Via nycresistor.com:

Do you enjoy playing Space Team, but find that you want tactile controls? Or like the Artemis Bridge Simulator, but think it is too serious? Do you love pushing buttons, turning knobs and shouting at each other? Then you’ll really have fun playing Future Crew at the NYCR Interactive Party!

Read more and sign up for NYCR Interactive Party here!

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Via raspberrypi.org:

If you’re familiar with the Raspberry Pi desktop experience, you’ll have noticed that windows on the desktop can be a bit slower to move around than you’re used to on your PC or laptop. This is because X, the windowing software (or composition protocol) that we use, is not optimised to use the graphics core of the BCM2835, the chip at the heart of the Raspberry Pi. All the work is done by the ARM processor instead, which slows things down and leaves the graphics core twiddling its thumbs. That graphics core is extremely powerful, so we’re working on putting it to good use to fix the issue.

Read more here!

Super nice Raspberry Pi car installation via flamelily.co.uk:

I have always loved those old TV series with futuristic tech in those futuristic vehicles, like Knight Rider, Air Wolf, Street Hawk etc. So it got me thinking about how easy it would be to add a computer to a vehicle. Now I know its been done before and a quick Google search shows multiple websites and companies making very complex car and other vehicle computers, but at a large cost.

Read more about the installation and see more photos here!

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Fedora Remix for RPi:

Pidora is a Fedora Remix optimized for the Raspberry Pi computer.

Download link here.

The fly-by, Wi-Fi hacking machine.

There’s something unusual about the motorcycle Denis Andzakovic likes to ride…

Kitted out with a miniature Raspberry Pi computer for a heads-up display (HUD) integrated in an external helmet, two Mikrotik routers, wireless sniffing and attack tools, GPS and a netbook, the motorcycle is able to detect wireless access points and plot them on Google Maps.

Really cool Raspberry Pi project from Paul Herron:

Heng Long Tiger tank with a Raspberry Pi installed. I followed Ian Renton’s build.

Original image source here!

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Pierre Villeneuve shares a great Raspberry Pi powered Lego project:

I have always wanted to control something interesting involving little servo motors. That’s somewhat of an ill-defined dream, isn’t it? But it has all been made possible by using my handy dandy Raspberry Pi computer. I spent quite a bit of time this past year on another project that involved reading signals from almost a dozen temperature-humidity sensors and reporting status details to a remote web server. That project is now unfortunately stuck on the backburner, but at least it got me started doing interesting things with my Raspberry Pi.

In this post I report on my current side project, which involves my Raspberry Pi, five servos, my son’s Lego blocks, and synchronized groovy music. Let’s get right to it: the final result is a video hosted on my YouTube channel. I recommend watching it full screen on a device with decent speakers. Enjoy!

Check out the full blog post here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685 – You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout. (read more)

Every purchase you make goes to fund the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s educational activities, so you’re not just making yourself look swanky; you’re directly helping kids.

Mark at marks-space.com shows how to automatically log into a Raspberry Pi:

Below I will outline how to automatically log into your Raspberry Pi from a Windows PC using Putty. This requires the setup of SSH keys, which is very easy to do.

Learn how to do it here!

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Via Mario Klingemann:

This one has an adapter that allows me to attach my lensbaby lenses. And a standard tripod screw hole at the bottom.

Original post here.

Via raspberrypi-spy.co.uk:

Having played around with the Pi camera I quickly realised I needed to make some sort of stand for it. The module weighs almost nothing and is tiny so it can be quite hard to keep in one place when you are experimenting. The Raspberry Pi Foundation apparently recommends Blu-tack, based on cost, simplicity and plain, old fashioned versatility.

I thought it would be best to create a template that I could print out and use to create a camera holder without using the real module. That way I could get all the dimensions correct without worrying about squashing or dropping the module itself.

So here is a diagram showing the main module measurements.

Check it out here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Gordon writes:

Part of my testing of wiringPi v2. was to make sure that some of the existing libraries code would work with GPIO expanders – and the Adafruit RGB LED Plate was an ideal candidate.

So I ordered one, took a few moments to solder it together and plugged it in – and 5 minutes later I had my LCD test program working without any real issues.

So if you want to drive one of these from C/C++ or anything else that uses wiringPi, then be assured that it’ll just work!

Full details of how to make it work here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Adafruit RGB Negative 16×2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi – This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use an RGB 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the RGB Character LCDs we stock in the shop. (For RGB we have RGB negative and RGB positive.) Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That’s nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi! (read more)

Matt writes:

The Pi camera module includes a red LED in one corner of the PCB. This lights up when the camera is active. It’s really useful in giving a visual indication that the camera is doing something and most of the time you will be glad it is there.

However there are a number of reasons you might wish it wasn’t.

In my testing here are some of the reasons it can get in the way :

• It can cause reflections on objects you are trying to photograph giving them a red glow.
• For nature photography it scares animals.
• For security applications it may draw unnecessary attention to the device.
• It consumes power.

Source code and more here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Raspberry Pi Camera Board – The Raspberry Pi Camera Module is a custom designed add-on for Raspberry Pi. It attaches to Raspberry Pi by way of one of the two small sockets on the board upper surface. This interface uses the dedicated CSI interface, which was designed especially for interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries pixel data. (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

From Les Orchard’s flickr:

I need to blog about this. This photo includes:

* A Raspberry Pi with a T-Cobbler
* Two 74HC595 shift registers
* A 20×4 LCD display with negative RGB backlight (currently hard-wired to purple)

Put together, this is a Raspberry Pi running a Python script that uses 3 GPIO pins to control 16 outputs.

Driving the LCD itself is a dirty, dirty hack that fools some code from Adafruit into thinking it’s talking directly to GPIO pins, when really it’s talking to my shift registers.

It’s that last part which made me bounce in my chair – because I don’t quite yet understand how to talk to the LCD display, yet my hack worked the first time. (Albeit very, very slowly.) \o/

In the near future, I want to figure out how to control the red / blue / green backlight pins from the Raspberry Pi, in order to change colors on the display

Original post here.

Featured Adafruit Products

Adafruit Pi T-Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi – Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an add on prototyping Pi T-Cobbler from Adafruit, which can break out all those tasty power, GPIO, I2C and SPI pins from the 26 pin header onto a solderless breadboard. This mini kit will make “cobbling together” prototypes with the Pi super easy. Designed for Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 1 or Revision 2. (read more)

Cluster computing with 32 RPis:

In the process of developing a novel data sharing system, Kiepert became convinced that the best way to test his ideas was to simulate them on a Beowulf cluster. A Beowulf cluster is a group of computers, usually identical, that are networked together in order to share the task of processing complex problems. (The name Beowulf was chosen by NASA engineers almost 20 years ago for a computer they deemed especially powerful.) At Boise State University, a Beowulf cluster exists in the “MetaGeek Lab” (or Onyx Lab), which is run by the Computer Science Department. The Onyx cluster currently consists of 32 processors, or nodes, each of which has a 3.1GHz Intel processor and 8GB of RAM, allowing substantial parallel processing capability.

Read more and check out a pdf of the project here!

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““In order to keep the cluster size to a minimum while maintaining ease of access, the RPis were stacked in groups of eight using PCB-to-PCB standoffs with enough room in between them for a reasonable amount of air flow and component clearance,” he writes. “This configuration suited our needs for power distribution very well since it allowed for a power line to be passed vertically along each stack.”

“Using this orientation, four RPi stacks were assembled and mounted between two pieces of acrylic. This created a solid structure in which the cluster could be housed and maintain physical stability under the combined weight of 32 Ethernet cables.”

US boffin builds 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster • The Register.

Via Frederik Lotter

From thingiverse.com:

Another iteration of the Open Box which is the hinged lid variant of the Adafruit Pi Box. This time with a slot and mounting holes for the Raspberry Pi Camera. The holes on the camera fit an M2 bolt.

This and others like it are available at http://www.phenoptix.com/products/openbox-raspberry-pi-model-b-with-camera-mount

Official website here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Via 3ders.org:

This looks brilliant, a team of self-described “lazy hackers” has come up an automated beer dispensing system named RoboKeg, a Raspberry Pi powered, NFC (Near Field Communications) triggered beer tap. A long beer line at a crowded concert or bar is not an issue anymore, with a Robokeg, sort of vending machine, all you need to do is let RoboKeg scans the chip in your wristband.

Read more here!

Creating your own Subnode: Networking with the Raspberry Pi + Node.js:

Created during the Fall 2012 Residency season at Eyebeam, Subnodes (http://subnod.es/) is an open source initiative designed to streamline the process of setting up a Raspberry Pi as a wireless access point for distributing content and taking part in shared digital experiences. The device behaves as a web server, creating its own local area network, and does not connect with the internet. This is key for the sake of offering a space where people can communicate anonymously and freely, as well as maximizing the portability of the network (no dependability on an internet connection means the device can be taken and remain active anywhere).

Reserve tickets here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Andrew Holme‘s homemade GPS receiver:

I was motivated to design this receiver after reading the work [1] of Matjaž Vidmar, S53MV, who developed a GPS receiver from scratch, using mainly discrete components, over 20 years ago. His use of DSP following a hard-limiting IF and 1-bit ADC interested me. The receiver described here works on the same principle. Its 1-bit ADC is the 6-pin IC near the pin headers, an LVDS-output comparator. Hidden under noise but not obliterated in the bi-level quantised mush that emerges are signals from every satellite in view.

All GPS satellites transmit on the same frequency, 1575.42 MHz, using direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS). The L1 carrier is spread over a 2 MHz bandwidth and its strength at the Earth’s surface is -130 dBm. Thermal noise power in the same bandwidth is -111 dBm, so a GPS signal at the receiving antenna is ~ 20 dB below the noise floor. That any of the signals present, superimposed one on another and buried in noise, are recoverable after bi-level quantisation seems counter-intuitive!

GPS relies on the correlation properties of pseudo-random sequences called Gold Codes to separate signals from noise and each other. Every satellite transmits a unique sequence. All uncorrelated signals are noise, including those of other satellites and hard-limiter quantisation errors. Mixing with the same code in the correct phase de-spreads the wanted signal and further spreads everything else. Narrow-band filtering then removes wideband noise without affecting the (once again narrow) wanted signal. Hard-limiting (1-bit ADC) degrades SNR by less than 3 dB, a price worth paying to avoid hardware AGC.

Schematics, diagrams, code and more here!

Via engadget:

Yes, there’s a fleet of camera-equipped, remote-controlled blimps live-streaming a bird’s-eye view of Google I/O on YouTube, right now. It’s called Google AirShow and it’s taken over the airspace within Moscone Center. We briefly chatted with Chris Miller, a software engineer with AKQA (the company that put the dirigibles together for Google), about the technology used in each aircraft. It all begins with an off-the-shelf model airship that’s flown manually via standard a 2.4GHz radio.

Photos and more here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Raspberry Pi Model A 256MB RAM – The Raspberry Pi® is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. (read more)

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Via polyideas.com:

This project focuses on a common area of power usage in the home- the humble PC. Sure, laptops are more efficient- but sometimes only a PC will do. Many of us leave a PC on just in case we need to log onto it remotely. If we’re not using it, it’s just sitting there using electricity- and usually quite a bit of it. The most efficient desktop PCs still use around 35-45 watts when idling. Gaming PCs with big video cards can easily top 200 watts!

The PiSwitch solution lets you hook up a Raspberry Pi to your PC to control your power and reset buttons. The Raspberry Pi only uses about 1 watt of power when on, so it’s more economical to leave it on all the time. In this article, I’ll walk through how to set up the Raspberry Pi from start to finish to do this.

Check out the tutorial here!

Print-a-Tweet 2000. Nial writes -

Another great job by Sir Ben of Phenoptix Towers. He built me the original case in clear acrylic with the old style Phenoptix logo on the front access and cover panel whilst I was setting my Adafruit Mini Thermal Printer up with my Arduino Ethernet to run as a Electronic Fortune Cookie machine. It was pretty cool for a few months till everyone had played with it enough and we had gone through 3x 75ft rolls of paper printing random fortunes from a server.

I have recently been inspired Adafruit once again who brought some new life to its lovely little £40 Thermal receipt printer and created the Python Libs and files to run the Printer from the much more versatile and powerful RasPi which obviously has a far more appeal and range of uses due to being able to connect to any website, server, or database and run far more complex programs due to the almost unlimited space available compared to the measly 32KB of room the ‘Duino allowed and having it all being able to be coded in Python which is far easier to change around and cut and paste pieces.

Anyway with a bit of tweaking of their code for running a standard search f the Twitter API every 30 seconds and printing any matches to the criteria you give it, I went a little further with the API and created some custom searches and set it up so an RGB LED would be lit if a match occurred and then it prints the tweet. I have also just about got it working so depending on which search criteria it matches it displays a different color (Nothing fancy, Just Red, Green and Blue to keep it simple). It also responds to a secondary button push which also lights the RGB LED, this button is as well as the standard as set out in the Adafruit program which gives you Time & Temp printout for a tap and Safe Power Down of the Pi if you hold down for 2 seconds. Now in addition on a further momentary switch the Printer will print the last tweet from each of the 3 criteria I have set it up for depending on how long you hold the button down, each step is 2 seconds and the LED will light each of its 3 main colours for every 2 seconds its held down which match the search criteria result light colour… So hold for 2 secs and the LED Goes Red and Prints out last tweet from criteria #1 (To @RaW_Gaming) once it gets to 4 secs the LED will switch to Blue and print the 2nd criteria last tweet (From @xxxxxx) and then at 6 secs it goes to Green and prints criteria #3 which currently is (Farnell and Camera) – was keeping eye on tweets for the word as soon as Farnell put the RasPi cameras on sale, which worked well as I got the first tweet saying they were up on the Farnell site and immediately went there and pre-ordered one of the first new RasPi cameras in exactly the same way as I managed to get one of the first UK BeagleBone Blacks the week before by having the app run matches for “Farnell and BeagleBone”. After 8 Seconds the Main program kicks in and starts a safe shut down and tapping the other button still prints Weather and Time (Local).

Its a pretty cool setup!

Anyway it was starting to look a mess and I needed to hide alot of fly leads so Ben kindly once again hit the laser and cut me a new front in semi transparent Purple Acrylic (which I bought myself and had shipped to Phenptix for a project I eventually scrapped months ago and has been sitting up there with no use for ages) etched with the Twitter Logo so that its not visible and just a plain purple front when there are no notifier lights lit but the logo lights ups when the LED does with each colour and and looks pretty sweet diffused through the frosted purple!. Also replaced the two side panels with same Purple to hide the mass of wiring bundled inside the case.

Top Job!

Thermal printer, cobbler and Pibow!

PICrouter by tkrworks:

PICrouter is a versatile and prototyping board specialized for Open Sound Control.
The main function is to communicate between OSC and USB-MIDI/HID.

PICrouter will be an useful with the following purpose.

• Develop an OSC/MIDI/HID controller for music or visual.
• Study a PIC32 microcontroller.
• Study a communication with usb and ethernet.

Demos and more here.

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

The Good Life Lab is pre-launching at Maker Faire. It comes out in stores everywhere June 5 and can be preordered on Amazon

Bios

Wendy Tremayne was a creative director in a marketing firm in New York City before moving to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, where she built an off-the-grid oasis in a barren RV park with her partner, Mikey Sklar. She is the founder of the textile repurposing event Swap-O-Rama-Rama, which has spread all over the world. She has written for Craft’s webzine and Make magazine and, with Mikey Sklar, keeps the blog Holy Scrap.

Mikey Sklar is a digital homesteader, open source hardware developer and anti-griddle master. Mikey has worked for Adafruit, Hack-A-Day and Popular Science.

Wendy & Mikey are giving three presentations @ Maker Faire, San Mateo, CA

Meet the Maker Stage
Saturday May 18, 2013 03:30PM – 3:50

Homegrown Village Stage
Sunday May 19, 2013 11:30AM – 12:20

Swap-O-Rama-Rama – Talk and Book Signing
May 20, 2013 03:20PM – 3:40

Tour Schedule

Holy Scrap Blog

Note from Ladyada & pt @ Adafruit: We’ve known Wendy & Mikey for years, we’ve visited their place in Truth or Consequences and it was one of the best experiences ever. They shared a preview of the book with us and it’s inspirational tale for all makers. If you’re at Maker Faire this weekend, go see them and either way, pick up this book!

Via evilmadscientist.com:

Hey all you Raspberry Pi and Eggbot lovers: over on Instructables, user crgfrench shows how to load Inkscape and the Eggbot extensions on your Raspberry Pi. He even goes so far as to mount the Raspberry Pi on the Eggbot for compact plotting.

See the post here!

Justin Hayes wrote in to say:

I know it isn’t Friday yet, but last Monday’s episode of Revolution 2012 contained a brief appearance of the Raspberry Pi. Thought it would be a good one for the blog!

Thanks Justin!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Andrew Back posted a great blog about using the new Raspberry Pi camera for time-lapse photography:

A simple time-lapse photography project using the new Raspberry Pi Camera with a Raspberry Pi Model A and a battery pack.

I’d long wanted to try my hand at time-lapse photography and for one reason or another had never got round to doing anything about it, but when I was fortunate enough to be given a pre-production Raspberry Pi camera I no longer had any excuse!

Read more and see how to do it yourself!

Featured Adafruit Products

Raspberry Pi Camera Board – The Raspberry Pi Camera Module is a custom designed add-on for Raspberry Pi. It attaches to Raspberry Pi by way of one of the two small sockets on the board upper surface. This interface uses the dedicated CSI interface, which was designed especially for interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries pixel data. (read more)

Raspberry Pi mounted in an Oak case with Monitor by Brett Oliver

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

This is a great project that reuses an LED display found on buses in the 1990s. Translated from the original:

I recently recovered a display bus brand DATA Display (1992, at the sight of datecode components). The display consists of two parts:

• Part of a top, consisting of two green segments 12 of dies (7 × 5 each), or a large array of (2 * (12 * 5)) * 7 pixels.
• The bottom part, a bit the same, but with red pixels

The bottom part is interesting because it seems to contain a RAM, with external connection (and a NiMH battery to retain RAM) can be upload messages to display. By cons, manufacturers do not have the transmission protocol. It will be a bit boring to reverse-engeenirer.

The top part, it is almost identical. Except that it contains a ROM containing the characters ASCII (at least, their representation in matrix 5 × 7) to display the text. It also has a special connection (RS232, but not too much). It’s going to be boring to do. But I decided to disassemble the upper display and watch how it worked.

Source code, photos and more here!

Here’s a great Internet Radio project via http://usualpanic.com:

How cool would it be take a vintage 1940′s or 1950′s wooden radio and rebuild it as a modern Internet Radio? That’s the premise I had in mind when I started out on my first Raspberry Pi project.

I used the Adafruit Occidentalis Linux distribution and Adafruit python class for the 32×2 LCD display.

I found a great YouTube tutorial by MeisterVision that covered the basics of the MPC/MPD Linux Music Player really well.

Source code and more here and check out our own Raspberry Pi WiFi Radio tutorial!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

UPDATED PRODUCT – Budget Pack for Raspberry Pi (Does not include Raspberry Pi) – An optimized collection of parts and pieces to experiment with Raspberry Pi at home, school or work. Great for students and those that want to get their feet wet, no soldering required! THIS PACK DOES NOT INCLUDE A RASPBERRY PI

Contains:

• New! Adafruit Pi Case – Keeps your Pi snug and safe, and is compatible with the GPIO cable and cobbler! Durable and chic, snaps together in seconds.
• 3′ long USB Micro-B Cable – Use this to power the Pi from a computer or the 5V 1A adapter
• 5V 1A power adapter – this ain’t no regular USB power plug! We had these custom made specifically for use with embedded Linux machines like the Pi. It provides clean 1A minimum with 5.25V to overcome the 0.25V drop of the USB cable
• SD Card 4GB size – 2GB is a little too small, we think. This card works perfectly with our reader below and is ideal for loading in our educational Pi distro
• Adafruit Pi Cobbler kit with GPIO cable – fully assembled and tested! No soldering required– makes connecting to the GPIO/I2C/SPI/Power pins easy as pie
• Half-size solderless breadboard – Space to plug in the Cobbler and some other electronic parts
• Breadboarding wires – These flexible wires come in various colors and are easier to use than ‘cut wire’ kits

This pack is a great way to start and will let you burn our Adafruit hacking distro to the SD card, connect your Pi to the ‘net and check out our many Pi tutorials to whet your appetite This pack has only the basics to get you started. That allows us to keep the price low while giving you the choice of what accessories to add in. Once you have the pack, check out our free online tutorials for Raspberry Pi!

