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#151 | March 2025

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Industrial Raspberry Pi
ComfilePi
 Welcome

Welcome to
Raspberry Pi
Official Magazine

Editor
Lucy Hattersley
T his is an incredibly important edition of the magazine
formerly known as The MagPi. We’ve now got full official
status and are now known as Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
I love change, but it’s important to remember where you are from. So
we’re keeping everything else familiar to those of you who see this as the
Lucy is trying to make
151st edition of The MagPi. If you appreciated our old magazine, you’ll
RPOM a thing! If we
say it enough; it will love Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. It looks different but is packed with the
happen. RPOM! same amazing Raspberry Pi projects, tutorials, and features.
We’ve got a huge troubleshooting guide updated for Raspberry Pi
[Link]
OS with Debian Bookworm. Armed with this guide, you’ll be a better
Raspberry Pi maker and builder. We tapped into the Raspberry Pi
engineering team for advice and feedback so you can be sure everything
works as intended.
Rob has written a complete guide to building your own maker space.
So if you want a cave for all your tools, this is the way to do it. And
Andrew has been chatting to the maker of an amazing synth with
hexagonal keys.
I hope you enjoy the new-look magazine and find it both refreshing
and familiar at the same time. We really can’t do this without our
readers and subscribers. Thank you for spending time with us.

Lucy Hattersley – Editor

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 3

 Contents

Contents

World of Raspberry Pi 10

010 Hacking Challenge Results

014 Steam Link updated

018 Clever concrete compute

020 Subscribe to Raspberry Pi

Official Magazine

Project Showcase

022 HexBoard

026 Mini Air Hockey 38

030 Portable Air Quality Meter

034 Raspberry Pi Chess Board

038 Fruitbox Jukebox

26

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is published monthly by Raspberry Pi Ltd., 194 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, England, CB4 0AB. Publishers Service Associates, 2406 Reach Road, Williamsport, PA 17701
is the mailing agent for copies distributed in the US. Periodicals Postage paid at Williamsport PA. Send address changes to Raspberry Pi c/o Publishers Service Associates, 2406 Reach Road, Williamsport, PA 17701.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 5

 80
Top Projects

044 Stealth Macintosh Portable

046 Whispering wires

048 Pomodoro Bot

050 Vertical Runner

052 3D print showcase

Tutorials
Feature
068 Get started with Sense HAT V2
54
076 Build a private cloud server –
part 5: Getting social

080 Build a Raspberry Pi 500 home

recording studio – part 2

084 Custom CNC machine: carbon

filament winder – part 2

090 Dehydrate fruit, vegetables,

and herbs

Feature
96
054 
Problem Solving: troubleshoot your
Raspberry Pi errors with our expert guide

096 
Maker Tools: fill your maker space with
the right stuff

6 Contents
7
 112

116

Reviews

104 
Only the best: Mini displays

110 ED-IPC3100 industrial

computer

112 
Top 10: Raspberry Pi 5
accessories

Raspberry Pi Community 126

116 
Interview: NetworkChuck

118 This Month in Raspberry Pi

122 Your Letters

124 Community Events Calendar

Competition

Win 1 of 5 PiFi Kits

126

Disclaimer: Some of the tools and techniques shown in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine are dangerous unless used with skill, experience, and appropriate personal protection equipment. While we attempt to guide the reader,
ultimately you are responsible for your own safety and understanding the limits of yourself and your equipment. Children should be supervised. Raspberry Pi Ltd does not accept responsibility for any injuries, damage to
equipment, or costs incurred from projects, tutorials or suggestions in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. Laws and regulations covering many of the topics in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine are different between countries,
and are always subject to change. You are responsible for understanding the requirements in your jurisdiction and ensuring that you comply with them. Some manufacturers place limits on the use of their hardware which
some projects or suggestions in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine may go beyond. It is your responsibility to understand the manufacturer’s limits.

8 Contents
Raspberry Pi finds a new home
Versatile enclosure for Raspberry Pi B+
The new UCS Universal Case System is now available with ready made cut-outs for
the 7” touch display and standard connections of the Raspberry Pi B+ single board
computers. The 237 x 195 x 47mm housings are available in black or grey and are
suitable for wall or desktop mounting

For additional information call 01952 681700 or visit

[Link]
RP2350 Hacking
Challenge
How Raspberry Pi is improving security through
transparency and an open approach to security
engineering. By Lucy Hattersley

R aspberry Pi has announced the

winners of its recent RP2350
Hacking Challenge.
To coincide with the DEF CON hacking
conference in August 2024, where RP2350
single‑instruction fault with supply-
voltage injection’ by Marius Muench,
‘Signature check single-instruction fault
with laser injection’ by Kévin Courdesses,
and ‘Extracting antifuse secrets from
featured on the conference badge, a prize RP2350 by FIB/PVC’ by IOActive. More
of $10,000 was offered to the first person details on each hack can be found in
to demonstrate the ability to bypass the this article.
chip’s security architecture and read a “We’d like to thank everyone who
secret value from the on-chip one-time- participated in the challenge,” says
programmable (OTP) memory. The prize Eben. “While the rules specify a single
was later doubled to $20,000, and the $20,000 prize for the ‘best’ attack, we
deadline extended from September to were so impressed by the quality of the
December 2024. submissions that we have chosen to pay
On 14 Jan 2025, Eben Upton, Raspberry the prize in full for each of them.
Pi co‑founder and CEO, stated: “We’re “As expected, we’ve learned a lot,”
pleased (ish) to announce that we received Eben continues. “In particular, we’ve
not one but four valid submissions.” revised downward our estimate of the
effectiveness of our glitch detection
S The RP2350 based badge handed out at The winners scheme; the difficulty of reliably injecting
DEF CON, containing a secret value The winners are: ‘Hazardous threes’ multiple faults even in the presence of
created by Aedan Cullen, ‘USB bootloader timing uncertainty; and the cost and

10 RP2350 Hacking Challenge

 The World of Raspberry Pi

Security through transparency

is here to stay

complexity of laser fault injection. We’ll

take these lessons into account as we work
to harden future chips and anticipated
future steppings of RP2350.”
While this challenge is over, another
one will soon start. Raspberry Pi is
working on an implementation of AES
which is hardened against side-channel
attacks, and expects to offer a prize for the
first person to demonstrate the ability to
extract an AES key via differential power
analysis or other non-invasive methods.
Says Eben: “All vendors have security
vulnerabilities in their chips.” He adds,
“We are unusual because we talk about
them, and aim to fix them, rather than
brushing them under the carpet. Security S Raspberry Pi RP2350
through transparency is here to stay.”

Hazardous threes – Aedan Cullen

RP2350 features “antifuse” OTP (One Time Programmable) memory. An
antifuse is the opposite of a fuse, in that a permanent low-resistance
connection is created when a voltage is applied between two points on
the chip.

When RP2350 turns on it reads security-critical settings from OTP memory.

To ensure that the OTP is correctly powered before reading security critical
settings, it first checks that it can successfully read a fixed “guard word”,
with the value 0x333333.

If the power is unstable, the guard word check should fail. However, the
OTP remembers the last successful read. If the attacker cuts power at
the right time – just after a guard read has occurred – the chip reads
0x333333 instead of the real setting, which allows an attacker to disable
security protections.

More information can be found on Aeden’s GitHub page:

[Link]/hackingrp2350git. He also explains the method in a
video: [Link]/hackingrp2350vid. S Hazardous threes. Image courtesy of Aedan Cullen

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 11

 Signature check single-instruction fault
with laser injection – Kévin Courdesses
USB bootloader
single-instruction RP2350 contains glitch detectors which aim to
prevent attackers from skipping instructions
to be validated loads into RAM – causes the
hash function to be computed using a different
fault with supply- by glitching the power supply. Kévin’s attack, image from that which is to be executed.

voltage injection however, uses lasers to skip an instruction

without disturbing the glitch detectors, Detailed information can be found in Kévin’s
– Marius Muench bypassing parts of the boot security system. paper here: [Link]/rp2350laserinj. “No
mitigation is available for this attack, which has
Kévin’s laser applies a brief pulse to the back been assigned erratum number E24,” says Eben.
A foundational security feature of RP2350 is
of the die, which has been exposed away by “It is likely to be addressed in a future stepping
secure boot. This restricts RP2350 to only run
grinding parts of the package. Injecting a single of RP2350.”
code signed with a specific private key.
precisely timed fault – just after the firmware

Marius’ attack tricks RP2350 into running

malicious unsigned code by first loading
the code into memory, before rebooting
the system and glitching the power supply
at a precisely chosen moment to skip an
instruction. This tricks RP2350 into selecting
a special reboot mode, which restarts at a
user-specified memory location – in this case
the location of the malicious code.

RP2350 is consequently tricked into

executing the malicious code loaded into the
system beforehand.

Marius says: “While this break may seem

straightforward in retrospect, reality is quite
different. Identifying and exploiting these
types of issues is far from trivial. Overall, this
hacking challenge was a multi-month project
for me, with many dead-ends explored along
the way and countless iterations of attack
code and setups to confirm or refute potential
findings. Nonetheless, I had plenty of fun
digging deep into the intricacies of the new
RP2350 microcontroller, and I would like to S Signature check single-instruction
thank Raspberry Pi and Hextree for hosting fault with laser injection. Image
courtesy of Kévin Courdesses
the challenge!”

12 RP2350 Hacking Challenge

 The World of Raspberry Pi

Extracting antifuse secrets from RP2350 by FIB/PVC –

IOActive
This attack attempts to extract information directly from the OTP memory
using an analysis technique called Passive Voltage Contrast (PVC) with a
Focused Ion Beam (FIB).

Unlike other attacks, which glitch the system into revealing its secrets, this
attack physically examines the system to recover hidden data.

The attack has limits. It currently recovers the bitwise OR of two physically
adjacent memory cells. “With some per-bit effort it may be possible for an
attacker to separate the even/odd cell values,” speculates Eben.

This attack is believed to have broad applicability to all antifuse-based

memories. Dr Andrew Zonenberg, who led the technical team on this
project along with Antony Moor, Daniel Slone, Lain Agan, and Mario Cop,
commented: “Our team found a unique attack vector for reading data out
of antifuse memory, which we intend to further develop. Those who rely
S Extracting antifuse secrets from RP2350 by FIB/PVC. on antifuse memory for confidentiality should immediately reassess their
Image courtesy of IOActive security posture.”

Glitch detector evaluation, and OTP read double-instruction

fault with EM injection – Hextree
Raspberry Pi also commissioned the Hextree team ([Link]) to evaluate
RP2350’s secure boot process. They found that the glitch detectors can
detect many voltage glitch attacks, but the rate of undetected glitches is
high enough to make attacks feasible (albeit with some effort).

Raspberry Pi would also like to express gratitude to Colin O’Flynn

and his team at NewAE ([Link]) for collaborating with both
us and Thomas Roth / Hextree on this advanced silicon security
research, as well as enabling us with their fantastic ChipWhisperer
kit ([Link]/chipwhisperer).

S RP2350 Target Board for ChipWhisperer.

Image courtesy of NewAE and Fritz

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 13

Steam Link updated
Updated version of Steam Link for Raspberry Pi
is now available. By Lucy Hattersley

S
S VirtualHere detecting devices
in Raspberry Pi OS
team Link, the popular video gaming streaming
software, has had a series of updates for Raspberry
Pi. The latest 1.3.5 BETA version was released on
8 February and introduces support for VirtualHere in Raspberry
Pi OS Bookworm.
With Steam Link software installed on a Raspberry Pi, you
can stream video games from any computer on your local
Stream video games network or over the internet running Steam software. In effect,
this extends your PC video games to stream at any location in
from any computer the house. It’s especially useful for streaming video games
from a PC (located in the house) to a console-style Raspberry Pi
on your local network connected to your home television.
We tested it out with a Steam Deck handheld device and a
Raspberry Pi 5 running Steam Link software.
VirtualHere is a Steam Link device upgrade that enables
you to use the Xbox One Wireless Controller alongside
“steering wheels, microphone, headphones, flight sticks, PS3
controllers, Bluetooth adapters, and many other USB devices
directly on your Steam Link device.”

14 Steam Link updated

 The World of Raspberry Pi

Installing Steam
It improves the compatibility of gaming controllers because S VirtualHere Link
it transmits the actual USB signal between Steam Link and activated in
the remote computer. The remote computer (in this case our Steam Deck on
To install Steam Link yourself, grab yourself an
Raspberry Pi) thinks the gaming controller is local to it. Raspberry Pi
up-to-date Raspberry Pi OS image and type:
In our test, it detected an 8BitDo Retro Keyboard and the
Raspberry Pi Official Mouse.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
A difficult challenge sudo apt install steamlink
Writing on the Raspberry Pi blog in December, Raspberry Pi
CTO (Software) Gordon Hollingworth explained how Steam
Double-click the Steam Link icon on the
Link was integrated into his household. “With Steam Link, our
desktop to start the software. Click the ‘?’
kids can – OK, we can – play PC games on any computer in the
icon and choose ‘Switch to beta build’ to view
house, without having to lug the PC around. And now, you can
the latest features. Switch back to the ‘public
run Steam Link on your Raspberry Pi 5!
build’ to use the latest safe version.
“Steam Link is tackling some quite difficult challenges to
enable us to play graphics-heavy games remotely,” explains

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 15

X Playing Pacific Drive
on Raspberry Pi 5
via Steam Deck

Steam Link is tackling some

quite difficult challenges
Gordon. “Firstly, screen sharing is not normally optimised for
sending high-quality images, since you have to work quite T Viewing the Steam
hard to keep both the bitrate and the latency down; you also Deck interface remotely
don’t normally transmit audio as well as video, and you need to on a Raspberry Pi
do a bit of magic to talk to game controllers. So the smart folks
at Valve have successfully solved quite a few hard problems to
bring this into being.”
Valve senior software engineer Sam Lantinga has been
working on getting Steam Link to run on Raspberry Pi 5. “The
previous method used to run Steam Link on Raspberry Pi OS
no longer worked very well after we moved away from the
closed-source Broadcom multimedia libraries,” says Gordon.
“With Wayland, a different approach was needed. Sam has
been working with the Raspberry Pi software team to use our
hardware in the most efficient way possible.”
Sam has been able to get Steam Link working at some
amazing rates on Raspberry Pi 5, including 4Kp60 and even
1080p240 (240 frames-per-second; you’ll need a suitable
monitor for that.)

16 Steam Link updated

 Get game design tips and
tricks from the masters
Download and play game
examples inspired by classics
Learn how to code your own
games with Pygame Zero
Explore the code listings and

Code the Classics Volume II not only tells the

stories of some of the seminal videogames of the
1980s, but shows you how to create your own games
inspired by them using Python and Pygame Zero,
following examples co-programmed by Andrew Gillett
and Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton.

Available now: [Link]/store

Clever concrete
compute
Slump sensor puts Raspberry Pi to innovative use.
By Chris Boross

L ately, well-crafted connected

devices that feature wireless
sensors and
cost compute hardware have been
reliable,

revolutionising many ‘unconnected’

low-

industries, services, and applications.

One such industry and service is the
delivery of pre-mixed concrete.

Mounting MixPilot
Canadian Raspberry Pi customer Giatec
([Link]) recently launched
a unique and very clever product called
MixPilot ([Link]/mixpilot). MixPilot
gets mounted to concrete delivery
trucks and, through the use of sensors
and algorithms, can monitor various
aspects of concrete being delivered,
including a property known as
its ‘slump’. This is measured

X Two sensors
send data to a
gateway. Image via
[Link]

18 Clever concrete compute

 The World of Raspberry Pi

MixPilot gets
mounted a form or mould, as otherwise it might
S One of MixPilot’s
benefits is its
not flow correctly to fill the volume,
to concrete leaving voids – bad news if you want a
‘set and forget’
aspect. Here it is

delivery trucks structurally sound construction.

To deliver MixPilot, Giatec built a
being fitted

highly reliable wireless gateway based

to ensure the quality of the concrete and on Compute Module 4 and paired it with
give the fleet operators more visibility two custom sensors that wirelessly
into the trucks and their payload, as send their sensor readings back to the
well as bringing other new operational gateway, where the data is processed
benefits. Part of the product’s charm and the concrete payload’s status is
is that it’s easy to install on the truck: displayed to the truck operator. The
it’s ‘set and forget’, and doesn’t require gateway is then connected to Giatec’s
much maintenance. cloud via cellular, allowing for further
Slump is a measurement of how well data processing as well as providing
concrete flows when it’s poured. It is the end customer with a cloud console
important for the slump to be in the right to enable useful features, such as alerts
range when the concrete is poured into and fleet-wide stats.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 19

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Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 21
HexBoard 01

A unique way to make music.

By Andrew Gregory

M
02
usical instruments are
dependent on physics and
maths for their sounds.
A guitar string changes pitch when its
physical properties change, be that
string thickness, tension or length. A
note from a saxophone, or any wind
Maker instrument, changes according to the
Jared DeCook length of the instrument that the air
Stay-at-home dad of is vibrating through. Any physical
two wonderful (and instrument needs to have some physical
very small) kids. I property that the player must interact
primarily work on my with in order to play music, and this
projects during nap naturally limits who can play, and what
time, but I love finding can be played.
parts we can work At least, that’s how it always was.
on together. With MIDI and computers, this no longer
has to be true. The instrument that
[Link] you play is nothing more than an input
device, like a keyboard and a mouse, and
as such, it can be any shape or size that
the maker wants. In this case, the maker
Jared DeCook, maker of the HexBoard, connecting to hardware MIDI devices. It
has chosen to make a grid of hexagonal has a very basic built-in sound generator
keys and RGB LEDs, all controlled by a that can play over headphones or built-
Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip. in speaker, which is nice for when
you want a quick and simple setup. All
Custom controller the unused pins from the RP2040 are
“The HexBoard is primarily a MIDI exposed as headers on the board for ease
instrument, which means that it of hackability for those interested in
sends note information to software or taking the hardware farther.”
hardware sound generators that play On a piano, each key has two notes on
the sounds based on the notes you play,” either side of it; on the HexBoard, each
Jared tells us. “It has a USB-C connector key is touching six further keys, so you
for connecting to MIDI software on can physically reach more notes with
a computer and a TRS MIDI jack for one hand – which is useful if you don’t

22 HexBoard
 Project Showcase

01. The HexBoard has 140 individual mechanical

switches, each with a 3D-printed keycap lit
by an addressable RGB LED

02. The unusual keyboard gives rise to unique

chord shapes and melodic ideas

have massive mitts like Franz Liszt or Why use an RP2040?

Jimi Hendrix. “The RP2040 chip is the brains of the
“The lit-up hexagonal keys allow whole project,” he adds. “It reads the
for many different note layouts while buttons, sets the lights, updates the
indicating which note is which using screen, sends MIDI data, and generates
colours,” says Jared. “The different simple sound waves. No proprietary
layouts included make it easy to play software is needed to run this as it’s all
chords using simple finger shapes that handled by the RP2040.
don’t change depending on the key, unlike “I appreciate how I can use PIO to
an instrument like the piano. I designed handle updating the LEDs without
the keycaps in TinkerCAD and designed blocking the CPU. I selected this chip
the frame in Blender. I print everything on for this project as it had all the I/O my
the Bambu Lab P1S, which just barely fits project required with a good amount
the frame into the build area.” of headroom for future developments.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 23

 T Jared launched the HexBoard in May
2023, and has since overhauled the
design to make it easier to assemble and
repair, and to add new features

I come up with different ideas on the

HexBoard than I do on a standard
musical keyboard

That, plus it was very available during different ideas on the HexBoard than I do
the big chip shortage that occurred in on a standard musical keyboard.
the early stages of this project.” “With the latest update, it’s now a
While big companies may relentlessly useful tool for those experimenting in
focus group products to make sure microtonal music. The compact size
they find an audience, Jared originally and wide range make it very useful for
made the HexBoard for a pretty small musicians who want access to a large
audience: himself. We reckon argue this number of keys while still being able
might have enabled him to focus on to easily carry it around in a backpack.
making the HexBoard awesome. Beyond this, the colourful lights and
“Originally, I made it for me and my animations make it plain fun for anyone
brother,” he recalls. “I wanted a fun, to play around with.”
hackable instrument that looked cool
and was relatively easy to learn. I’m
quite happy with where I am on that, so Quick FACTS
I’d say the maker/hacker/musician is
my primary target. ƒ Jared built a similar device in 2013,
“As the project has advanced, it’s inspired by the Axis 49 instrument…
become useful to a variety of people. A
beginner musician can use it to start ƒ …when this started to fail in 2021, he began
learning basic chords and melodies. Any work on the HexBoard
given melody or chord has the same
shape/movement no matter what key ƒ It originally used a Teensy LC board as the
you are in, so in many ways it has a source of the processing power…
simpler learning curve.
“A music producer can use the various ƒ …but this was replaced with an RP2040-
layouts to spark inspiration as each based module designed by Jared
different layout gives a unique way
to consider the relationships between ƒ HexBoard is still under development, with
notes. I know for me, I come up with new features being added all the time

24 HexBoard
 Project Showcase

How to build a HexBoard

1. Design a custom PCB with all the ports you need, breakouts to the
RP2040 module, and room for 140 mechanical switches.

2. Solder the switches in place, then fire up the 3D printer and get to
work creating a grid of tessellating hexagons.

S The screen enables users to navigate 3. Meanwhile, create your own custom RP2040-based board – add
through the many layout options offered
this to the PCB to handle all the ins, outs, and programming.
by the HexBoard

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 25

Mini Air Hockey
games table
Offering a physical workout as well as a tactical
one, this Raspberry Pi-controlled games table is
a fun build. By Rosie Hattersley

F or the past 15 years, Chris

Downing has been part of a
community that
TV console games and turns them
takes

into portable versions using original

old
Given his interest in retro gaming,
Chris didn’t want a plain vanilla air
hockey table, instead envisaging one
with a DOOM theme and plenty of
additional gameplay options. He’s “a
hardware wherever possible, posting designer and fabricator at heart” with
details on his site, Downing’s Basement plenty of technical knowledge from
Maker ([Link]). Raspberry his retro games builds. As well as the
Chris Downing Pi had “always been in the scene”, mini air hockey table, Chris already
Chris is “a 42-year-old with many hobbyists using it to make had a suitable ATX power supply, a fan
console modder portable emulation handhelds, “which in to cushion the pucks, and scoreboard
from the backwoods its own right was very cool”, says Chris, screens. He used CAD software to design
of central New even though it was against the group’s
Hampshire” while “purist original hardware culture”.
CrashBash is a Nonetheless, when it came time to create
fellow modder and his own Doom-playing Mini Air Hockey
software engineer. Table and scoreboard, he instinctively
turned to Raspberry Pi.
[Link]
Multicoloured swap shop
A change of company gave Chris access
to bigger and more robust CNC routing
tools and large flatbed printers, while a
Yankee swap at the office party netted
him a kids’ mini air hockey table that
went down a storm with his 5- and
X The Hyperion
lights mimic the 7-year-old children. This spurred Chris
action when a on to create his own, using the Raspberry
games console Pi 2B he’d bought for a portable project
is attached that had never materialised.

26 Mini Air Hockey games table

 Project Showcase

02

01

01. Flashing lights in the legs and a

celebratory sound are triggered when a
point is scored on this Raspberry Pi Zero
air hockey table

02. A video wall of LEDs underneath the

1/8-inch thick acrylic playing field are
controlled using a Raspberry Pi build of
Hyperion open-source software

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 27

and 3D-print parts for the screen housing in person. As a result, recalls CrashBash,
and other structural elements. However, “the theme of the software-side was to,
he needed an LED controller and an OS for an extent, to make it able to be hacked
the scoreboard interface and automatic together in such a way that it could be
score-detecting puck traps. mostly completed in a weekend”.
Raspberry Pi was used for the puck
T Chris
trap sensors and scoreboard inputs.
demonstrates
Quick FACTS CrashBash quickly realised that the
player modes
‘Hyperbian’ Raspberry Pi build of the
and other control
ƒ Goal-scoring sound effects are played by Hyperion Ambilight LED controller options in his
using aplay YouTube video:
[Link]/
ƒ Aplay plays a randomly selected audio file Raspberry Pi airhockeyvid

ƒ Delay-based ‘de-bouncing’ prevents players was used for

being wrongly awarded multiple goals
the puck trap
ƒ Air Hockey Doom mode actually allows you
to play a game of Doom
sensors and
scoreboard
ƒ Consoles and emulation mode are
all supported inputs

Play to your strengths would be ideal and could be easily

Chris says coding is his biggest Achilles’ integrated using a Bash script that
heel. “You play to your strengths the executes at boot. They would later add a
best you can, but when they fall short Raspberry Pi Pico and use leftover GPIO
in an area, having someone who can pins and a serial port to have lights flash
bridge the gap is invaluable.” In this on the scoreboard struts too.
case, Chris’s modding buddy CrashBash Hockey rink and DOOM hockey modes
was immensely more experienced use Python and the Ambilight Hyperbian
with Raspberry Pi and able to offer effects API to generate static along
professional software engineer input. with dynamic images such as DOOM’s
“This project would not have gotten fire mode. Hyperbian even includes the
anywhere near my vision without his option to create a video wall in which
help,” says Chris. the LEDs recreate the images from a
There was one slight problem: the composite video capture card. “You get
two men live more than 800 miles away a rather low and somewhat lagged live
from each other in different US time representation of what is being played
zones and would have a single weekend down on the main deck,” says Chris,
to work on the air hockey/DOOM project “but it still looks freaking cool!”

28 Mini Air Hockey games table

 Project Showcase

Ready player one

1. Adapt an existing gaming rig or build your own, adding Raspberry

Pi, power supply, scoreboard display, fan to make the pucks ‘float’,
and any lights and speakers you wish.

S Chris designed and 3D-printed the

mode-specific scoreboard display

2. Downstall and install Hyperbian ([Link]/hyperbian), a

ready-to-use OS including the Hyperion LED controller. A string of
addressable LED lights attached to Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins can
be made to respond to the air hockey or gaming action.

3. CrashBash wrote a Python script for Raspberry Pi Pico that

recognises when a puck enters the trap, adjusting the score and
triggering Hyperion to play celebratory sounds and lights.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 29

Portable Air Quality
Meter
Monitor the air for pollutants in real-time with
this smart meter. By David Crookes

W hen you venture outside

and take a deep breath,
you expect to be inhaling
a heap of fresh air, particularly if you’re
in the countryside. But in truth, you’re
Meter was created with the intention of
measuring the degree of air pollution in
my city,” he explains. “Since we’d just
had an air quality issue in New Delhi,
where I live, I thought it would be a
just as likely to be filling your lungs good idea to try to develop a project to
with pollutants from dirt, dust, pollen measure the pollution level.”
Maker spores, gases, and even lead. There’s Delhi has suffered record pollution
Arnov Sharma just no getting away from the fact that levels of late with the Air Quality
Arnov describes a good percentage of air can be deemed Index (AQI) measuring as high as
himself as “just your unhealthy so being able to monitor it on- 1500 in November 2024. Toxic air of
average maker” but his the-go with a flick of a switch is almost this magnitude, which led to smog
talents for electronics, certain to be welcome news. descending over the area, is 15 times
embedded systems Arnov Sharma has created a handheld the level considered satisfactory
and PCB designing air quality meter which can use a for breathing by the World Health
has led to make some Raspberry Pi Pico 2 connected to a gas Organisation. It was so bad that schools
outstanding projects. sensor to display the current levels were temporarily closed, construction
of a host of hazards. “My Air Quality was halted, and flights were disrupted.
[Link]/
arnovsharma

X To test the build, Arnov used a breadboard

and simply connected the sensor and a
Raspberry Pi Pico 2

30 Portable Air Quality Meter

 Project Showcase

02

01

01. The screen displays the current air

quality as a number while also explaining
what that number means

02. The MQ135 gas sensor pokes out of

the top of the device and allows the
environment to be assessed

We’d just had an air quality

issue in New Delhi, where I live
What’s more, it hasn’t become infinitely fertiliser production. It helps to build a checking air quality,” Arnov says, of a
better since, with an AQI reading in general understanding of the air quality module that can be picked up for less
January 2025 showing the air has in any given location, Arnov says. than £10/$10. “It was handy for various
remained poor, albeit at a level of 262. So while Arnov’s meter doesn’t quite projects where I needed to monitor the
go as far as matching an AQI evaluation air around me, particularly in spotting
Turning detective – which also includes assessing the harmful gases. The best part is that it’s
With his project, Arnov has sought to PM2.5 and PM10 types of particulate super-easy to get hold of. It doesn’t burn
detect carbon dioxide, smoke, benzene, matter, along with oxygen, nitrogen a hole in your pocket, making it an all-
alcohol, nitrogen oxide and ammonia in dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and carbon around great pick.”
the air. In doing so, his resulting device monoxide – it’s still ultra-useful. What’s
is able to display the levels of gases more, he designed his meter so that it Displaying values
produced by the incomplete combustion would also be inexpensive, meaning this Arnov says planning the project was
of fossil fuels, wood and coal, as well as open-source project should be within simple. “I already had an idea of the
some of those pumped out by vehicles the reach of wide numbers of people. It components I wanted to use, which
and emitted from hazardous waste influenced his choice of components. was the PCBWay MQ135 sensor with
sites. The detection of ammonia is “I used the MQ135 sensor and found Raspberry Pi Pico 2 – Pico is my preferred
indicative of the amount of livestock it to be incredibly versatile for pollution microcontroller for projects unrelated
waste, decaying organic matter, and control, environmental monitoring, and to wireless LAN. I first created a basic

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 31

breadboard setup consisting of the Pico
and MQ135 sensor.” This allowed him
to make use of the sensor’s outputs:
one that generates an analogue voltage
signal based on the gas concentration
and a digital signal based on the gas
concentration beyond a threshold.
Having written a short program to
test the sensor’s readings, ensuring
it returned both analogue and digital
values, Arnov then looked to refine
the project further. To be effective, he
needed the readings to be displayed on
a screen – it shows the specific particle
levels in real time – so he chose a tiny,
0.96-inch SSD1306 OLED display, again
available for an extremely low price. “I
then constructed a body to house all of
the components inside a nice enclosure,”
he continues, explaining that he used
the CAD facilities of Autodesk Fusion
to complete the task. “This wasn’t
challenging: I have experience with Gas panic Regardless, the device works well.
industrial design, so creating a case was At this stage, Arnov made a big decision. Arnov used Arduino IDE to write the code
easy enough.” He swapped out the Raspberry Pi and upload it to the board. The program
Pico 2 microcontroller for a Firebeetle 2 takes the raw analogue value – of
ESP32-E, which may sound like between zero and 4095 – and reduces it to
Quick FACTS sacrilege but he had his reasons. Chief a range between zero and 1023 which is
among them was a lack of space in the needed for an air quality measurement.
ƒ Air quality is measured using the enclosure that led to a power-related It then helpfully describes the value as
MQ135 sensor issue. “I was using a lithium cell as a either very poor, poor, moderate, good,
power supply and, in order to charge or excellent so the user can immediately
ƒ Readings are displayed on a small the lithium cell, Pico would require the assess the current state of hazardous
OLED screen use of an additional board,” he explains. gases in the environment.
“Firebeetle has an on-board TP4056 So how has it fared? In tests, Arnov
ƒ The device detects numerous lithium cell charging circuit.” found that city readings ranged between
environmental gasses Yet, as he says, “Pico would be 550 and 620 regardless of whether he was
just as effective” and he has plans to close to a major road, industrial region,
ƒ Beginners can easily replicate this open- return to Raspberry Pi. “I will use the or green space. It’s proof, if any were
source project RP2040 chip directly on a custom PCB needed, that such gadgets could prove
that will also include a lithium cell useful in helping people prepare for
ƒ The maker wants to reduce the size using charging circuit,” he explains. As with unsafe environments – and that urgent
an RP2040 chip the Firebeetle, this would resolve the work is needed to improve matters in
problem of space. some parts of the world.

