I have already posted about the Energenie wireless remote control sockets. I’ve now had chance to look through one of their other products – which is an infrared remote control socket. This is a power saving socket allowing a TV and associated equipment to be fully powered off from the mains socket using the normal […]

I’ve been running XBMC using RaspBMC on a Raspberry Pi for some time. I’ve digitised my music and videos and this allows me to watch them on various TVs around the home accessing from a central server PC. Recently the XBMC project has now renamed itself as Kodi to reflect that it has changed from […]

Having already done some work with LCD displays on the Arduino I had been looking for a project to use one with the Raspberry Pi. Wiring this up was a bit messy until the MyPiFi LCD display board came along. The problem I then had was that I couldn’t fit the MyPiFi LCD onto the […]

This Halloween I created an indoor halloween light effect using a Raspberry Pi and a PIR sensor. Unlike previous years my children weren’t really involved in making this one, which is because my 9 year old daughter decided to create her own Raspberry Pi based Halloween Project. She has created a Raspberry Pi, Makey Makey […]

It’s useful to be able to turn mains electricity on using a computer program. Whilst it’s not hard to create an electronic circuit that can switch mains voltages, if not done correctly it can be dangerous. This is where the remote control sockets can be used to create a physical barrier between the low voltage […]

It’s not often that you see a Raspberry Pi workshop, a team from (soon to be???) the worlds fastest car and some llamas in the same room, but that’s what you’d find at this years school’s day at the Malvern Festival of Innovation. I was there as a STEM Ambassador helping out on the Raspberry […]

PyCon UK is the UK conference for the Python programming language, held annually at Coventry. PyconUK is attended by many professional developers, but has recently added an education day to the line up. Last year was the first day that kids were specifically invited through the PyCon UK Raspberry Jam. For 2014 this evolved into […]

The HDMI Pi screen for the Raspberry Pi has now been made and is shipping to the kickstart supporters. It’s been a long wait, although much of that is due to changes and improvements in the design and we’ve been kept informed about the progress. So was it worth it ? … Yes! The final […]

During the second world war Bletchley Park was home to the Government Code and Cypher School and played a critical role deciphering encrypted messages. I first visited a several years ago before it was opened to the public, it seamed a shame then that such an important part of British history wasn’t more accessible. Since […]

One of the things I’ve been doing as a STEM Ambassador is to help support a Raspberry Pi club at a local high school. At first the club was led by the sixth form students, with the teachers and myself helping out as required. This was working well at first, but with many of the […]