Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #124

It may be true that money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you small computing and maker projects, which is a pretty good substitute. We love the holiday season and what better time to gift something you love, from yourself (and probably to yourself)? This month, we have put together our guide to buying Raspberry Pi and the best Raspberry Pi kit you can find (page 36). We’ve also got our guide to turning a spare space into a maker room (page 66). Between the two, this month you can turn a hectic holiday season into a time of pure bliss. Making and crafting your own electronic projects in a space of your own. At least that’s the plan. Good luck! GET A RASPBERRY PI PICO W WITH…

MAKER github.com/MaironW There is no doubt that a crisp, modern, flat display has been a blessing for our eyes, not to mention the space in our homes, schools, and offices. But if you’re a retro enthusiast and you have old video games or movies from the last century, then you may want to go the whole hog and grab yourself a cathode-ray tube (CRT) television instead. That’s exactly what Mairon Wolniewicz has done, creating a media server based around a Raspberry Pi computer that outputs to an old Sony Trinitron CRT he picked up following months of searching. As it happens, these TVs were created in the Sony UK Technology Centre factory in Pencoed, south Wales, where Raspberry Pi is produced today, but Mairon was simply after a quality television…

01 The VCR-inspired menu lets you navigate up and down to watch TV, play video games, or listen to music. 'Exit’ was added because Mairon got bored of typing sudo shutdown -h now 02 As well as TV shows such as Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting, Mairon can navigate to music videos, other series and movies, and random YouTube videos via MyRetroTVs.com. 03 Homebrew retro games can be played via EmulationStation and the radio option launches Spotify TUI, a tool that allows Spotify streams to be controlled from the terminal.…

MAKER magpi.cc/hemiphoto With an established tree surgery business under their belts, Ed Lane and his brother decided to branch out into “proper forestry”, offering advice to larger clients such as farmers and landowners about the long-term health of their land. Obvious puns aside, adding hemispheric photographic monitoring to their list of services meant both clients and arborists could take a long-term look at how climate change was impacting stands of trees in their immediate vicinity. Having encountered Raspberry Pi at university, and through a general interest in technology, Ed chose it for Green Lane Forestry’s ForestryPi monitoring scheme, which quickly attracted several business customers. In a further twist, Ed has recently handed over the tree surgery business to his brother and is currently training as a primary school teacher. He…

01 ForestryPi is based around a Raspberry Pi Zero with a 32GB SD card, so there is plenty of storage space for the photos it takes over a lengthy period. Find setup code and instructions at magpi.cc/forestcamtut. 02 Attach a fish-eye lens to Raspberry Pi and add cables for a powerful battery pack so the setup can run without user intervention for several months. 03 Attach a Witty Pi 3 real-time clock so the Raspberry Pi knows when to activate the camera shutter. House everything inside a sturdy, weatherproof box and attach securely to a tree trunk, with the camera pointing upwards to capture leaf canopy changes.…

MAKER magpi.cc/handipi The name of this project is rather inspired because it pretty much encapsulates what it’s about. Aside from being a handheld hacking deck making use of Raspberry Pi 4, a touchscreen, and mini-keyboard, HandiPi also comes in, well, handy as an easily portable desktop computer. Not bad given Richard Sutherland originally envisioned creating nothing more than a functional case. “It sort of ran away from there,” he smiles. Richard was inspired by the PICOmputer PCB created by Peter ‘Bobricius’ Misenko. “It’s a sort of carrier board for Raspberry Pi Pico that includes a keyboard using 6 mm push-button tactile switches and a display,” he explains. “When I later ordered a Raspberry Pi 4 computer, I got to thinking: what if I could build a case with a screen…