32 Portable Air Quality Meter

 Project Showcase

How It Works

W The casing was

1. Although the device has a large orange O and X displayed on the
designed to be
front, these are not operational and they’re merely aesthetic. The
3D-printed and,
as well as being only actual button is a power one which is placed on the left side
functional, Arnov of the meter.
added some
aesthetic flourishes

2. When the power button is pressed, the device calls upon the
MQ135 highly sensitive sensor, which can be easily connected
to Raspberry Pi. It measures gas concentration from 100 to
10,000 ppm and outputs an analogue value.

3. With the information sent to the microcontroller, Arnov’s code is

able to assess the sensor’s data for the current location and use
S To make it easier to carry and operate, Arnov it to calculate the current air quality value which is then displayed
made it possible to attach a keychain or ID on the screen.
card strap to the device

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 33

Raspberry Pi
Chess Board
Teenage strategist Tamerlan created a remote
chess board in which a Raspberry Pi-controlled robot
arm makes all the moves. By Rosie Hattersley

C alifornia high school student

Tamerlan Goglichidze has
been coding and building
projects since he was 11, teaching
himself essential skills using online
a robot arm and a small JARVIS (from
Iron Man) mechatronic simulation with
animatronic servo eyes that move around
and also integrated voice recognition and
artificial intelligence.
videos and tutorials before progressing
from virtual to physical creations once
Maker his knowledge base gave him the Quick FACTS
Tamerlan Goglichidze confidence. This early focus would be
High school impressive enough in itself, but Tamerlan ƒ Each chess piece contains a magnet,
student Tamerlan was also busy taking on all-comers as a moved using a stepper motor
has a passion for chess player who travelled extensively
engineering and to compete in International Chess ƒ To prevent the stepper motor
innovation and initially Federation matches. His Raspberry Pi returning home…
taught himself using Chess Board combines the two interests.
online videos. ƒ …Tamerlan created an optimisation
Winning strategy algorithm for his 8x8 grid…
[Link]/piboard He chose Raspberry Pi 4 as “the brain of the
system, bridging the digital chess world ƒ …with 2200 stepper motor steps per
with physical movements on the board”, chess board side…
noting its ability to handle advanced and
complex systems as well as the versatile ƒ …and a global position variable
OS and accessible GPIO pins. Tamerlan
felt it “was the best choice to handle both
the chess engine calculations and stepper Pure magnetism
motor movements.” Seeing DIY but expensive automated
His Raspberry Pi Chess Board project chess boards online motivated Tamerlan
built on his experience of creating a to create a functional, budget-friendly
Raspberry Pi-based MARS rover with version with similar capabilities

34 Raspberry Pi Chess Board

 Project Showcase

01. Raspberry Pi 4 remotely controls this Pi Chess Board in which a

human player competes against a customisable chess engine

02. The stepper motor glides along a rail, moving chess pieces smoothly
along the X and Y axes and deftly mimicking the knight’s move

01

02

W Tamerlan learned all about Raspberry Pi in

his earlier Iron Man JARVIS project

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 35

S Tamerlan pits his
that would capitalise on his growing
wits against his
engineering skills. He designed most
DIY Pi Chess Board
aspects using Fusion 360 and used a
X Tamerlan’s
standard chess board, cutting wooden
impressive website
shows his Pi Chess boards as a base in his parents’ garage.
Board in action Challenges for the automated chess
system included accurately weighing
each chess piece so the XY stepper motor
mechanism and magnets could seamlessly
move them across the board. Tamerlan
tracked down an algorithm to minimise
the stepper motor’s power consumption.
He used a servo linear actuator with a
magnet to move each chess piece, rather
than an electromagnet, having calculated
it would be more power-efficient. “To
generate a strong enough magnetic field
to lift or attract objects, high current is
typically required, demanding a robust
X He was partly
inspired by power supply and generating heat,
commercial chess which must be managed,” he explains.
games such as “In contrast, a servo linear actuator
Square Off needs power primarily during movement,

36 Raspberry Pi Chess Board

 Project Showcase

Calculated moves
with significantly lower standby power
consumption.”
Using magnets moved by a stepper
motor rather than a robot arm allowed
Tamerlan to make the chess board as
compact as possible. He wrote Python
code to control each piece, translating
the coordinates for each of the board’s
64 squares into steps the stepper motor
could execute. Raspberry Pi calculates
the best moves according to player input
and translates text such as ‘b3b5’ into 1. The project can be made with a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 and uses a
moves. “Castling is straightforward and standard chess board and pieces with a sturdy wooden base to
can be handled by writing two different which the electronics will be attached.
functions to cover the four possible
cases and executing them accordingly.”

Seeing DIY but expensive

automated chess boards
online motivated Tamerlan
He also needed a way to move pieces
without pushing others out of the 2. Tamerlan used two NEMA stepper motors, a servo, two linear
way, in particular the knight’s dog-leg rails, stepper motor belts, and plenty of jumper cables. He
movements. His solution has the knight 3D-printed parts, designed in Fusion 360, for the mechanism.
do a half-step between squares, follow
its move, and then reverse the half-step.

Peer approval
Players can specify difficulty levels and
whether to play as black or white pieces
against the computer chess engine, and
there is a web option for remote play
against other chess fans. The project
quickly garnered interest and plaudits
online. Buoyed up by the success of
his Raspberry Pi Chess Board which
“gained remarkable attention” and,
after being featured by a number of tech 3. Tamerlan’s website provides details of how to overcome the issue
hobbyist sites, led to 40,000 visits to of overheating electromagnets and inaccurate grabbing of chess
his own website ([Link]/piboard), pieces by mapping magnets fixed to individual pieces and moving
Tamerlan has set his sights on a them with the stepper motor.
computing or engineering career.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 37

Raspberry Pi
Fruitbox Jukebox
Get into the groove and blast out those tunes
with this retro jukebox. By David Crookes

I t’s always good to come across a

project that you can really make a
song and dance about. And, in the
case of this awesome, authentic-looking
jukebox based around a Raspberry Pi 4
computer, that’s exactly what we’ve
been doing.
Maker Maker Jeremy Childress has harked
Jeremy Childress back to the 1950s for his first Raspberry Pi
Jeremy has a degree in project, producing a machine that makes
electrical engineering great use of a popular customisable MP3
with a background player called Fruitbox. He’s done so at a
in displays and fraction of the price it would cost to buy
communications, but and fix up a retro jukebox while having
he mostly works as a lots of fun in the process.
project manager now. “My mom has always wanted a
He also loves teaching vintage jukebox and several years ago,
his children how my parents bought an old Seeburg DS160
things work. that never worked right,” Jeremy says.
“I tried messing with it a few times, but I
[Link]/fruitbox could only get it to play a random record
and only one at a time. So, I wanted to
give my mom a working jukebox and,
seeing the expense of a fully functioning
vintage one, I thought I could do better
for far cheaper.”

Golden grooves S The cabinet is completely modular. The

To begin, Jeremy researched jukebox marquee, monitor, button board and back
software to see what was available. panel bolt to the sides so it can be easily
“Most of it was for Windows and didn’t disassembled and moved if necessary

38 Raspberry Pi Fruitbox Jukebox

 Project Showcase

01. The 32-inch monitor, running

at 1080p, displays a retro
Fruitbox skin modified to fit a
larger display
01
02. The cabinet contains all of
the components within the
front section and ensures the
amp is visible for easy control

02

fit what I was looking for,” he says. “I for,” Jeremy explains. “Once I got it up
then happened to think about seeing and running, it was pretty easy to figure
if there were any Raspberry Pi jukebox out, although I had some initial problems
projects I could work with and came getting it up and running with the latest
across Fruitbox.” Excited, he went to his version of Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm. It
local Micro Center to pick up a Raspberry was missing a library dependency that I
Pi 4 Model B 1GB computer. “I didn’t have had to install separately and I thought it
plans to buy any other hardware until I was all running smoothly until I tried to
was sure the software was going to work get it to autostart at boot.
like I wanted it to,” he says. “Then I found the Fruitbox4dummies
Luckily, it fit his needs. “It had the site which had a big notice saying there
vintage look and feel that I was looking were issues between the latest version

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 39

of Fruitbox and Bookworm. It suggested Another panel was made so it could
using a specific version from March 15, include a coin slot. “I was just going to
2024 so I reinstalled everything and it all cut a slot to put coins in and rig up a
went smoothly from there. Just using switch to detect a coin,” he explains.
Fruitbox with the keyboard, it appeared He then discovered a programmable
to function like I had hoped and the coin acceptor – one which only accepts
Fruitbox4dummies site was an amazing quarters but acts like a button whenever
resource, explaining how to configure a coin is inserted. Each quarter adds three
Fruitbox and customise the skin.” credits. “The number of credits each
coin provides is an option in Fruitbox,”
Jeremy says. “It’s the only way to play
Quick FACTS songs with my machine besides a secret
button on the back to add free credits.”
ƒ This project uses Fruitbox with a There were some issues connecting
custom skin the coin acceptor to Raspberry Pi. “I
initially wired it to
ƒ It only took a month to plan and build one of the joystick
inputs where it It turned out better than I
ƒ The jukebox will accept quarter coins caused issues but
when I wired it to a could have imagined
ƒ Labelled buttons allow songs to GPIO input, it worked
be selected as expected,” he recalls. The other major somewhat,” he says. “But I ended up
issue Jeremy faced was painting. “I leaving it visible, because you can easily
ƒ There’s a swappable light-up marquee tried using metallic paint to look like change the volume, it can be controlled
aluminium, but it was really streaky and by a remote, it has microphone inputs
it ran everywhere,” he says. “I had to for karaoke, and FM tuner, Bluetooth,
Cabinet craft sand it down and start over, which set and can play MP3s from a USB drive.”
With the software in place, Jeremy me back a week.” As a finishing touch, Jeremy also
was able to crack on with the rest of included a marquee at the top of the
the build. “It was all about making it Amp power jukebox consisting of album covers
look as authentic as possible, but after To speed things up and make the build back-printed on window clings stuck to
considering buying and gutting an a family affair, he enlisted his eight- some 1/8-inch plexi. These are lit using
old jukebox, I decided to build my own year-old son, Luke, to help build the LEDs. More lights were fitted beneath
cabinet,” he says. cabinet, sand, and paint. His nine-year- the control panel, ensuring the overall
He based the cabinet around a old daughter, Charlotte, also helped to build would look as good as it sounds.
32‑inch monitor, making the sides, modify the skin he used in Fruitbox. “She With a few extra design flourishes –
front and back panels out of wood. One picked out some of the design elements some notes painted on to the front – it
of the panels was cut so it could fit an and I had her program them in the skin,” was ready to gift.
assortment of buttons that could be used Jeremy reveals. “It turned out better than I could have
to control the jukebox interface. These As expected, aside from the screen, imagined,” Jeremy says. “The interface
buttons were connected to Raspberry the Raspberry Pi is connected to an looks great. The buttons look and feel
Pi using the joystick controller, “just amplifier and speakers, enabling the authentic and feel like using a real
because it would save me a lot of time jukebox to fill the air with sounds. “I jukebox. My parents are very excited
making up wires since the kits already debated whether or not to leave the about it and the kids love to play around
came with wires that connected to the amplifier exposed because I thought with it too.” It’s enough to make us want
buttons,” Jeremy says. it took away from the vintage vibe to dance with joy.

40 Raspberry Pi Fruitbox Jukebox

 Project Showcase

How it works

W All of the hardware is housed in the button

board. A couple of connections for power
and the monitor are needed

1. Flick a single power switch and the jukebox springs into action.
Everything is turned on, from the display to the amp and lights,
and the Raspberry Pi 4 computer automatically boots to the MP3
player Fruitbox.

2. There are two ways of playing tunes. You can insert a quarter for
three songs or hit the secret button on the back of the jukebox to
get five ‘free’ credits. You’re then able to start picking some songs
to enjoy.

3. There are 80 songs on each page and there are currently six
pages. When a song is selected using the panel buttons, an
S Jeremy says he would use a smaller monitor if animation shows the record being picked and played. Up to 20
he was replicating this build, so he could keep songs can be queued.
the cabinet under 24 inches wide

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 41

 2025

200 PAGES OF RASPBERRY PI

A guide to getting started Inspiring projects to give
with every Raspberry Pi board you your next big idea

All the essential info on the Upgrade your emulation

brand new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 with next-gen retro gaming

Buy online: [Link]/store

Stealth Macintosh
Portable
By Paul Rickards

[Link]/StealthMacintoshPortable

O ld hardware is great for

repurposing with modern
tech. Moore’s Law, the trend
that makes hardware smaller, better
and cheaper over time, means that the
an ATmega32u4 5 V 16MHz Pro Micro to
bring this back to life).
Software-wise the machine runs Mini
VMac, an emulator for early Mac systems,
and it even has a functioning floppy disk
hardware that you can buy for pennies drive. It’s a real labour of love, and one
today is far better than the bigger, bulkier that will surely have Macintosh old-timers
toys of yesteryear. Add to this the fact stroking their beards in appreciation.
that those bulkier electronics need bigger
enclosures, and you get a machine such
as this: a Macintosh Portable that has had
its innards removed and replaced with a
much smaller, much faster computer in
the shape of a Raspberry Pi 5.
The unit’s owner, Paul Rickards, had
tried for years to get the original hardware
working, to no avail, and so instead he
resolved to give it a modern operating
system that used as much of the existing
hardware as possible, without making
any modifications to the case that can’t
be undone at a later date.
The screen is an LCD module taken
from an old iPad, but the keyboard is
original (and it is interfaced with the
Raspberry Pi 5 via a Raspberry Pi Pico),
as is that beautiful trackball (Paul used

44 Top Projects
 Top Projects

W The username in the terminal window

says rickards@pi5 – the only clue that
this Macintosh isn’t all it seems

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 45

Whispering wires
By Rootkid

[Link]/WhisperingWires

H ere’s a true work of art: a

build designed to be useless;
to do nothing other than
bring beauty into your life. The maker
was looking around a flea market one day,
T Théo designed and 3D-printed a support
to go inside the phone for the electronics
– older equipment often has plenty of
room for modern upgrades
came across an old telephone handset, and
wondered to himself: “What if those silent
wires could whisper again?” Thus began
this wonderful project, called Whispering
Wires, which takes a phone and uses a
Raspberry Pi Zero W to add poetry.
Maker Rootkid (aka Théo Z V Champion)
started with a Socotel model S63, which
was the standard issue phone in France
in the ’60s. This model was built to last
and, crucially for our purposes, built to be
repaired, so everything can be taken apart
and put back together again. He needed
the phone to be connected to the internet
and to play audio, so he used a Raspberry
Pi Zero W, connected to two 1-watt audio
amplifier chips and two speakers — one
for the body of the phone, and one for
the earpiece.
When the phone receiver is picked
up, the Raspberry Pi Zero W plays
an audio recording of a poem from
[Link], with the sound
file ingeniously filtered to make it sound
like it’s been compressed and sent down
a copper wire – in the days of the Socotel
S63, phones squished human voices down
to a range of 300Hz to 3400Hz, with a
sampling frequency of 8kHz.

