in the loop and to hear when Spectator tickets go on sale.

Projector

Joe Herman has taken an old film projector, a Raspberry Pi, a camera module and a stepper motor and created a machine that will help to convert 8mm and 16mm film reels into a digital format. He had to re-focus the camera module and he’s used a magnetic reed switch to detect when the frame has been moved on by the stepper motor to trigger the camera to take a photo of that particular frame. The actual processing of the photographic images was done on a more powerful Linux box. He’s written an article over on the IEEE Spectrum website, so head over there to read more. See the results of one of the videos below: