Raspberry Pi: 21 Brilliant Projects

Raspberry Pi: 21 Brilliant ProjectsA few months ago I was approached by PC Pro’s Priti Patel with a project proposal: a MagBook featuring a number of interesting projects for the low-cost Raspberry Pi microcomputer. I, naturally, jumped at the chance, and the fruit – pun entirely intended, I’m afraid – of my labour is now available.

Entitled Raspberry Pi: 21 Brilliant Projects, the MagBook features 141 full-colour pages of projects designed for beginner to intermediate users. The introductory projects are, as you might expect, gentle indeed: unboxing and connecting the Pi, installing an operating system via the New Out-Of-Box Software (NOOBS), and the like. From there, the MagBook then covers four project categories: Productivity, Entertainment, Plug-In Hardware and DIY & Advanced.

In the Productivity chapter, I walk the reader through safely overclocking the Pi to boost its performance, sharing a keyboard and mouse with a desktop without the need to move any cables, using the Pi as a thin client for a desktop or laptop running Windows, OS X or Linux, setting up a TOR proxy, and installing and running the popular WordPress blogging platform.

In Entertainment, readers see how to convert any TV with HDMI, DVI, SCART or composite video inputs into a smart TV, work with Minecraft Pi Edition, emulate vintage gaming platforms, and build a headless Internet radio receiver.

For the Plug-In Hardware chapter, I wrote up how to build a digital photo frame, the use of USB-connected application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to mine Bitcoins, a Twitter-powered motion-sensing security system, how to configure the Pi for fully wireless use, and how to combine the power of the Pi with that of the Arduino microcontroller.

Finally, in the DIY & Advanced section, the reader learns how to use the Pi’s general-purpose input-output (GPIO) capabilities to build a traffic light system, create a doorbell that sends Twitter messages when activated, drive motors for a robotics system, build a custom arcade controller, create an Internet of Things printer, and how to cluster multiple Raspberry Pi units together to boost performance.

The MagBook is available in supermarkets and newsagents now, and will soon start shipping from Amazon UK for £9.99.

Raspberry Pi for Kids

Raspberry Pi for KidsThose of you who follow my every move may remember a few projects I created for Dennis Publishing’s Computeractive publication, centring around the Raspberry Pi and Arduino single-board systems – in particular the three-part series walking newcomers through creating software and hardware accessories for the Pi, which proved extremely popular with readers. So popular, in fact, that Dennis has extracted the tutorial on building a switch-based game controller and republished it in the MagBook Raspberry Pi for Kids.

If you missed it the first time around, the tutorial was designed as the follow-up to an earlier guide on writing a simple snake game in Python. Using microswitches, resistors, a segment of stripboard and a soldering iron, readers are shown how to add a dedicated game controller – connected through the Pi’s general-purpose input-output (GPIO) header – to the system and modify the game’s source code accordingly. Reader feedback was good, and the relatively simple circuit makes it a logical choice for the MagBook’s target audience – although younger kids should, naturally, be supervised when using a soldering iron.

The MagBook also makes heavy use of my photography, both in my tutorial and throughout the rest of the publication where various images of my Pis can be found gracing its pages. Sadly, in an editorial oversight, my name appears to have been missed off the list of contributors – but I’m sure that will be quickly corrected in a future edition.

The Raspberry Pi for Kids MagBook is available in newsagents and supermarkets now, or via Amazon.