46 Top Projects
 Top Projects

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 47

Pomodoro Bot
By CodersCafeTech

[Link]/PomodoroBot

T he Pomodoro technique is a
method of time management
named after a kitchen timer
in the shape of a tomato. Its adherents
break up the day into 25-minute chunks,
useful, then a Pomodoro timer would be
a brilliant place to start.
This example from CodersCafeTech
takes the concept of a simple timer and
takes it several steps further. For one
separated by five-minute breaks. After thing, it’s cuter than your average timer:
four of these 25-minute chunks of time the anthropomorphic little face, the 3D
have elapsed, you can then take a longer printed body, and the little feet make it
break, typically 25–30 minutes. Fans of the something that we’d quite like to have
Pomodoro technique say that it helps them in the office. On the technical side, the
to concentrate, as rather than having to makers have added an air quality sensor
negotiate emails, messages, meetings, and an ambient light sensor, to monitor
and whatever else goes on during the your working conditions and make you
day, the comforting ring of the pomodoro even more productive. And since it’s built
timer means that it’s time to actually get around a Raspberry Pi 5, it has internet
things done. connectivity, meaning you can sync it
Pomodoro timers are also a brilliant with your work calendar to get reminders
subject for physical computing projects. of upcoming meetings.
They need a way of counting time, an
input method, an audio output of some
kind, power management, and a way of
tying all the functionality together with
a bit of coding. If you’ve recently got your
hands on a Raspberry Pi Pico or something
similar and you want to build something

S As well as looking cute, this timer monitors

air quality index, O₂, and VOC levels

48 Top Projects
 Top Projects

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 49

Vertical Runner
By Reeves Media

[Link]/VerticalRunner

I f this cyberdeck looks like

something out of a movie, it’s
because it is… kind of. The maker
initially set out to make a prop for a film
they were making, but accidentally ended
T This device does get warm when it’s running,
but the maker reckons they would only use it
in short 30-minute bursts anyway
up learning all about ethical hacking,
cybersecurity and Linux, finishing up with
a working handheld computer.
The hardware for this build comprises a
Raspberry Pi 4 8GB, a Waveshare 3.5-inch
touchscreen LCD, a Vilros battery pack,
a Fly Way Bluetooth 3.0 keyboard, and a
BrosTrend Dual Band Wi-Fi (monitoring/
injection) adapter, which is what makes
this build something a little different
from the normal computer-on-the-go
devices: this project was actually built
with cybersecurity testing in mind.
It took some work to get the Waveshare
screen working with Raspberry Pi OS, and
the 3D printing – which looks great —
was done in collaboration with Precision
Additive. When the machines are rising
up and you need to hack an insecure
network to shut them down, this is the
sort of device you’ll need.

50 Top Projects
 Top Projects

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 51

3D print
Brilliant, beautiful creations
made out of molten plastic

[Link]/Bezicron

W e often say that with

3D printing,
programming,
can imagine it, you can build it. That’s
all very well, but how on earth do you
as
if
with
you

imagine something like this if you’re

not a visionary like Ekaggrat Singh
Kalsi? He was inspired to build this
unique display – which goes by the
awesome name of ‘Bezicron’ — by his
daughter’s elastic hair bands, and
created a mechanism that would use
motors, cams, and levers to stretch
a length of elastic into the shapes
of digits.
The clock is powered by two 20 mm
geared stepper motors, which each turn
two of the four modules. Both motors
are controlled by a module featuring
an ATmega8 chip, as used in the
Arduino ecosystem.
The horizontally stacked cams, and
the fact that the levers that shape the
digits move horizontally, give rise
to the stacked/multilayered look of
the clock. As that’s how FDM printers
lay down material (in layers) the
design of this build lends itself to 3D
printing. Having said that, we’d love
to see this with a chassis made from
machined aluminium.

52 Bezicron
 3D Print

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 53

 PROBLEM
PROBLEM
SOLVING
SOLVING

Get better at setting up

and taking care of your
Raspberry Pi devices.
By Lucy Hattersley

54 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

You’ll become
a smarter tech
troubleshooter

R aspberry Pi is the computer

for everybody. One group
of people that it’s especially
good for is those of us who really do
love computing.
The great thing about Raspberry Pi
is you can take it apart, put it together,
and start to understand what’s going on
inside. Unlike the glass and glue slabs
that pass for computers, Raspberry Pi
is a real computer that you can fix, and
break, and fix again.
And that’s what this feature is all
about. We’re going to look at setting
up Raspberry Pi, along with some tips
for picking the right accessories, and
problem solving Raspberry Pi.
There is bound to be something
here that you don’t know. So read this
feature and you’ll become a smarter
tech troubleshooter.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 55

 Power up Zero model, or Raspberry Pi 4/400 or
The bare minimum you need to get earlier. The new Raspberry Pi 5/500
started with a Raspberry Pi computer is models operate best with a 27 W power
a power supply and some form of boot supply and for these we recommend
media: typically a microSD card, but getting a Raspberry Pi Power Supply
increasingly an SSD or USB thumb drive. ([Link]/powersupply).
Newer Raspberry Pi models, from It is possible to run a Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi 4 / 400 onwards, use a USB-C Zero / Zero 2 or 4/400 or earlier with 15 W
connection to provide power; Raspberry Pi of power, you may run into problems
Zero and Raspberry Pi 3 (or earlier) models with USB attachments that draw
use a micro USB connection. So make sure power from the device (such as mice,
you have the right cable to hand. keyboards, thumb drives, or any HAT
More important is keeping an eye on attached hardware).
how much wattage your power supply If your Raspberry Pi does not power
is capable of. Many Raspberry Pi owners up – or keeps resetting – then the first
repurpose a power supply from other thing to look at is the power supply.
devices; using a standard phone charger Check it against the ‘Recommended
is common. power supply’ table and if it falls
There are lots of 5V/3A power supplies short, pick up an appropriate charger,
available that supply 15 W (V × A = W), such as a Raspberry Pi power supply
which is enough for a Raspberry Pi ([Link]/2wpowersupply).

X Raspberry Pi’s
Official USB Power
Supply provides
enough wattage
to comfortably run
the latest models

FIND YOUR RASPBERRY PI

Take a close look at the board and it will

tell you what device you are using, such
as ‘Raspberry Pi 4 Model B’ or ‘Raspberry
Pi 5’. Raspberry Pi Zero has it written on the
reverse of the board, as do keyboard models
such as Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi
500. Head to [Link]/products to get a
visual overview of all Raspberry Pi hardware.

56 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

Pick your boot media

Most Raspberry Pi models use a separate
storage medium to boot the operating
system. Typically, this is a microSD
card, which slots into Raspberry Pi and
contains an operating system image.
Raspberry Pi OS is the official image,
but Raspberry Pi models can run a range
of operating systems including Ubuntu
and Recalbox.
You can also boot modern Raspberry
Pi computers from USB storage, network
storage, and via storage attached to the
PCI Express 2.0 interface on a Raspberry
Pi 5 (typically accessed via the Raspberry
Pi M.2 HAT+, [Link]/m2hatplus).
You will want to use at least a Class
A2 microSD card. The speed of the card
is likely to affect the performance of the
operating system. Raspberry Pi sells its
own official SD Cards that are rigorously
S Identify your Raspberry Pi by tested to ensure optimal performance
looking closely at the board ([Link]/sdcards).

Recommended power supply

Recommended power
Model Raspberry Pi power supply
supply (voltage/current)

5V/5A, 5V/3A limits

Raspberry Pi 5 27W USB-C power supply
peripherals to 600mA S Raspberry Pi’s official microSD card has
been rigorously tested
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 5V/3A 15W USB-C power supply

Raspberry Pi 3 12.5W micro USB

5V/2.5A HOW BIG A MICROSD CARD?
(all models) power supply

Raspberry Pi 2 12.5W micro USB We define ‘ample space’ as at least 8GB

5V/2.5A
(all models) power supply to run Raspberry Pi OS with a graphical
interface, or 4GB to run Raspberry Pi OS in
Raspberry Pi 1 12.5W micro USB ‘headless’ mode (accessible only via the
5V/2.5A
(all models) power supply command line or over a network). Only the
first-generation Raspberry Pi uses a full-
Raspberry Pi Zero 12.5W micro USB
5V/2.5A sized SD card; all models from Raspberry 2
(all models) power supply
onwards support microSD.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 57

Other cables
If you want to use Raspberry Pi directly,
you’ll also need the following:

• a display
• a cable to connect your Raspberry
Pi to your display
• a keyboard
• a mouse

Most of these items are easy to source

and many Raspberry Pi owners repurpose S Raspberry Pi’s official monitor
old equipment. Raspberry Pi sells its
own Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, and guides, and a Bookshelf application for have another Raspberry Pi up-and-
Display Cable if you wish to use official reading our magazines and books. running, or you can install it in terminal:
kit ([Link]/products). You can use Raspberry Pi has created an easy way
any of the USB ports on Raspberry Pi to to install Raspberry Pi OS onto your SD sudo apt install rpi-imager
connect a USB wired keyboard or mouse. card using a program called Raspberry Pi
It is also possible to connect Bluetooth Imager (available for Raspberry Pi, Mac, With your card in a USB microSD
keyboards and mice from the Raspberry Windows, and Linux computers). card reader ([Link]/sdreader), open
Pi OS interface. Download the Imager software from the Imager software. Click on Choose
Raspberry Pi models have a range [Link]/software and follow Device and pick your Raspberry Pi target
of different display output ports and the instructions at [Link]/imager. device, click on Operating System and
it is likely you will need to acquire a It is installed in Raspberry Pi OS if you select one, then click on Choose Storage.
dedicated display cable. Raspberry
Pi 4/400 and 5/500 models require a
micro HDMI to HDMI cable ([Link]/
microhdmicable). Raspberry Pi Zero and
Zero 2 models need a mini HDMI cable
([Link]/minihdmicable).

Installing your OS
Raspberry Pi computers check for an
operating system on the SD card first,
followed by the NVMe/USB boot drive
and network drive (depending on the
order set in raspi-config).
Raspberry Pi OS should be your first
port of call for an operating system.
Based upon Debian Linux, it is fast and
efficient. Raspberry Pi OS features an
effective collection of programming,
internet, and desktop applications. And S Use Raspberry Pi Imager to install an
it has links to documentation, reference operating system

58 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

Use OS customisation?
Before writing your OS to disk, a pop-
up appears asking you if you would like
to apply OS customisation settings. We
can’t recommend highly enough that you
click the EDIT SETTINGS button.
Here you will see three tabs:

• General. Set a custom hostname,

username, and password.
Configure the wireless LAN with
an SSID and Password and set
your locale. S Use OS Customisation to give
• Services. Tick the Enable SSH Raspberry Pi OS custom boot settings
button if you want to access
your Raspberry Pi from another
computer. If you already
have an RSA key in your SSH
Raspberry Pi OS should be
configuration, Imager uses that your first port of call
public key. If you don’t, you
can click Run SSH-keygen to
generate a public/private key You will also need a wired internet
pair. Imager will use the newly connection via an Ethernet cable, along
generated public key. with a monitor and keyboard.
• Options. Here are three To launch Network Install, power on
checkboxes: Play sound when your Raspberry Pi while pressing and
finished, Eject media when holding the SHIFT key in the following
finished, and Enable telemetry configuration:
([Link]/telemetry).
• No bootable storage device
Network install • An attached keyboard
It is now possible to install Raspberry Pi • An attached compatible storage
OS onto a storage device using a version device, such as an SD card or
of Raspberry Pi Imager downloaded over USB storage
a network. This means that you no longer
require a second computer to install A red and white screen will appear with
Raspberry Pi OS. The only downside is ‘Install Raspberry Pi OS using Raspberry
that you need a reasonably recent model Pi Imager’. Follow the instructions to
of Raspberry Pi (i.e. Raspberry Pi 4/400 download Imager and write an operating
or later). system to your storage device.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 59

Boot problems important bug fixes. You can
A Raspberry Pi that is reluctant to boot manually update the bootloader LED WARNING FLASH CODES
is a great troubleshooting starter. You’ll using a microSD card and
almost certainly run into this one at Raspberry Pi Imager. Select Misc If a Raspberry Pi fails to boot for some
some point. Follow these steps: utility images > Bootloader and reason, or has to shut down, in many cases
select a boot mode: SD Card an LED will flash a specific number of times
• Check the power supply. First, Boot is recommended; NVMe/ to indicate what happened. The LED will blink
check that your power supply is USB Boot and Network Boot for a number of long flashes (0 or more),
connected and that your power are the other options. Please then produce short flashes, to indicate the
supply provides enough wattage see ‘Update the bootloader’ on exact status. In most cases, the pattern will
for your model of Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi’s documentation for repeat after a two-second gap.
computer (see ‘Recommended detailed instructions [Link]/ledflashcodes
power supply’ table). If you have ([Link]/updatebootloader).
an alternative power supply, try
using that one instead.
• Check LED activity. If a Long flashes Short flashes Status
Raspberry Pi has power but
fails to boot, it will – in many 0 3 Generic failure to boot
cases – flash the LED a specific
0 4 start*.elf not found
number of times to indicate what
is happening. Take a look at the 0 7 Kernel image not found
‘LED Warning Flash Codes’ box.
• Check HDMI cable or network 0 8 SDRAM failure
connection. If you are connecting
0 9 Insufficient SDRAM
Raspberry Pi to a monitor, check
the HDMI cable is the correct 0 10 In HALT state
type, and it is correctly inserted.
2 1 Partition not FAT
If you have another cable
available, try swapping it out. 2 2 Failed to read from partition
• Check boot installation. Remove
the power supply, then carefully 2 3 Extended partition not FAT
remove the storage media and
2 4 File signature/hash mismatch – Pi 4 and Pi 5
reinsert it. If it still fails to boot,
reflash the operating system with 3 1 SPI EEPROM error – Pi 4 and Pi 5
Raspberry Pi Imager and double-
check you have the correct 3 2 SPI EEPROM is write protected – Pi 4 and Pi 5
Raspberry Pi Device selected.
3 3 I2C error – Pi 4 and Pi 5
If installing Raspberry Pi OS,
try using the ‘Recommended’ 3 4 Secure-boot configuration is not valid
version of Raspberry Pi OS. If you
are using a different operating 4 3 RP1 not found
system, check with the OS
4 4 Unsupported board type
provider that the version you are
installing works with your model 4 5 Fatal firmware error
of Raspberry Pi.
• Update the bootloader. 4 6 Power failure type A
Raspberry Pi OS automatically
4 7 Power failure type B
updates the bootloader for

60 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

W Check for
updates using DIG DEEPER!
the Raspberry Pi
OS GUI interface Click Show Updates to see a list of packages and versions. You can
look these up online if you want to get an understanding for what
different elements of Raspberry Pi OS and Linux are.