In stock and shipping now!

A sweet selection of tasty Raspberry Pi distros via techradar.com:

The Raspberry Pi phenomenon appears to go from strength to strength; like a runaway train, it’s ploughing ahead and forging itself a place in the record books.

It’s hardly surprising – the hardware alone is developed perfectly for the goals of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the pricing is pitched perfectly, and having the unique versatility of Linux as the operating system seals the deal nicely.

Most buyers, once they get their hands on their new RPi, make a move towards the official Raspberry Pi site and follow the getting started instructions therein; the end result is the user running Raspbian “Wheezy”, the Foundation’s recommended operating system, creating, learning and programming, and strapping the poor wee beast onto a weather balloon and sending it to the outer edge of the atmosphere.

What many RPi users don’t realise, though, is that there’s a wealth of other operating systems available for their beloved Pi. We thought, therefore, that those users who aren’t aware of these other sweet toppings for the Raspberry Pi need to be informed, and what’s more, they need to have a chocolate box selection presented to them.

Check out the full article here!

via @scottpav:

Just completed my Pandora Wifi Radio using @adafruit RasPiLCD plate and awesome tutorial from http://learn.adafruit.com ! pic.twitter.com/mTB4Ttm5kD

Check out the Raspberry Pi WiFi Radio tutorial here!

Featured Adafruit Products

Adafruit Blue&White 16×2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi – This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use a blue and white 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the 16×2 Character LCDs we stock in the shop. Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 1 to control the backlight for a total of 7 pins. That’s nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi! (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

From the Color My Desk website:

Hey everyone! I’ve installed a set of colored lights behind my desk and this site lets you (yes, you!) control the color. I know, crazy, right? Learn more about how I did this at Will Makes Things. But first, pick a day, pick a color, and tell me why you picked it!

William writes that “the project has gotten a considerable amount of interest and colors are scheduled every day until March 2014.”

See detailed documentation here!

Via raspberrypi.org:

While we love all programming languages equally here at the Foundation, we do love Python an awful lot. Most users run their code under the “default” CPython interpreter, but over the last few years the PyPy project has made great strides in producing an highly compatible alternative interpreter with an integrated tracing JIT compiler. On x86 platforms this can improve the performance of some workloads by a factor of ten or more, and the PyPy team are now bringing the same sort of boost to the ARM world.

Visit the official PyPy Status Blog here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Dennis Brylow extolls the virtue of low-cost computing via wuwm.com:

What Raspberry Pi does, according to Brylow, is removes the intimidation factor for students. He hopes the low-cost gadget enables schools to turn out more qualified computer science graduates

Read more!

Featured Adafruit Products

Miniature Keyboard- Microcontroller-Friendly PS/2 and USB – Add a typing interface to your project with this microcontroller-friendly miniature keyboard. We found the smallest PS/2+USB keyboard available, a mere 8.75″ x 4.65″ x 0.6″ (220mm x 118mm x 16mm)! It’s small but usable to make a great accompaniment to either a microcontroller project or a computer such as the Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi. The keyboard supports either USB or PS/2 interface and will automatically adjust to whichever its plugged into (there’s an adapter included).

Comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, and has a num-lock number pad. Nearly all microcontrollers have existing PS/2 keyboard examples that would work fine with this keyboard. For Ardiuno users, we tried out PJRC’s PS2_Keyboard library with great success – just check the ‘simple text’ example for which pins you can connect to on your ‘duino (on an Uno we used digital pins 2 and 3). We suggest our PS/2 adapter cable to make the wiring easy. Start typing and you’ll see the data appear in the serial terminal! (read more)

Via raspberrypi.org:

We’ve seen a number of photographers who have taken to the Pi as a way to bring down the cost of the sort of kit that was, pre-Pi, outside the budgets of mere mortals. Case in point: gigapixel photography. A gigapixel image is made up of (at least) a billion pixels, which means you’ve now got access to the sort of fine and vivid detail on your monitor that we mere humans with our shonky eyeballs could only dream of until recently.

