Today, to celebrate their 5th birthday, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced an exciting new version of the Raspberry Pi Zero. Our favourite mini single board computer now includes a feature that many of us have wished for: wireless connectivity!
(The third part of a running mini-series about the Raspberry Pi Zero, the second part is here).
In my last post about the Raspberry Pi Zero, I promised to give some ideas for projects that would be well-suited to implement with our favorite little hobby SBC. Through logical reasoning, we determined that the qualities to look out for are “battery-powered, space-confined, camera-connected, slighty complex but not too performance-critical projects that could not be served by JustAnotherApp on your phone”. In order to keep this post short (and worth your read), I’m going to limit the list to the 5 project ideas that I think are most exciting and at least reasonably original (so, everything on this list is off-limits), and that I might actually consider doing myself. So, without further ado, some of my best ideas:
(The second part of a running mini-series about the Raspberry Pi Zero, the first part is here).
The Raspberry Pi Zero is an amazing little tinkering trinket. It is among the smallest, cheapest and most efficient single board computers currently on the market, because of its radical design choices. First, it features almost no additional components besides the system-on-a-chip (SoC) and the RAM, which are stacked on top of each other. And second, its connectors are all chosen to be as flat as possible, making this the flattest offering on the market. Logically, these choices open up some doors while it closes others. Because of my personal interest in low-cost embedded/mobile/robotics projects, I’m mainly interested in the doors that open. What follows is thus a slightly biased analysis of the pros and cons of the Raspberry Pi Zero (version 1.3 available since May 2016).
(The first part of a mini-series about the Raspberry Pi Zero).
We all loved the original Raspberry Pi premise; a small and modest yet very affordable and versatile single-board hobby computer that brought computing projects into homes and classrooms alike. They were not the first or the only one on that market, but they hit a sweet spot in terms of value for money and community building that resulted in an unprecedented buzz.
Last week, I finally received my new robot controller board after more than three weeks of waiting. Well, actually, a complete new robot kit, since the controller board is not sold separately. Good thing as well, because as it turns out, the original GoPiGo is not available anymore (in NL), and the new one I received is a GoPiGo2… which is not compatible with the original GoPiGo. Allow me to elaborate….
It’s been some time since the last update, and that is not because I haven’t done any work on this project. Fact is, the work that I have been doing is not really going to do well as a party conversation starter…
So, this fellow Murphy came by the other day to bother the heck out of my little project!!
After burning many flasks of midnight oil, I’m proud to introduce to you…
OK, so here goes my first ever video blog! Some things can only be shown by… well, actually showing them. No amount of pictures or written text could express what this video does. Please be plentiful with your positive reinforcing comments, as I am still quite shy and insecure about my vlogging skills.
PS. The instructional mentioned in the video is not yet available, but will appear on this blog in the near future. Will keep you posted!
Now that we have the GoPiGo robot kit to make the Raspberry Pi move, what are we going to do with it? Well, turn it into a proper autonomous robot pet, of course! A robot that can move about on its own, capture images, follow commands, and maybe even interact with humans and convey emotions. A robot that will impress, inspire, educate & entertain.