OS update Remote access program (which will run on

If you did not use the configuration tool There are three ways to remotely access your Raspberry Pi) and a client
in Raspberry Pi Imager, the operating Raspberry Pi OS and they are all worth program, which runs on the
system will run a configuration wizard learning. Especially if you plan to run computer you are using to access
on first boot and guide you through the your Raspberry Pi without a monitor Raspberry Pi ([Link]/vnc).
steps of connecting your devices, Wi-Fi or keyboard: • Raspberry Pi Connect.
or network cable, browser, and guide Raspberry Pi Connect is a service
you through a software update. • SSH (Secure SHell). You can provided by Raspberry Pi that
Otherwise, the first thing you should access the text-based terminal provides free, out-of-the-box
do when booting up Raspberry Pi OS of a Raspberry Pi remotely access to your Raspberry Pi
is check for updates. If updates are from another computer on the from anywhere in the world. You
available, an ‘Updates are available’ icon same network. This is quick activate the service in Raspberry
will appear in the menu bar, click it and to set up and is fast to access, Pi OS and can remote-access your
choose ‘Install Updates’. but accessing windows or GUI computer from the Raspberry
If you are running Raspberry Pi OS elements is an arduous process Pi Connect web service in any
headless (i.e. without a GUI interface), ([Link]/ssh). browser ([Link]/connect).
update using: • VNC (Virtual Network
Computing). This process SSH and VNC options are both found
sudo apt update enables you to control the in the Interfaces section of Raspberry Pi
sudo apt full-upgrade desktop of one device from Configuration. Raspberry Pi Connect is
another. VNC relies upon a server found to the right of the menu bar.

Update to a new major

version
Occasionally Raspberry Pi will introduce a new major version of
Raspberry Pi OS; it will be announced via the Raspberry Pi news channel
([Link]/news) and the article will have instructions on how to
update to the new version.

To update the operating system to a new major release on your

Raspberry Pi, image a second, separate SD card with the new OS release.
You can use a USB SD card reader or network storage to copy files and
configuration from your current installation to the new SD card. Then,
S Raspberry Pi Connect enables you to access swap the new SD card into the slot on your Raspberry Pi, and boot.
a Raspberry Pi from a web browser

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 61

 Raspberry Pi
Configuration
There are several tools to configure the
settings on Raspberry Pi, but Raspberry
Pi Configuration on the desktop is the
one you should become most acquainted
with. Open Raspberry Pi Configuration
from Preferences in the main menu. raspi-config S Adjust settings with
the Raspberry Pi
The raspi-config tool helps you configure
Configuration tool
• System. Here you can change Raspberry Pi OS from a command-line
your Password, Hostname, Boot, environment. Open a terminal and enter:
and Login options as well as
choose the default web browser sudo raspi-config
(Chromium or Firefox).
• Display. Screen Blanking blanks Changes to raspi-config will modify
the screen after ten minutes of /boot/firmware/[Link] and other
inactivity (when enabled); the configuration files. To navigate the
On-screen Keyboard should configuration tool from the terminal:
appear and hide automatically
when a touch-display is attached • Use the up and down arrow keys TIP!
(and can be set to permanently to scroll through the settings list.
appear here). • Access the <Select> or <Finish> Some advanced
• Interfaces. Here you can turn on options using the right arrow configuration
and off various Raspberry Pi OS or TAB. is available in
system interfaces including SSH, • Return to the settings list using the raspi-config
VNC, and SPI. the left arrow or TAB. CLI, but not the
• Performance. Click Configure on • Type a letter to jump ahead Raspberry Pi
Overlay File System to enable a alphabetically. For example, type Configuration GUI.
read-only filesystem. Here you E to jump ahead to ‘Europe’ in the
can also turn the Case Fan on time zone list.
or off (and set the Fan GPIO pin
or Temperature).
• Localisation. You can configure
the UI language, Timezone,
Keyboard, and Wireless LAN
country code here.

Raspberry Pi Configuration isn’t the

only tool in Raspberry Pi OS. There’s also
Appearance Settings, Main Menu Editor,
and Mouse and Keyboard settings which
X The raspi-config
tool enables you are used to customise the OS interface.
to adjust settings In addition, Screen Configuration can
from the command be used to identify, arrange, and adjust
-line interface attached displays.

62 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

X Set the screen

resolution in
the Screen
Configuration tool

[Link]
Raspberry Pi OS uses a configuration file
called [Link]. Raspberry Pi looks for
this special file in the /boot/firmware/
directory of the file system.
While it is still possible to edit
the [Link] file directly from your
Raspberry Pi OS installation, Raspberry
Pi does not recommend this any more. OLDER VERSION
Instead, we would direct you to the GUI
configuration tools or raspi-config. Prior to Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, Command-Line
You can view the current active
settings by opening a terminal window
Raspberry Pi OS stored the boot partition
at /boot/.
Networking
and using the following commands:
It is possible to connect to a wireless
$ vcgencmd get_config <config> Adjust HDMI and display network via the command line with nmcli
Raspberry Pi uses the EDID of the HDMI- (command-line tool for NetworkManager).
… displays a specific config value, e.g. connected monitor to automatically pick Open a terminal and enter:
vcgencmd get_config arm_freq the best resolution. You can manually
choose a different resolution with $ nmcli dev wifi list
$ vcgencmd get_config int the Screen Configuration tool found
under Preferences in the menu. Click …to scan for networks, and:
…lists all non-zero integer config on Screens and select your connected
options (non-zero) display (HDMI-A-1 or HDMI-A-2). $ sudo nmcli --ask dev
wifi connect <example_ssid>
$ vcgencmd get_config str
SCREEN BLANKING …to connect. Enter your network password
…lists all non-null string config when prompted. For more commands and
options. If the screen periodically goes blank, it may information, take a look at the Networking
Take a look at the [Link] section of be that screen blanking is enabled. Check section of Raspberry Pi’s documentation.
Raspberry Pi’s documentation to become the Display setting in Configurations and
familiar with the commands you’ll find ensure Screen Blanking is set to Off. [Link]/networkingdocs
in [Link].

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 63

 Fortunately, Raspberry Pi OS
S Use SD Card
has a built-in tool called
Copier to back up
your Raspberry Pi
SD Card Copier
Composite video mode Adjust the audio mode enter sudo raspi-config. Select
Composite video can be used to connect Raspberry Pi has multiple output modes: System Options > Audio and
Raspberry Pi to CRT displays such as HDMI, the headphone jack (if your device choose your required mode. Press
analogue televisions and monitors. In has one), and USB audio. By default, ENTER to choose the mode and
some countries these are widely used, Raspberry Pi outputs audio to HDMI 1. If then select <Finish> to exit the
and it’s useful for classic retro projects. no HDMI output is available, Raspberry configuration tool.
To enable composite output, append Pi outputs audio to the headphone jack
this to the end of the ‘dtoverlay=vc4-kms- or USB audio device. Create a backup
v3d’ line in /boot/firmware/[Link]: Once you have Raspberry Pi OS running
• Desktop volume control. Right- to specification, it’s a good idea to create
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,composite click the volume icon on the a backup. This enables you to restore all
taskbar bar to open the audio your files and system settings.
By default, this outputs NTSC mode. output selector. Available devices Fortunately, Raspberry Pi OS has a
For more information and settings, see will be listed; pick the one you built-in tool called SD Card Copier that
[Link]/compositevideo. want to use. enables you to clone your boot drive.
• raspi-config. To change your Attach a second storage device that is
Wayland vs X11 audio output from the command the same capacity (or larger). Open SD
Since Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm line, open a terminal window and Card Copier under Accessories in the
([Link]/bookworm) was released
in 2023, all Raspberry Pi computers use
a new display system called Wayland. Model Composite output
This performs much better than X11,
Raspberry Pi 1 A and B RCA jack
the system it replaced. You can switch
between Wayland and X11 with: Raspberry Pi Zero Unpopulated TV header

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Test pads on underside of board

$ sudo raspi-config
Raspberry Pi 5 J7 pad next to HDMI socket
Now choose 6 Advanced Options > A6
All other models 3.5 mm AV jack
Wayland > W1 X11.

64 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Feature

menu and choose your boot drive from Third-party makers provide their own
Copy From Device. Select your target documentation which you can consult to
backup device from Copy To Device and troubleshoot the device.
click Start.
The backup device will be a perfect Getting physical COMPOSITE
copy of your boot drive and you can boot Raspberry Pi is hardware and you should VIDEO
your Raspberry Pi from it. take steps to protect it physically as well PHYSICAL
as on the software layer. LOCATION

HAT+ and hardware • Raspberry Pi Bumper. We love Composite

One of the brilliant things about the Bumper! It’s a snap-on video output
Raspberry Pi is the ability to attach silicone cover that protects the can be found on
physical hardware to the GPIO pins. bottom and edges of the board. some models
And that there are many, many third- It also prevents slippage and of Raspberry Pi
party boards you can use to extend can help protect from vibration computer – see
Raspberry Pi’s functionality. Everything ([Link]/bumper). the table on the
from motor controllers for robots, to AI • Raspberry Pi Case. Moving up page opposite.
accelerators, to audio DACs (and much from the Bumper is the Raspberry Note: composite
more besides). Pi Case. These combine high- video mode is
Raspberry Pi has created a HAT+ quality construction with a not found on
(Hardware Attached on Top) standard minimalist design that enables keyboard models.
for third-party manufacturers. These you to quickly remove the lid and
HAT+ devices contain an EEPROM chip access the board. Raspberry Pi 5
that holds the board manufacturer models also have an integrated
information, GPIO setup, and a device fan ([Link]/case).
tree fragment (this allows Raspberry Pi • Third-party cases. There are
OS to automatically load up the required many other cases available that
drivers). If your hardware is HAT+, it offer a range of features above
should – in theory – work as soon as it and beyond Raspberry Pi’s
is connected. official case. The HighPi Pro case
You can read more details about the offers a large internal volume
new HAT+ standard in this blog post: area for HATs and VESA mount
[Link]/doublestandards. support ([Link]/highpipro),
The complete HAT+ specification can while ComfilePi offers touch
be found at [Link]/hatplusspec. panel cases with high-tolerant
If you are having trouble with HAT+ parts for industrial applications
hardware, power off your Raspberry Pi
and try reseating the HAT+ hardware
on the GPIO pins (carefully to ensure NEW PARTITION UUIDS
it is sitting on the pins correctly). If it
still fails, try updating Raspberry Pi OS, By default, SD Card Copier will clone the partition UUIDs (Universally
updating the firmware, and check your Unique Identifiers) which means you get an exact copy of the drive.
power supply is enough to power both This makes it difficult to mount both disks at the same time. It isn’t a
the device and HAT+ hardware. problem if you expect to store the backup, but if you want to keep it
Raspberry Pi has documentation on connected to Raspberry Pi and boot from either device, select the New
all its HATs, which you can find here: Partition UUIDs checkbox.
[Link]/accessoriesdocs.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 65

X Use a Raspberry Pi
Bumper or a case to
protect your computer

Raspberry Pi and digital

computing is a vast subject
([Link]). Argon offers
a popular range for home media
that include infrared remote Getting help
control, DAC audio, and large
storage ([Link])
Raspberry Pi and digital computing is a Magazine, its predecessor The MagPi, and
• Cooling. Raspberry Pi computers
vast subject. You will routinely come across various books.
are designed to operate safely
something you don’t understand. Don’t be
without cooling. If you want
afraid to look for help. Here are some places • Documentation. Make sure you look at, and
to put a Raspberry Pi under
to get started. bookmark, Raspberry Pi’s comprehensive
stress, then cooling will help it
Documentation portal ([Link]/docs).
stay at a comfortable operating
• Help section. Choose the Help section Here you will find comprehensive links
temperature, even under a heavy
from the Raspberry Pi OS desktop menu. and you can search by subject (CTRL+K
load. The official option is a
Here you’ll find links to starter guides, accesses the search box).
Raspberry Pi Active Cooler for
Debian reference guides, and projects.
Raspberry Pi 5 that combines
Bookshelf is also here, which contains • Forums. Raspberry Pi maintains a vibrant
an aluminium heatsink with a
digital PDF editions of Raspberry Pi Official forum user base ([Link]/forums).
temperature-controlled blower
fan ([Link]/activecooler).

66 Raspberry Pi Problem Solving

 Your FREE guide to
making a smart TV

BUILD A RASPBERRY PI
MEDIA PLAYER
Power up your TV and music system

FROM THE MAKERS OF THE OFFICIAL RASPBERRY PI MAGAZINE

[Link]/mediaplayer
 Get started with
Sense HAT V2
Part 01

Learn to make a sparkly simple project with this

accessible guide to Raspberry Pi’s environment
sensing HAT

A Raspberry Pi single-board computer (SBC) can do

a lot of things thanks to its size, portability, and
ability to connect to the internet easily. With the
GPIO ports you can control electronics and interact with the
world. One of the best ways to get started with interaction is
by using an add-on like the Sense HAT V2.
The Sense HAT is a very sophisticated add-on board for the
Lucy Hattersley Raspberry Pi. While ‘HAT’ is an acronym (Hardware Attached
Sense HAT brings on-Top), it does act in a way like a hat for your Raspberry
together some of Pi. The Sense HAT contains a suite of sensors that allows the
Lucy’s favourite things: Raspberry Pi to sense the world around it, along with an array
space, sparkles, and of LEDs on top which can be used to display information on
environmental sensing. what the board can sense, and a little joystick for interaction.
The Sense HAT V2 also includes a TCS3400 RGB colour and
[Link] brightness sensor.
There is a Python software library called Sense HAT that
is used to control the HAT and access information from its
sensors. Together this makes a powerful combination.

SENSE HAT PYTHON DOCUMENTATION

YOU’LL NEED

y Raspberry Pi computer (any 40-pin model) Full documentation for the sense-hat Python module can be found on
[Link]. It’s a good website to bookmark.
y Raspberry Pi Sense HAT V2 [Link]/sensehatmodule
[Link]/sensehat

68 Get started with Sense HAT V2

 Tutorial

W Sense HAT V2
is an add-on for
Raspberry Pi that
provides an 8×8
RGB LED matrix
display and
multiple sensors

The Sense HAT is a very

sophisticated add-on
board for the Raspberry Pi

S A joystick provides physical

interaction, enabling input

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 69

 The Sense HAT is a vital component of the Astro Pi, the 1. First, put the GPIO extension header block onto the
specially adapted educational Raspberry Pi computers which Raspberry Pi GPIO pins.
were sent up to the International Space Station with British ESA 2. Screw the hexagon stand-offs to the Raspberry Pi itself,
astronaut Tim Peake to run code created by young students. by threading the screws through from the bottom and
You don’t need to be in space to make use of the Sense HAT: turning the hexagonal stand-offs between your finger
it works down on Earth as well! In the following tutorials, we and thumb.
will set up the Sense HAT and learn how to code it using the 3. Next, insert the Sense HAT into the GPIO pin extension
Python programming language. header. The corner holes should line up with the
hexagonal stand-offs.
Assemble the Sense HAT 4. Lastly, put the remaining screws through from the top.
If you have not yet installed the Sense HAT, now is the time to 5. Use a small Phillips screwdriver to tighten each corner
do so. Do this with your Raspberry Pi shut down, disconnected stand-off individually. They don’t need to be especially
from the mains, and with all other cables disconnected. tight, just enough to ensure that the HAT doesn’t
The Sense HAT comes in a silver anti-static bag, along with become loose.
the following fixtures and fittings: 6. Now boot your Raspberry Pi to the Raspberry Pi OS
desktop and start Thonny, by choosing the Raspberry Pi
• 1 × GPIO pin extension header menu and selecting Programming > Thonny IDE.
• 4 × Hexagonal stand-offs (female-to-female) When you first boot up the Sense HAT, it will display a
• 8 × M2.5 screws rainbow pattern across the LED display, enabling you to
confirm power and see that the LEDs work (Figure 2).
Check that these are all present before proceeding.
The diagram in Figure 1 shows how it all fits together.

