Custom PC, Issue 235

Custom PC Issue 235This month’s Custom PC Magazine brings with it some sad news: the magazine is no more, with the printers falling silent in the face of growing print and distribution costs. That doesn’t mean Custom PC, long a staple of the enthusiast sector, is going away: editor Ben Hardwidge is to lead a new website, dedicated to the magazine’s core topics of mainstream Intel/AMD Windows-based PCs – which, unfortunately, means that my Hobby Tech column will not be making the transition.

Custom PC was my first print byline, and I’ve been writing for the magazine near-continuously my entire career. Hobby Tech itself has been running in the magazine for two months short of a full decade without a single missed deadline, over which time I’ve seen hobbyist products launch and prosper or wither on the vine – along with, of course, a sprinkling of vapourware. I’ve created benchmarks for microcontrollers and single-board computers, put together a custom workflow for high-resolution thermal imagery with visible-light backdrops, taken and edited quite literally thousands of photographs, reviewed hardware, software, and books, interviewed a broad range of people, and penned guides for everything from a hardware RSS feed reader to compiler optimisation.

I am determined that this will not be the end of Hobby Tech, which has long been a popular section of the magazine. In the coming months I’ll be seeking a new outlet for the column – and if you have a publication you think may be interested, please do send the editor my way!

For this final issue of Custom PC, meanwhile, I took a look at the impressive Open Circuits, the CRUMB Circuit Simulator, and the news of Sipeed’s upcoming LM4A system-on-module and PINE64’s PineTab2.

Open Circuits, to start, is Eric Schlaepfer and Windell H. Oskay’s love-letter to electronics. Published by No Starch Press, the hardback tome is a full-colour investigation of what actually goes into electronic components – from multi-layer printed circuit boards and integrated circuits to vintage devices like valves and simple gadgets like switches. We’re not just talking theory, here: the authors literally grind the components down to reveal their inner workings, capturing cross-sectional imagery which you won’t find anywhere else.

Originally a mobile app and now available on Valve’s Steam, Mike Bushell’s CRUMB is another way of looking at electronics – allowing you to build surprisingly complex circuitry in a realistic 3D environment from virtual components. Using SPICE for the actual simulation work, CRUMB offers a drag-and-drop approach to breadboard projects which keeps your desk free of clutter and which is surprisingly detailed – though perhaps a little tricky to operate at times.

All this, and more, is available for a limited time at your nearest newsagent or supermarket – for the last time ever. Goodnight, Custom PC Magazine, and rest well.

The MagPi, Issue 105

The MagPi Issue 105This month’s The MagPi Magazine includes a six-page tutorial I originally wrote as part of Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico: The Official Guide, my well-received guide to physical computing on Raspberry Pi’s first-ever microcontroller development board: a two-player reaction-testing game.

As with all projects in the book, the reaction game is designed to build up gradually. The reader is first taken through wiring up a simple circuit with a single LED and a single button, using one to trigger the other. Gradually, the complexity is increased: using the LED to trigger a countdown stopped only when the button is pushed, giving the user a look at how quickly they can react.

The project’s culmination comes with the integration of multiplayer: two buttons are used, and whichever player hits their button first is declared the winner. It’s a simple game, admittedly, but a surprisingly competitive one – and one which introduces a range of core concepts for input handling, timing, and conditional statements.

The MagPi Issue 105 is available at all good supermarkets and newsagents, online with global delivery, or as a Creative Commons-licensed DRM-free no-cost PDF download on the official website.

The MagPi, Issue 104

The MagPi Issue 104Inside The MagPi Magazine this month you’ll find five pages of step-by-step tutorial walking through the creation of a functional traffic light simulator using the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board – taken from my latest book, Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico: The Official Guide.

All the projects in the book, the traffic light simulator being no exception, work step-by-step in building the simplest possible incarnation of each then adding increasing complexity – and in doing so introducing new concepts. In the case of the traffic light simulator, it starts off as a simple set of three LEDs which are under timed control.

As the project progresses, the reader adds a button to act as a trigger for a pedestrian crossing – which adds the concept of threading, taking advantage of the second CPU core on the Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040 microcontroller – before finishing the project with a buzzer providing audible feedback for when it’s safe to cross.