At the moment, a camera that can take a gigapixel image all in one shot is the sort of fantasy hardware that the military is pouring millions into. But if you’re not in charge of a defence silo, you can still take your own gigapixel images by stitching together many megapixel-sized images from an SLR camera on a motorised mount into a giant, seamless mosaic with very fine detail. You’ll need something approaching a defence budget if you’re going to do this yourself without building your own hardware, though; I spent a few seconds googling and found that off-the-shelf motorised rigs for your camera can cost nearly $1000.

Tim and Jack Stocker thought this was daft, so they built their own out of MDF, some Lego turntables, and a Pi with a cheap stepper motor attached.

Read more at raspberrypi.org and check out the GigaPi blogspot here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Over on Google+, Alan McNeil shared his current IoT Printer project.

Made my Adafruit Internet of things printer print up essential info for the day: sunrise, sunset, weather forecast with wind chill, any task due today at my Remember the Milk list, and a fortune.

It fetches the info about 30m before I usually get up. Helps get me back in sync with the planet after dreamtime.

Going to refine the forecast software a bit more and then post the code.

Build an “Internet of Things” connected mini printer that will do your bidding! This is a fun weekend project that comes with a beautiful laser cut case. Once assembled, the little printer connects wirelessly to get Internet data for printing onto 2 1/4″ wide receipt paper. Based on a Raspberry Pi computer, this is a powerful mini Linux machine. We have example python code for a few different printouts including a daily weather forecast report, sudoku puzzles, image printer and a tweeter printer that connects Twitter’s search API and retrieve and print tweets according to your requests: you can have it print out tweets from a person, a hashtag, mentioning a word, etc! All the code is open source so its easy to adapt and write your own custom printer software

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In this lesson, you will learn how to use the digital inputs on the GPIO connector with a door sensor and a PIR motion detector.

In this lesson, we will concentrate on sensing movement and activation of the door switch. In Lesson 13 we will build on this security sensing to have the Pi use a digital output to control the power to an electrical appliance when movement is detected.

Check out the tutorial here!

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PIR (motion) sensor – PIR sensors are used to detect motion from pets/humanoids from about 20 feet away (possibly works on zombies, not guaranteed). This one has an adjustable delay before firing (approx 0.3-18 seconds), adjustable sensitivity and we include a 1 foot (30 cm) cable with a socket so you can easily reposition the sensor or mount it using the two drills on either side. (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

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Adafruit RGB Negative 16×2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi – This new Adafruit Pi Plate makes it easy to use an RGB 16×2 Character LCD. We really like the RGB Character LCDs we stock in the shop. (For RGB we have RGB negative and RGB positive.) Unfortunately, these LCDs do require quite a few digital pins, 6 to control the LCD and then another 3 to control the RGB backlight for a total of 9 pins. That’s nearly all the GPIO available on a Pi!

With this in mind, we wanted to make it easier for people to get these LCD into their projects so we devised a Pi plate that lets you control a 16×2 Character LCD, up to 3 backlight pins AND 5 keypad pins using only the two I2C pins on the R-Pi! The best part is you don’t really lose those two pins either, since you can stick i2c-based sensors, RTCs, etc and have them share the I2C bus. This is a super slick way to add a display without all the wiring hassle.

New, we’ve updated this Pi plate so the buttons on on the right side, which makes it a little more mechanically stable.

This pi plate is perfect for when you want to build a stand-alone project with its own user interface. The 4 directional buttons plus select button allows basic control without having to attach a bulky computer.

The plate is designed for both Revision 1 and Revision 2 Raspberry Pi’s. It uses the I2C (SDA/SCL) pins. We have a special xtra-tall 26-pin header so the plate sits above the USB and Ethernet jacks. (read more)

Servo motors are often driven using the PWM outputs available on most embedded MCUs. But while the Pi does have native HW support for PWM, there is only one PWM channel available to users at GPIO18. That kind of limits your options if you need to drive more than one servo or if you also want to dim an LED or do some sort of other PWM goodness as well. Thankfully … the PI does have HW I2C available, which we can use to communicate with a PWM driver like the PCA9685, used on Adafruit’s 16-channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver!