S Figure 2. The rainbow effect on power-up

For our first trick, we’ll display text on the Sense HAT’s LED
matrix. This program contains two crucial lines of code, which
import the Sense HAT software and create a sense object which
represents the Sense HAT:

from sense_hat import SenseHat

sense = SenseHat()

The next line makes the Sense HAT display some scrolling
text (Figure 3):

sense.show_message("Hello, Sense HAT!")

S Figure 1. Attaching Sense HAT to Raspberry Pi

70 Get started with Sense HAT V2

 Tutorial

S Figure 4. The Sense HAT displaying text with using the text_colour and
back_colour settings

The LED matrix can also display a single character rather

than an entire message, using the sense.show_letter function,
which has the same optional parameters. For example:
S Figure 3. The LED matrix displaying an H from our ‘Hello World’ text

sense.show_letter("A", text_colour=[255, 0, 0])

You can easily change the message inside the quote marks
to display your own text, but there’s much more you can do. This will display a single red A character on the LED matrix
For example, we can expand the sense.show_message (Figure 5).
command to include some extra parameters which will change
the behaviour of the message
The following program will display the text ‘Astro Pi is
awesome!’ more slowly, with the text in yellow [255, 255, 0]
and the background in blue [0, 0, 255]:

from sense_hat import SenseHat

sense = SenseHat()
sense.show_message("Astro Pi is awesome!",
scroll_speed=0.05, text_colour=[255, 255, 0],
back_colour=[0, 0, 255])

You can make the message repeat by using a while loop: S Figure 5. Sense HAT’s LED matrix displaying a single character

from sense_hat import SenseHat

sense = SenseHat() DOWNLOAD
while True: show_message.py THE FULL CODE:
sense.show_message("Astro Pi is awesome!!",
scroll_speed=0.05, text_colour=[255, 255, 0], > Language: Python [Link]/github
back_colour=[0, 0, 255])
001. from sense_hat import SenseHat
Now we’ve made our first program, we should save it. Click 002. sense = SenseHat()
Save, give your program a name like show_message.py, then 003.
click Run or press F5 to run it (see Figure 4). Easy! 004. sense.show_letter("P", text_colour=
Try running the [Link] program (shown overleaf) [255, 255, 0], back_colour=[0, 0, 255])
for a more detailed program that uses messages.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 71

 DOWNLOAD
[Link] THE FULL CODE:

> Language: Python [Link]/github

001. import random 013. 'Signs point to yes',

002. import time 014. 'Without a doubt',
003. from sense_hat import SenseHat 015. 'You may rely on it',
004. 016. 'Do not count on it',
005. sh = SenseHat() 017. 'Looking good',
006. 018. 'Cannot predict now',
007. sh.show_message("Ask a question?") 019. 'It is decidedly so',
008. 020. 'Outlook not so good'
009. [Link](3) 021.
010. 022. ]
011. replies = [ 023.
012. 024 sh.show_message([Link](replies))

Displaying images
Of course, the LED matrix can display more than just text. We
The sense_show function can control each LED individually to create our own images,

parameters and there are a couple of different ways we can accomplish

this. The first approach is to set pixels (LEDs) individually; we
can do this using the sense.set_pixel() command. First, we
need to be clear about how we describe each pixel.
Parameter Effect
The Sense HAT uses a coordinate system; the numbering
The scroll_speed parameter affects begins at 0, not 1. The origin (0,0) is in the top-left rather than
how quickly the text moves on the the bottom-left, as you may be used to. Try the following
scroll_speed screen. The default value is 0.1.
program (and see Figure 6):
The bigger the number, the slower
the speed.

The text_colour parameter alters the

colour of the text and is specified as
three values for red, green, and blue.
text_colour
Each value can be between 0 and 255,
so [255,0,255] would be red + blue
= purple.

The back_colour parameter alters

the colour of the background and is
back_colour
also specified as three values for red,
green, and blue.
S Figure 6. The Sense HAT’s LED matrix uses a coordinate system

72 Get started with Sense HAT V2

 Tutorial

When you first boot up the using the colours of the rainbow:

Sense HAT, it will display a r = [255, 0, 0]

o = [255, 127, 0]
rainbow pattern across the y = [255, 255, 0]
g = [0, 255, 0]
LED display b = [0, 0, 255]
i = [75, 0, 130]
v = [159, 0, 255]
e = [0, 0, 0] # e is for empty
from sense_hat import SenseHat
sense = SenseHat() We can then describe our matrix by creating a 2D list of
sense.set_pixel(0, 2, [0, 0, 255]) colour names:
sense.set_pixel(7, 4, [255, 0, 0])
image = [ e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
Setting pixels individually works, but it gets rather complex e,e,e,r,r,e,e,e,
when you want to set lots of pixels. There is another option, e,r,r,o,o,r,r,e,
though: sense.set_pixels. r,o,o,y,y,o,o,r,
This is quite straightforward; we just give a list of colour o,y,y,g,g,y,y,o,
values for each pixel. We could enter: y,g,g,b,b,g,g,y,
b,b,b,i,i,b,b,b,
sense.set_pixels([[255, 0, 0], [255, 0, 0], b,i,i,v,v,i,i,b ]
[255, 0, 0], [255, 0,
0],...]) Once you have the colour and image variables, you can then
simply call them by adding:
…but this would take ages. Instead, you can use some
variables to define your colour palette. In this example we’re sense.set_pixels(image)

DOWNLOAD
[Link] THE FULL CODE:

> Language: Python [Link]/github

001. from sense_hat import SenseHat 012.

002. sense = SenseHat() 013. image = [ e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
003. 014. e,e,e,r,r,e,e,e,
004. r = [255, 0, 0] 015. e,r,r,o,o,r,r,e,
005. o = [255, 127, 0] 016. r,o,o,y,y,o,o,r,
006. y = [255, 255, 0] 017. o,y,y,g,g,y,y,o,
007. g = [0, 255, 0] 018. y,g,g,b,b,g,g,y,
008. b = [0, 0, 255] 019. b,b,b,i,i,b,b,b,
009. i = [75, 0, 130] 020. b,i,i,v,v,i,i,b ]
010. v = [159, 0, 255] 021.
011. e = [0, 0, 0] # e is for empty 022. sense.set_pixels(image)

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 73

 When used in the rainbow program, it would look like this:

from sense_hat import SenseHat

sense = SenseHat()

…but don’t forget to start your listing with: r = [255, 0, 0]

o = [255, 127, 0]
from sense_hat import SenseHat y = [255, 255, 0]
sense = SenseHat() g = [0, 255, 0]
b = [0, 0, 255]
Click File > Save As, give your program a name, such as i = [75, 0, 130]
[Link], then click Run (or press F5) to run it. What will v = [159, 0, 255]
you display on your Sense HAT? e = [0, 0, 0]

Setting orientation image = [

So far, all our text and images have appeared the same way e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
up, assuming that the HDMI port is at the bottom. However, e,e,e,r,r,e,e,e,
this may not always be the case (especially in space), so you e,r,r,o,o,r,r,e,
may want to change the orientation of the matrix. To do this, r,o,o,y,y,o,o,r,
you can use the sense.set_rotation() method and inside the o,y,y,g,g,y,y,o,
brackets enter one of four angles (0, 90, 180, or 270). y,g,g,b,b,g,g,y,
To rotate your screen by 180 degrees, you’d use this line: b,b,b,i,i,b,b,b,
b,i,i,v,v,i,i,b
sense.set_rotation(180) ]

sense.set_pixels(image)

DOWNLOAD sense.set_rotation(180)
spinning_j.py THE FULL CODE:
Click File > Save As, give your program a name, such as
> Language: Python [Link]/github
rainbow_flip.py, then press F5 to run it.
You could also create spinning text using a for loop:
001. from sense_hat import SenseHat
002. import time from sense_hat import SenseHat
003. import time
004. sense = SenseHat()
005. sense = SenseHat()
006. sense.show_letter("J")
007. sense.show_letter("J")
008. angles = [0, 90, 180, 270, 0, 90, 180, 270]
009. for r in angles: angles = [0, 90, 180, 270, 0, 90, 180, 270]
010. sense.set_rotation(r) for r in angles:
011. [Link](0.5) sense.set_rotation(r)
[Link](0.5)

74 Get started with Sense HAT V2

 Tutorial

This program displays the letter ‘J’ and then sets the
rotation to each value in the angles list with a 0.5 second
pause. Click File > Save As, give your program a name, such as
spinning_j.py, then press F5 to run it.
You can also flip the image on the screen, either horizontally
or vertically, using these lines:

sense.flip_h()

or…

sense.flip_v()

With this example, you could create a simple animation by

flipping the image repeatedly:

from sense_hat import SenseHat

import time DOWNLOAD
[Link] THE FULL CODE:
sense = SenseHat()
> Language: Python [Link]/github
w = [150, 150, 150]
b = [0, 0, 255] 001. from sense_hat import SenseHat
e = [0, 0, 0] 002. import time
003.
image = [ 004. sense = SenseHat()
e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e, 005.
e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e, 006. w = [150, 150, 150]
w,w,w,e,e,w,w,w, 007. b = [0, 0, 255]
w,w,b,e,e,w,w,b, 008. e = [0, 0, 0]
w,w,w,e,e,w,w,w, 009.
e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e, 010. image = [
e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e, 011. e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e 012. e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
] 013. w,w,w,e,e,w,w,w,
014. w,w,b,e,e,w,w,b,
sense.set_pixels(image) 015. w,w,w,e,e,w,w,w,
016. e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
while True: 017. e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,
[Link](1) 018. e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e
sense.flip_h() 019. ]
020.
Click File > Save As, give your program a name, such as 021. sense.set_pixels(image)
[Link], then press F5 to run it. 022.
This month we’ve looked how to set up a Sense HAT with 023. while True:
your Raspberry Pi and use Thonny to control the LED matrix. 024. [Link](1)
Next month, we will look at how to access the sensors and get 025. sense.flip_h()
information on the temperature, pressure, humidity.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 75

 Build a private cloud
server: Getting social
Part 05

Want to chat to the world on your terms? The

Fediverse may be the social service you’re
looking for

T here’s been a lot of talk about centralised services on

the Internet. Companies such as X or Facebook have
closed systems and hidden algorithms that control
what you see. The Fediverse, backed up by the ActivityPub
protocol, was designed as a true decentralised system that no one
organisation can control. Mastodon, the Fediverse microblogging
platform, has come to the fore as a real alternative for those
Maker who take their privacy seriously. In this final part of our private
PJ Evans cloud server series, we invite you to join the Fediverse. We’ll
PJ is a writer, software use CasaOS ([Link]) from the previous instalments and use
engineer, and homelab Docker to create our instance.
enthusiast. He’s been
lost in the Fediverse 01. Introducing GoToSocial
for many years. Although Mastodon is typically the server people use for an
ActivityPub microblog, it’s notoriously difficult to set up and
@mrpjevans configure. Instead, we’re going to use GoToSocial, which is
not only compatible with Mastodon but is also available in a
Docker container, making installation a breeze with CasaOS. If
YOU’LL NEED you’re not using CasaOS, you can follow this tutorial but will
need to have installed Docker and have some understanding
y Private cloud server
of how it works. CasaOS does not come with GoToSocial in
[Link]/144
its marketplace (yet), but luckily with a bit of work, we can
[Link]/145
install any Docker container we want. But first, let’s sort the
[Link]/146
network out.
[Link]/148

y Domain name 02. Network setup

Before we install GoToSocial, we will need to ensure that other
y Static IP (or DuckDNS setup)
ActivityPub servers can communicate with it, otherwise it’s
not very social (although you don’t have to federate, if you just
want a private microblogging service!). Your server will need

76 Build a private cloud server: Getting social

 Tutorial

We will need to ensure that

other ActivityPub servers
01
can communicate with it

01. Just like other

microblogging
platforms,
Mastodon
shows posts
from friends
and followers

02. Get notifications,

send personal
messages,
02
and search the
Fediverse!

S How the Fediverse links different services; each service can be made
up of many instances. Credit: Imke Senst & Mike Kuketz CC-BY-SA

a unique domain name. A typical approach is to use ‘social’ as 04. Installation

a subdomain. We are using ‘[Link]’ in our Docker containers often come with a ‘Docker Compose’ file:
examples. On your domain name provider’s site, create this a set of instructions on how the container should be run and
subdomain as an A record and point it towards your static IP what access it has. CasaOS can import these files, saving us
address (you should already have port forwarding configured time and complexity. Start by getting the official GoToSocial
on your router from previous tutorials). compose file from [Link]/gotosocialyaml. In CasaOS on
your cloud server, click the ‘+’ icon in the top-right of the screen
03. Domain proxy and select ‘Install a customised app’. Ignore the settings for
In previous instalments of this tutorial we covered installation now and click the ‘Import’ arrow in the top-right of the dialog.
and configuration of Nginx Proxy Manager, a way of hosting You can now paste in the compose file. There’s no need to make
multiple services on a single server and providing SSL security. any changes yet.
See issue #146 ([Link]/146) for more details on this. Open
up Nginx Proxy Manager and add a new Proxy Host. Configure 05. Configuration
it with your new domain name and forward it over HTTP to You’ll go back to the settings dialog where we need to provide
[Link] port 8083 (change the port if it’s already in use). Now some extra info. Give the service a name (Hint: ‘GoToSocial’
click on SSL, select ‘Request a new SSL certificate’ and select might be a good choice for this!) and set the icon URL to
‘Force SSL’. If your DNS is OK, your secure connection should [Link] Next, set the WebUI
now be set up; loading the URL should give a ‘Bad Gateway’ address to the new domain (e.g. [Link]),
error (as opposed to no response). Return to CasaOS. select ‘https’ and leave the port blank. Change the host port

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 77

 Docker?
Docker is an elegant solution to the age-old problems of hosting multiple
services on a single server. To avoid clashes of software versions and
configurations, Docker wraps up a service in its own OS environment
called a container.

Open CasaOS’s Files app and browse to AppData > gotosocial.