The MagPi Issue 104 is available in all good supermarkets and newsagents now, online with global delivery, or as a Creative Commons-licensed DRM-free PDF download on the official website.

The MagPi, Issue 103

MagPi Issue 103This month’s The MagPi Magazine carries my six-page guide to getting started with physical computing projects using the newly-launched Raspberry Pi Pico, the first microcontroller in the Raspberry Pi family.

Taken from my book, Get Started with MicroPython on Raspberry Pi Pico: The Official Guide, the tutorial walks the reader through programming the Raspberry Pi Pico using MicroPython – starting with the physical computing equivalent of “hello, world,” lighting up an LED. No additional hardware is needed for this part: the Raspberry Pi Pico includes a surface-mount user-addressable LED at the top of the board.

The reader is then shown how solderless breadboards work, introduced to importing MicroPython libraries and handling delays, how external LEDs require resistors, how to read a button input, and finally how to put it al together into a simple circuit which can toggle the LED based on the user’s button presses.

The MagPi Issue 103 is available at all good supermarkets and newsagents, online with global delivery, or as a Creative Commons-licensed DRM-free no-cost PDF download on the official website.

HackSpace Magazine, Issue 14

HackSpace Magazine Issue 14This month’s HackSpace Magazines includes my review of an easy-to-use but surprisingly feature-rich robot from Dexter Industries: the BBC micro:bit-powered GiggleBot.

At first glance, the GiggleBot seems like a straightforward two-motor wheeled robot chassis. A closer look, though, reveals where it differs from the norm: RGB LEDs, a built-in line-following sensor, Grove headers for additional hardware, and even a pair of servo headers to add additional motion into the mix.

All this hardware is controlled from a standard BBC micro:bit microcontroller board, and doesn’t interfere with any of its existing components – meaning you’re still free to use the LED matrix display, compass, accelerometer, and Bluetooth radio, the latter even allowing you to use one BBC micro:bit as a handheld remote for another powering the robot.

For the full review you can either pop to your nearest supermarket or newsagent for a print copy of the magazine or, as with all Raspberry Pi Press publications, you can download a Creative Commons licensed digital version free of charge from the official website.

The MagPi, Issue 77

The MagPi Issue 77If you’ve ever wanted to tackle an electronics project but didn’t quite know where to start, my latest article for The MagPi Magazine should get you up and running: it’s a look at resources for learning beginner-level electronics.

Centred, naturally enough, around the Raspberry Pi itself, my feature walks through a number of different resources: books, including Phil King’s Simple Electronics with GPIO Zero, all-in-one electronics kits of components and project sheets, online courses, and video tutorials for everything from connected LEDs and switches to the Raspberry Pi through to core concepts surrounding precisely what electricity is and how it works.

As with all Raspberry Pi Press publications, The MagPi Issue 77 is available for free download under a Creative Commons licence from the official website, or you can pick up physical copies in your favourite newsagent, supermarket, or from the comfort of wherever you are right now via the Raspberry Pi Press Store.

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner's GuideToday sees the release of The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, my latest educational book on the remarkable single-board computer and its software and the first to be made available for free download and redistribution courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribition-ShareAlike-NoCommercial licence.

Written in partnership with Raspberry Pi Press, The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide walks newcomers through a tour of the Raspberry Pi and what it can do, setting up both the hardware and the software, learning how to navigate the Raspbian desktop, how to write programs in Scratch 2 and Python 3, and even building custom circuits that use the Raspberry Pi’s general-purpose input-output (GPIO) header. If that weren’t enough, there are chapters on using the Sense HAT add-on board, the Raspberry Pi Camera Module, and a handy list of additional resources for when you’ve finally exhausted the book itself.

While it’s my name on the cover, this book is very much a team effort. I’d like to thank everyone at Raspberry Pi Press who was involved in its creation, from the authors of the original projects pulled in and updated in this new publication to eternally-patient project editor Phil King, fantastic technical editor Simon Long, amazing illustrator Sam Alder, and a whole host of others without whom the book would be nowhere near as good as it has turned out.

The book is available to buy now in all good newsagents, supermarkets, and bookstores, or direct from Raspberry Pi Press. The digital edition, as a Creative Commons-licensed PDF without any digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, is available from The MagPi website now.