Using this breakout, you can easily drive up to 16 servo motors on your Raspberry Pi using our painless Python library and this tutorial.

Note this cannot be used for driving anything other than analog (1-2 millisecond pulse drive) servos. DC motors, AC motors and digital servos are not going to work.

Check out the tutorial here!

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Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver – I2C interface – PCA9685 – You want to make a cool robot, maybe a hexapod walker, or maybe just a piece of art with a lot of moving parts. Or maybe you want to drive a lot of LEDs with precise PWM output. Then you realize that your microcontroller has a limited number of PWM outputs! What now? You could give up OR you could just get this handy PWM and Servo driver breakout. (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

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NTSC/PAL (Television) TFT Display – 2.0″ Diagonal – Yes, this is an adorable miniature television! The visible display measures only 2.0″ diagonal, the TFT comes with a NTSC/PAL driver board. The display is very easy to use – simply connect 6-15VDC to the red and black wires, then connect a composite video source to the yellow and black wire. Voila, a television display! There’s a little button to adjust the LED backlight brightness (5 levels) – there is no other adjustment available but we found that the color and contrast look great right out of the box.

To demonstrate it, we took some photos with the display connected to a Raspberry Pi, but it will also work connected to any analog composite-video output such as a YBox or Propeller w/Video out. It will not work with a device that only outputs VGA, HDMI or any other digital video signal.

Please note, these miniature displays are very delicate and require care to avoid ripping the delicate flex connector. These are best used by electronics geeks who have experience and are comfortable working with delicate electronic components. WE CANNOT REPLACE DAMAGED DISPLAYS if you are not careful and rip the flex connector! (read more)

The low cost and full HD video playing capabilities of the Raspberry Pi make it ideal for building your own media center. This will allow you to play music and videos through your Raspberry Pi onto a TV.

The advantage of using a Raspberry Pi, is that all the software can be configured and modified in whatever way you want.

In this tutorial we will show you how to set your Raspberry Pi up as a media centre and in the next tutorial you will find out how you can use the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO connector to add a IR remote facility.

Check out the tutorial here!

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Miniature Wireless USB Keyboard with Touchpad – Add a miniature wireless controller to your computer project with this combination keyboard and touchpad. We found the smallest wireless USB keyboard available, a mere 6″ x 2.4″ x 0.5″ (152mm x 59mm x 12.5mm)! It’s small but usable to make a great accompaniment to a computer such as the Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi. The keyboard itself is battery powered (there’s a rechargeable battery inside that you charge up via the included USB cable). The keyboard communicates back to the computer via 2.4 GHz wireless link (not Bluetooth). (read more)

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Small and neat HD video via raspi.tv:

There was a Raspberry Jam in Oxford this week. There were lots of good exhibits as usual. I’ll probably blog a bit more about some of the others a little later, but the big news for me was the much awaited Pi camera board. It was the first time I’d seen one. Here’s a screen grab from my video showing what it looks like.

Stream files from Raspberry Pi to a smartphone:

The best thing about the Raspberry Pi is that, besides being an excellent educational device, it can double up as a very capable headless server – now even more so with the increased memory.

Contrary to popular belief, not every server task requires lots of processing power. For example, if you wish to download files and share them with users on the network irrespective of their operating system or device, you don’t need a machine with a multi-core processor. In fact, using an old Linux computer as such a seedbox is a popular way of rescuing discarded hardware.

The only downside of this approach is that it consumes a lot of electricity. Most modern routers have a USB port, and will share the plugged-in device with all computers connected to this router. But what if you have an older router and want to do more than just share files?

With the RPi, you can do all this and a lot more without the costs associated with a traditional computer, and without the restrictions of dedicated devices such as routers.

Check out the tutorial here!

We now have Raspberry Pi Model B with 512MB RAM in stock and shipping now!

Ryan Longo and Michael Vogt created this crazy-looking light-up helmet!

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Space Invader – Raspberry Pi via MAKE.