Click ‘Upload or create’ > ‘New file’ and name it [Link].
X The customised
Now go to the settings page for GoToSocial in CasaOS and add
app setup in
two new volumes:
CasaOS takes
all the pain out
of installing /DATA/AppData/gotosocial/.cache
and configuring /gotosocial/.cache
Docker apps /DATA/AppData/gotosocial/[Link]
/gotosocial/[Link]
to 8083. Then, under environment variables, set GTS_HOST
to your new domain name. Next, add a new variable called Now add the following environment variables:
GTS_TRUSTED_PROXIES with the value [Link]. Finally,
reduce the memory limit to 1024 (GoToSocial is not memory GTS_CONFIG_PATH /gotosocial/[Link]
hungry) and click ‘Install’. TZ Europe/London

06. Testing (Change the TZ value to suit your locale). Finally, click
We’re not quite done yet, but your ActivityPub server should ‘Save’ and GoToSocial will restart.
now be live! Click the cute sloth icon on CasaOS (or just visit
your new domain name) and you should see an ‘About this 08. Create the first user
instance’ page. If not, go back and check your Nginx Proxy Time to get a first user on our server and promote them to
settings are OK and you have used the correct port numbers. administrator. Not all functions are available in the web
Congratulations, you are now a part of the Fediverse. However, interface, although the makers are working hard on this. In
nobody knows about you yet, so you will not be exchanging this instance, we need to create the user on the command line.
messages (or ‘federating’) with other servers. Before we get to Go back into GoToSocial’s settings and click the ‘Terminal and
that, we need to do a little more configuration. logs’ icon in the top-right. When you have the prompt, enter
the following command:
07. Final configuration
Now we know we have a working server, we can add in a few $ ./gotosocial --config-path ./[Link]
features to help it run smoother. First we want a dedicated admin account create --username pj --email
config file that persists if the Docker container is restarted. pj@[Link] --password
'mysupersecretpassword'

Make sure you change the values above to match your

Explore the Fediverse instance! Once created, promoted the user to administrator
like this:

Now you have a Mastodon service running, don’t forget that the
$ ./gotosocial --config-path ./[Link]
Fediverse has many more aspects. Have a look at Pixelfed for an
admin account promote --username pj
Instagram alternative, or Loops for your own TikTok.

78 Build a private cloud server: Getting social

 Tutorial

Glossary
The decentralised world can be confusing at
first. Here are the terms you need to know.

ActivityPub
An open protocol for federated
communication between servers.

Mastodon
A decentralised microblogging service built
S The Mastodon around ActivityPub.
Now restart the server (three dots > circle with arrow) and
platform provides
the user is ready.
a rich experience Fediverse
to rival commercial The collective term for ActivityPub services that
09. Personalise your server and profile alternatives can federate with each other.
We can now log in! Browse to your server’s URL with ‘/settings’
at the end (e.g. [Link]/settings) to get
to your profile page. Accept the instance, enter your username
and password then authorise the app to access your account.
If you can see three different sections on the left-hand side,
you’re an admin! GoToSocial has many settings, far too many
to cover here. It is well worth your time browsing through them
and deciding what features you want to enable or disable. At
a bare minimum, set your name, profile pic and bio so that
people can recognise you when you start posting. S Your first post on your very own personal Fediverse instance

10. My first toot then follow them. Your server will now be federating with their
GoToSocial does not come with a user client, it is a server only server. The more people you follow, the more servers you will
with some user controls. Luckily, the Fediverse is such that be able to exchange messages with. With a bit of work and
there are many clients available, most of them open source. patience, your timeline will soon fill up with messages from all
The easiest one with which to get started is the browser-based over the world.
Elk ([Link]). Go to the site and add your account. Enter your
server URL when prompted and you’ll be redirected to your 12. That’s all folks
own server to log in (this is a secure method of authorisation This brings our series on running your own private cloud server
called OAuth). When you come back, you’ll be ready to post! to a close. We could go on for months about the other things
Try it. Just post ‘Hello world!’ or something. You should see you could do, but it’s time to let your own curiosity take over.
your own post appear in your timeline (and yes, posts on CasaOS provides an excellent platform for experimentation,
Mastodon are known as ‘toots’). using Docker’s capabilities to avoid bricking your server
as every new service is isolated, so don’t be afraid to try
11. To the Fediverse! something new! One final note: a server that isn’t backed up
So, you now have a working microblogging platform but no- should not be considered to exist. Try to back up at least the
one to talk to. It’s time to federate. The easiest way to do this is /DATA directory in CasaOS, which contains all the config and
to follow someone you already know on the Fediverse. Search data files for your services, ideally somewhere in the cloud.
for them in Elk (using the full @username@domain format) Enjoy your private cloud server!

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 79

 Build a home
recording studio with
Part 02

Raspberry Pi 500
Here’s what you need to know to equip your
new studio, from micro to medium budgets

C ontinuing from last month’s guide to setting up

an acoustically treated recording space at home,
it’s time to get to the hardware. Quieter than an
actively cooled Raspberry Pi 5 setup in most cases, Raspberry
Pi 500 is a great studio computer (other Raspberry Pi 4, 400
and 5 models also work well, if you use a silent case or no fan),
but you’ll need a little more equipment than that.
Maker
K.G. Orphanides Audio interfaces
K.G. is a game You’ll need an external audio device. For basic voice recording,
developer, tinkerer, we’ve successfully used a pocket-sized consumer USB DAC
writer and sometime (AudioQuest DragonFly Red, £135) and a USB microphone. This
musician. Check out is enough, with the right software and driver setup, to handle
their SoundCloud. vocal and spoken word recording, editing, and mixing without
any quality or latency issues.
[Link]/ More sophisticated productions require more gear. A guitar
dungeonsynth can also be connected via a USB guitar lead, and USB XLR
microphone leads are also available. These generic devices are
available from brands including [Link], Lindy, and Behringer
for around £13, and they’re functionally interchangeable. If
you have a condenser mic that requires 48 V phantom power,
you’ll need an additional power unit.
This is a point in favour of dedicated audio interfaces,
such as the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (£159), currently in its 4th
generation, which has two powered XLR inputs, two TRS or
TS inputs, a stereo pair of TRS outputs, a TRS headphone port,

80 Build a Raspberry Pi 500 home recording studio

 Tutorial

For vocal work in a sound-treated room, we

recommend a large-diaphragm condenser mic

S A basic voice recording setup could

include a USB condenser mic,
studio monitors, and headphones

and can record two live inputs at once. You can save money by designed for use as a DAW controller. MIDI instruments can
getting an older model, and even those with software controls be connected via integrated USB, Wireless USB, or traditional
are supported thanks to a Linux driver project. Other good MIDI ports assuming your audio interface has them – our
entry-level audio production interfaces are made by Behringer, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 doesn’t, so we used USB.
Presonus, Steinberg, and Roland. Make sure that you have enough space for any instruments
you need, add floor- or wall-mounted instrument stands as
Instruments required, and ensure that your audio interface is equipped to
Assuming you already have the instruments you play, you’ll handle them.
mostly either need to consider mic’ing up acoustic instruments
and making sure you have an interface with the right Microphones
connectors for your electric instruments. Dynamic microphones use a magnetic coil to pick up sound,
If you primarily compose using MIDI step entry and plan on while condenser mics use a lighter, thus more sensitive,
mostly working with loops or in your DAW’s notation or piano electrostatically charged diaphragm. Dynamic mics are
roll interface, you don’t necessarily need any instruments, robust, highly directional, and well suited to the rigours
although a MIDI keyboard can come in handy. We opted for a of a stage environment. They’re not favoured for studio
lightly weighted, 49-key Novation Launchkey 49 Mk4 (£222), use, as they’re less sensitive to sound than condenser

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 81

 W Raspberry Pi 500’s three USB ports are
sufficient to connect both an audio
capture device and a DAC, but if you have
multiple instruments to connect, a more
sophisticated audio interface makes sense
and saves ports

Avoid the kind of open-backed cans

that are aimed at hi-fi enthusiasts (these
tend to have a great soundstage but
least sound) and on-ear headphones.

Studio monitors
Eventually you’ll also want studio
monitors: speakers with a neutral audio
profile designed to make the job of
mixing music easier – no bass boosts or
hi-fi EQ tweaking.
We’re using Adam Audio TV5 (£135 per
powered speaker – £270 for two), which
mics and have a narrower frequency response. But if you are about as big as our desk will comfortably hold, measuring
frequently have background noise in your environment, 290 × 180 × 270 mm. These are near-field monitors, designed
the reduced sensitivity of a good-quality dynamic mic to accurately reproduce the full frequency spectrum of your
could result in a better-sounding overall recording. We use music at a low volume, close to your head, so you don’t need to
a Shure SM-58 for vocals and SM-57 for mic’ing amps and blast your ears apart.
instruments, as these live workhorses sound great and border We’ve also run with larger monitors: Behringer’s Truth
on indestructible. B2030A monitors (£281 for a pair) are much larger powered
For vocal work in a sound-treated room, we strongly loudspeakers, measuring 317 × 214 × 211 mm. Their sound is
recommend a more responsive large-diaphragm condenser a little less precise than the Adams, but is still appropriately
mic, connected via either USB or XLR. Entry-level favourites neutral at low volumes and is a solid choice if you’re working
include the Audio Technica AT2020 XLR mic (£75), Logitech’s in a larger space.
Blue Yeti USB/XLR mic (£120), and the Rode NT-1 XLR mic
(£135 including shock mount).

Headphones
Headphones allow you to monitor – i.e. listen to – whatever
you’re recording and let you listen to previously recorded
parts that you’re trying to accompany. Closed-back studio
headphones won’t leak sound for live mics to accidentally
pick up their sound.
We used Adam Audio H200 headphones (£135) for this.
Shure’s SRH440s are a little cheaper, and also good for the
job. However, you can use whatever you happen to have, as
long as they don’t leak noise and have a fairly neutral sound
profile. So if you have a favourite pair of sound-isolating
earbuds, they’ll do perfectly well if you don’t want to shell out S If you just need to connect a single guitar or bass, generic USB
for new cans straight away. interfaces are conspicuously cheap and work well

82 Build a Raspberry Pi 500 home recording studio

 Tutorial

X We’re using a desk If you’re on a budget, Mackie’s compact CR5-X speakers

mic here with a
(£159) fall between computer speakers and monitors, and are
solid stand with a
reasonable choice for the money if you’re not doing high-
heavy anti-vibration
precision work.
base, plus a
mic cover
Other equipment
To go with your microphone, you’ll need a mic stand or boom
arm. Options include desktop mic stands, booms with screw
clamps to hold them to the edge of your table, ceiling-mounted
booms, and a variety of floor-standing mic stands. Most
condenser mics are threaded, but you’ll need a microphone
clip to attach to the stand if you’re working with a traditional
dynamic stage mic, while condenser mics will benefit from
shock mounts.
Another consideration for your mic is a pop shield or cover
to soften plosives (hard consonants such as p, k, and t).
You’ll need the appropriate cables – there’s nothing more
frustrating than buying cool new gear that you can’t use – and
any relevant adapters, such as 3.5 mm to 1/4-inch TRS stereo
adapters for headphones, if yours don’t come with one.

Glossary: audio encoding

terms
PCM – pulse-code modulation. A digital representation of analogue
sound sampled at a specified rate and bit depth. Uncompressed file
types used for PCM include WAV and AIFF.

Sample rate – or sample frequency. The average number of samples

taken in one second to digitise analogue sound. CD audio has a sample
rate of 44,100 kHz (44,100 samples per second), allowing it to accurately
Glossary: hardware audio reproduce audio frequencies of up to 22.05 kHz – the upper threshold

encoding and decoding of human hearing. High-resolution audio formats use sample rates
of up to 192 kHz, but higher sample rates are most often used during
production. 48 kHz is sufficient to capture all audible frequencies in
DAC – digital-to-analogue converter: converts data into sound that you principle, but if you have sensitive recording equipment and an interest
can listen to via speakers or headphones. in psychoacoustic theory, you may have a reason to record at higher
frequencies. Note, though, that high-frequency recording results in
ADC – analogue-to-digital converter: captures an analogue sound and rapidly ballooning file sizes.
digitises it at a specified sample frequency and bit depth.
Bit depth – the number of bits used to encode each sample. CD bit depth
CODEC – a single-chip audio coder and decoder including the features of is 16-bit, but lossless digital formats such as FLAC are typically 24-bit.
both a DAC and an ADC. Higher bit depths can capture a broader dynamic range.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 83

 Custom CNC
machine
Part 02

Last issue we dived into developing a custom

CNC machine – now we’ll turn it into a
prototype carbon filament winder

I n the first part of this two-part mini series, we set out

designing various parts for a custom CNC machine
that is intended to act as a carbon filament winding
machine for making custom carbon-fibre tubes. We got
as far as creating a machine bed and frame from aluminium
extrusions and then created a sliding bed that would travel
the length of the machine on V-slot wheels and also designed a
Maker rudimentary tail and headstock idea to create a spindle.
Jo Hinchliffe The principle of the machine is that carbon tow (a small
With a house and shed ribbon made up of thousands of carbon fibres) will be wrapped
full of lathes, milling off a reel onto a mandrel (a small tube) with epoxy applied. The
machines, 3D printers tow will be applied to the mandrel in patterns of movement
and more, Jo is a where the mandrel turns and the sliding bed moves back and
constant tinkerer and forth, allowing the tow to wrap around the machine. Research
is passionate about indicates it’s a good idea for the carbon tow to be applied at
making. Obsessed with variable angles to the mandrel and so some form of turning
rockets, robots and head to change the angle is needed. Ultimately the carbon tow
much more besides, could flow through a reservoir of epoxy resin en route to the
he often releases mandrel, but it’s common to start off applying the tow dry to
designs and projects practise, and making first tubes by just painting epoxy onto
as open‑source. the tow and mandrel whilst it’s turning. As such, we aren’t
going to create the reservoir system until we have had a lot of
concretedog. practice runs.
[Link] In the last part, I began to devise head and tailstock parts
to mount and drive the mandrel assembly. Opting to have, for

84 Custom CNC machine

 Tutorial

It’s a good idea for the carbon tow to be

applied at variable angles to the mandrel

S Figure 1. The ‘FilaWinda’ attempting its first

dry runs with carbon-fibre tow filament

the headstock, a stepper motor mounted W Figure 2.

underneath the shaft and then use some The second
GT2 gear pulleys and a belt to turn the headstock
spindle. After some consideration it design with a
direct-drive inline
was realised that this perhaps added
NEMA 17 mount
some unneeded complexity and it was
possible to direct drive a threaded rod
with an inline stepper motor, Figure 2.
Being quite happy with other aspects
of the head and tailstock design, I made
the new headstock to match the centre
spindle height of the older design which
could still be used as the tailstock. The Warning!
head and tailstock are both fitted with Moving parts
two skateboard-style bearings which Be careful when
are a press-fit into the design and have handling this project
an 8 mm centre hole. Adding a length because it has moving
of 8 mm threaded rod through the head parts. Children should
and tailstock means we can then mount be supervised.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 85

 mandrels of different sizes onto the W Figure 3. The 3D-
system. In the headstock, I designed printed headstock
mount points for a NEMA 17 stepper with skateboard
motor which is mounted on some short bearings, a
lengths of M3 threaded rod. Finally, a threaded spindle,
and inline NEMA 17
small commercial 5 mm to 8 mm coupler
is used to connect the stepper motor to
the shaft, Figure 3. To remove the shaft driven by a stepper motor. FreeCAD has
to place a different mandrel system on some excellent tools for working with
it, I can just undo this connector and pull gears, and the design of the roller holder
the shaft out from the tailstock end. At and drive gear was greatly assisted by
some point I could replace the connector the FC Gears add-on workbench. This
with a flexible type which will even out workbench, once installed, allows you
any small amounts of non-concentric to quickly generate standard gears
movement between the motor and the of varying types and, of course, then
threaded rod. use additional FreeCAD tools in other
workbenches to add geometry.
Come on you gears! For the main roller holder part, I first
There were a few iterations and thought created a 60-tooth pinion gear that was
processes undertaken to create the 8 mm thick. Moving to the Part Design
main angle head assembly. Wanting to workbench, I created an active body and
have a replaceable roller that could be dragged the gear part into it. It’s then
positioned at variable angles, I needed possible to map sketches to faces of the
some kind of geared roller holder to be gear and do the usual padding, extruding
and pocketing operations to create
the needed geometry. I first created a
sketch with which to perform a pocket
operation, creating both the centre hole
in the gear and removing of the bottom
half of the gear, Figure 4. Mapping a
sketch onto the base of the half gear
allowed the creation of the straight legs
that in turn had holes added to receive a
small length of M3 threaded rod to hold
the roller. A simple fillet finished off the
part with a stand-off around the hole. It’s
interesting that whilst this might look
like a pretty complex part to design, it’s
actually a very simple job in FreeCAD.
Jumping back into the FC Gears
workbench to create another smaller
pinion gear which would be push-fit
onto the 5 mm shaft of a NEMA 17 stepper
motor, I began to think about how these
parts would be assembled into position.
S Figure 4. The angled head component looks I needed to know what distance to set
complex to model but FreeCAD has many apart the centres of the mount holes for
tools to make it a straightforward part both the pinion gear and the roller holder