Benchmarking the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+

Back in March, the release of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+—the Pi 3 B+ to its friends—brought a chance to take stock and review just how far the project had come since its launch via a series of benchmarks. Now the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ brings a bold claim: a dramatic drop in size, weight, and price over the Pi 3 B+, but without any loss in performance.

In other words: it’s benchmark time once again.

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Custom PC, Issue 184

Custom PC Issue 184Hobby Tech this month takes a look at a trio of very different products: the Clockwork GameShell modular hand-held console, the Dexter GiggleBot BBC micro:bit-powered robot, and the Coinkite Coldcard hardware cryptocurrency wallet.

First, the Coldcard. Designed by the company behind the Opendime (reviewed in Issue 175, and dead due to an apparent design flaw a week later), the Coldcard is roughly the size of a small stack of credit cards but provides a full hardware wallet for the Bitcoin and Litecoin cryptocurrencies. At least, that’s the theory: sadly, in practice, the device proved difficult to use owing to software glitches, hardware flaws, and a lack of third-party software support which reduces you to using only one wallet package to interface with the Coldcard.

The GiggleBot, by contrast, is a significantly more polished product. While the documentation still needs work, the robot itself – featured two individually-addressable motors, a line- or light-following sensor board, RGB LEDs, and expansion potential from Grove-compatible connectors and a pair of servo headers – is exceptionally impressive, and a great introduction to basic robotics for younger programmers. Those looking to make the leap from the block-based MakeCode environment to Python, though, will discover that the two libraries are far from equivalent in terms of feature availability – something that, again, will hopefully be addressed in the future.

Finally, the Clockwork GameShell. Produced following a successful crowdfunding campaign, the device is based around a Raspberry Pi-like single-board computer dubbed the Clockwork Pi and runs a customised Linux distribution with neat menu system. Its internals, interestingly, are modular, with each contained inside a snap-together transparent plastic housing – a decision which makes for a slightly bulky Game Boy-like outer shell and, sadly, is the direct cause of some overheating problems for the system-on-chip (SoC) during more intensive games like Quake. These issues, though, are largely outweighed by sheer novelty value: a few minutes of FreeDoom in the palm of your hand is sure to raise a smile.

The full reviews can be read in Custom PC Issue 184, available from your nearest supermarket, newsagent, or digitally via Zinio and similar services.

Custom PC, Issue 183

Custom PC Issue 183In Hobby Tech this month, there’s a look at a project which has genuinely transformed my mornings, a tiny temperature-controlled soldering iron with a hackable firmware, and the latest brain-melting program-’em-up from Zachtronics.

Starting with the game first, Exapunks caught my eye as soon as I saw it announced by developer Zachtronics. Taking the assembler programming concept of earlier titles TIS-100 and Shenzhen-IO, Exapunks wraps them up in a 90s near-future cyberpunk aesthetic alongside a plot driven by a disease called “the phage” which turns victims into non-functional computers. Because of course it does.

Anyone familiar with Zachtronics’ work will know what to expect, but Exapunks really dials things up. From the puzzles themselves – including one inspired by an early scene in the classic film Hackers – to, in a first for the format, the introduction of real though asynchronous multiplayer on top of the standard leaderboard metrics, Exapunks excels from start to oh-so-tricky finish.

The MiniWare TS100 soldering iron, meanwhile, sounds like it could be straight from Exapunks – or, given its name, TS-100: a compact temperature-controlled soldering iron with built-in screen and an open-source firmware you can hack to control everything from default operating temperature to how long before it enters power-saving “sleep mode.” While far from a perfect design – and since supplanted by the TS80, not yet available from UK stockists – the TS100 is an interesting piece of kit, with its biggest flaw being the need to use a grounding strap to avoid a potentially component-destroying floating voltage at the iron’s tip.

Finally, the project: an effort, using only off-the-shelf software tied together in a Bash shell script, to print out a schedule of the days’ tasks on my Dymo LabelWriter thermal printer. Using the code detailed in the magazine, the project pulls together everything from weather forecasts to my ongoing tasks and Google Calendar weekly schedule – along with a word of the day and, just because, a fortune cookie read out by an ASCII-art cow.

All this, and a variety of other topics, is available in the latest Custom PC Magazine on newsagent and supermarket shelves or electronically via Zinio and similar services.