86 Custom CNC machine

 Tutorial

parts. Whilst I could make educated

guesses, a simple way to do this a little
more accurately was to create a small
assembly of the two geared parts in
FreeCAD and then measure the distance
between the centres once happy with
the meshing of the gears. With the
latest 1.0 version of FreeCAD, there
is a new Assembly workbench which
makes this pretty straightforward to
achieve. I created and locked in position
two cylinders to act as shafts for the
geared parts and then constrained the
gears onto the shafts, Figure 5. I could section of the frame utilised the discovered S Figure 5. The angled head and drive gear
then adjust the shaft distance until dimensions from earlier to set the position component assembled in FreeCAD on
satisfied and then use the new universal of the NEMA 17 mount and the gear and the temporary cylinder shafts, allowing us to
measuring tool in FreeCAD to check the geared roller holder. In the first part of this ascertain dimensions for mounting
distance and note that dimension for series, I added some short lengths of 15 mm
further CAD. extrusion to our sliding bed and this served as the mount point
for the main angle head frame assembly via some M3 fasteners.
Roll with it To mount the angle head assembly we simply used a M8 bolt, a
Making the frame to complete the main couple of washers, and a nut. Whilst it should, after years of 3D
angle head was largely straightforward. printing, seem mundane to be able to print parts that fit well
As the roller holder articulates from first time, it’s still pretty cool to be able to print all this and put
side to side, it needed a large window in it together with gears meshing correctly first time, Figure 6.
the frame to create space for the roller The actual roller that the carbon tow will pass over will
and threaded tow to be able to move eventually be a disposable item as they will come into contact
through the frame unimpeded. The top with epoxy resin; however, they are a pretty small part that is

W Figure 6. The
final assembly of
the angle head
and prototype
filament delivery
components

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 87

 X Figure 7: Creating easy to design and 3D-print, Figure 7. We
a centring roller for sketched half of a profile of a prototype
the carbon-fibre roller in FreeCAD and then used the
tow to run over mirror tool in the Sketcher workbench
to complete the profile. A simple use of
the revolve tool completed a first design
attempt. The idea of the roller is that the
angled edges try to keep the carbon tow
in the centre of the roller mechanism.
Finishing off this first iteration of the
carbon tow delivery system, we created
a simple bracket that could mount to the
other end of the 15 mm rails to hold the
reel of carbon tow.

Belt drive
One final job was to add the belt drive we bought a few metres of 6 mm wide
system to the long cross slide. The belting. We designed some small loops
driven end of the system has a NEMA 17 on the edges of the sliding bed plate
mounted with a 40-tooth GT2 pulley in and had originally planned to double the
place. At the far end of the cross slide belt through the loop and clamp it back
we have a 3D-printed matching idler to itself for tension. A happy realisation
pulley. I designed the idler pulley again was that it would be pretty easy to create
using the FC Gears workbench that has a couple of clamp blocks and simply
T Figure 8. Simple blocks with a small groove a built-in tool for creating GT2 and other pass the GT2 belt over the top of the
on the underside snugly clamp the tensioned pulley/timing gear wheels. GT2 belting 15 mm rails each side and clamp it under
GT2 belts can be bought pretty readily online and tension. This worked pretty flawlessly,
Figure 8. After some testing, I realised it
was unnecessary to have the idler pulley
with teeth as this made it more likely for
movement along the long X axis slide to
cause skipping. A quick redesign and the
idler is now a blank smooth pulley for
the GT2 belt to roll over.
This marked the point where I could
mount all the NEMA 17 stepper motors
and wire them back to a controller. A
while ago, in issue 147, you may recall
we converted a small lathe to CNC and
used a cheap GRBL Woodpecker control
board for control and explored creating
custom settings and custom G-code to
control the machine. For this carbon
winder project, it’s a similar process.
Remembering this is a prototype GRBL

88 Custom CNC machine

 Tutorial

can certainly get the machine moving to to regulate the angle of the two arriving
Improvisation as
begin to work out how to create wound at the roller. I’m not sure the roller is design!
patterns. One slight hack is that it is actually needed; it may be better to have
using the Z axis as the rotation of the some form of slotted part the tow travels
You may have realised at this point
mandrel; this would probably be better through on the angled head, and indeed,
that indeed this is all being made up as
served with the mandrel being driven this might also be used as a ‘squeegee’ to
I go along. It’s certainly true that I am
by a non-stepper motor and using remove excess epoxy.
approaching the pattern-winding aspects
an encoder to then synchronise the It’s been a fun project so far and all
of the project ‘empirically’. This is a posh
rotations with the rest of the machine through the process I am reminded of
way of saying I am writing some G-codes,
motion. However, for now, we simply set how awesome it is that we can undertake
sending them to the machine, and seeing
the number of steps per millimetre for these types of builds using relatively
what happens. It’s certainly possible to
this axis as the number of steps for one affordable 3D printing and using free
approach the pattern creation from a more
complete rotation; this means that we and open-source CAD, CAM, and G-code
mathematical standpoint, but getting a feel
can issue simple G01 20 type commands tools. Speaking of open source, there are
for what works at different scales is a valid
and the Z axis will rotate 20 times. a lot of parts in this project and some
approach. I can imagine with some extended
To the angle head and roller, simple still need revision; keep your eye out as
tinkering I can find acceptable approaches
experiments are undertaken with GRBL at some point in the future I’ll release
and then perhaps create a spreadsheet
and the Universal GRBL sender to work the ‘FilaWinda’ source online. I can
or script that creates G-codes for given
out travel and desirable angles. definitely recommend trying to create
dimensions and given patterns of tube, but
With any CNC machine I always your own CNC machine, though: it’s
for now, playful tinkering it is.
suggest performing some ‘air cuts’. On excellent fun!
our CNC lathe this looked like running
the machine with no stock and no
cutting tools attached so the machine
runs the code and you can observe to
see if it’s behaving as expected. It’s no
different with this machine; I performed
a lot of ‘air winds’ to check movements.
In the current stage of development, at
time of writing, I’ve moved on to ‘dry
winding’ where I am winding carbon
tow around a mandrel, but without any
epoxy, Figure 1. This means I can get a
real sense of the winding operations as I
experiment, but it’s all non-permanent,
I can then (slightly laboriously) rewind
all the carbon back onto the reel by hand
to save waste. Immediately after adding
the carbon tow, it was obvious that the
tow needs to be under some tension to
stop it moving around on the mandrel,
causing slight irregularity in the winding
patterns. I’ve made an additional loop/ S Figure 9. The affordable ‘Woodpecker’-style
guide for the tow to travel through en boards are widely available and an easy way
route to the mandrel which also helps to interact with NEMA 17 motors

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 89

Dehydrating fruit,
vegetables, and herbs
With an electric food dehydrator, capture optimum
seasonal flavours and enjoy them throughout the year

D ehydration as a food preservation technique is

as old as the hills, a way of extending the life of
foods because, if the moisture is removed, this
obviously inhibits the growth of bacteria, mould, fungi, and
all those microorganisms that can cause decay when a food
is left uneaten for too long.
Dehydrating foods is very easy to do, and you can create
Maker some lightweight and portable snacks – great for when you are
Nicola King out walking or camping, for example. The dehydrated form of
Nicola is a freelance the foods we will consider still holds a high percentage of its
writer and sub-editor. nutritional value. It’s also a way of reducing food waste when
She’s been slicing, you have bought (or grown) too much of a particular food, with
chopping, and the added benefit that the taste of many dehydrated foods can
powdering this month be much more intense and concentrated. Dehydrating food
– if only she had yourself can also help you avoid preservatives and save money
a pantry... against the high cost of the dehydrated foods you can buy in
shops, some of which may contain added sodium and sugar.
@holtonhandmade
An appliance of science
A food dehydrator is a piece of equipment that pulls the
moisture out of foods, drying them at a low heat level so that
the nutrients are preserved as far as possible. The key thing to
remember is that dehydrators do not cook the food. Instead,
they draw air in through the bottom or side of the machine and
circulate that air with a fan, and at the same time a heating
element is working at very low temperatures, so it’s all about
heat and airflow. They also, depending on their wattage and
size, use very little power – the machine used for this tutorial
only used three-quarters of a kilowatt-hour over a six-hour
period (costing about 18p in the UK).
Bear in mind that we get a lot of water from some foods
and by dehydrating them, we are actually reducing our water

90 Dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and herbs

 Tutorial

01

01. If you ever have more apples or other fruits and

veg than you know what to do with during a
horticultural summer glut, consider dehydrating
the surplus. Fill all of your trays for optimal
energy efficiency and add whatever flavourings
you desire. It’s a year-round hobby, as something
is always in season!

intake, so do make sure that you drink enough water outside YOU’LL NEED
of snacking on your dehydrated fruits and vegetables. Also,
y A fresh fruit, vegetable, or herb to dehydrate
when using an appliance like this, make sure that you either
dehydrate savoury or sweet foods at any one time, not both – y Lemon juice (for fruit citrus baths – optional)
the flavours can transfer in the circulating air, so avoid mixing
y An electric food dehydrator (trays washed
your foodstuffs if you don’t want your apple snacks to taste
before first use)
of onion..
y A clean, airtight container to store the
Don’t skimp on the prep dehydrated product in (glass advised)
Before you begin, do clean and dry all surfaces and equipment,
y Basic kitchen utensils (e.g. sharp knife, apple
also washing your hands as often as you need to when
corer, tongs etc.)
preparing your foods. The very first fruit that we tackled was
the humble apple, and this is a great beginner project. We y Fruit/vegetable cleaning brush (optional)
first created a lemon juice bath to soak the apple slices in, and
y Baking/parchment paper (optional)
basically used one part lemon juice to four parts water. When
that was ready on standby, we washed our apples thoroughly y Spices/sugar/flavourings (optional)
and used a slicer/corer to split them into manageable pieces
and to remove the core and seeds. The key to dehydrating
foods successfully is to ensure that all of your pieces are as
uniform as possible in terms of shape and not too thick, or

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 91

 W We purchased an inexpensive machine online,
and here it is fresh out of the box, with the
plastic trays already rinsed in some warm,
soapy water, and ready for action. There are
five layers, or trays, to this model and its
dimensions are 31 cm in height and 28 cm
wide – not exactly a small footprint in the
kitchen. It uses around 345 watts of power

S A close-up of the temperature options. We

read one review on this appliance where
the user had found it ideal as a tool for
drying out his 3D printer filament, in a
well-ventilated room of course! Obviously,
you would not then use it for food
dehydration afterwards

they’ll take longer to dry out. We sliced our chunks a little including other spices such as nutmeg, or even sugar if you
thinner, maintaining a constant thickness, and then plunged have a sweet tooth. We then set the dehydrator to around 50°C
them into the lemon juice mix for around five to ten minutes. and left the machine to do its work, checking back every hour
It’s important to do this if you are keen to avoid the enzymatic for the first few hours just to ensure all was well.
browning that usually occurs when an apple is cut and oxygen
is introduced into the tissue of the fruit, causing oxidation. Not too hot, not too cold
Next, we’d read that using a liner sheet of baking or It’s worth talking a little here about the temperature to set
parchment paper in the plastic trays makes the latter a little when dehydrating your foodstuffs, as it’s crucial to dehydrate
easier to clean. It also makes it much easier to grab your at the correct low temperature and hitting that happy medium
finished fruits and veg out the trays, so we hand-cut some very can be down to some trial and error. Certainly one thing that
rough circles that fitted inside them, and were then ready to you do want to avoid is ‘case hardening’, which happens when
place the fruit slices on top in a single layer with space between the exterior of a food dries out too quickly due to too high a
each piece of apple. It’s not necessary to add any flavourings, temperature being set, causing the formation of a tough case
but a match made in heaven is apple paired with cinnamon, on the outside. This then consequently prevents the inside of
so we added a sprinkling over the top of the slices once they the food from dehydrating properly.
were in the tray. (If nothing else, the heavenly cinnamon scent We left our machine on for around six hours and the apples
that pervaded the kitchen was worth the effort.) You could were perfect at that point. Bear in mind that the length of time
add anything you like to dehydrating fruits and vegetables, that it takes to dehydrate will depend on the wattage of the

92 Dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and herbs

 Tutorial

It’s crucial to
machine, as well as the thickness of the dehydrate at jar around a bit and, if any pieces stick
slices you’ve cut. Clearly, if you can see
or feel moisture, then the food is not
the correct low to the side, it’s not properly dehydrated.
It’s important to note that if you see any
dehydrated and you’ll need to do it for
longer, but there are some ways to check
temperature mould developing in the jar a week or
two after you’ve stored your bounty, you
if it’s ready and it’s basically down to will need to throw the contents away.
texture. The first tip is to leave it for five or ten minutes after We tried the same process with some courgette slices, but
turning off the dehydrator, to give it time to cool. Then, if you this time we ‘blanched’ the courgette first as a pre-treatment.
can snap any fruit or veg in half, it’s definitely ready. Apple This basically involves dipping it in boiling water for around a
slices should be crisp and crunchy to bite on and if you squeeze minute, then putting it into cold water – for some vegetables,
them in your hand, there should be no bacteria-forming this helps to preserve the colour and texture, slow down
moisture or stickiness. enzyme action, and shorten the drying and rehydration times.
Gathered up into an airtight glass jar, we then put our Some say it also improves the taste, but it’s up to you. We then
cooled slices in a dark cupboard and they’ll now be good for seasoned the slices with some herbs/onion powder, but you
around six months or so. A tip we’ve picked up is to toss the could use a stock cube, paprika… whatever you prefer.

Alternative ways of dehydrating

So, if you simply don’t want to use an electric [Link]/SolarDehydrator. Air drying in the the food. Not all ovens can operate at the
food dehydrator, or don’t have the kitchen shade is a better option for drying some foods low temperatures required for dehydrating.
space to store one, there are other numerous such as leafy greens, as it protects these You’ll also need to use a rack so that the
ways of removing the moisture from fruits and foodstuffs from very harsh sun rays. air can circulate better, and our research
vegetables. Let’s take a look at some options: suggests a need to prop open the oven
• Air fryer. Try using the gadget that adorns so door too. Given that using an oven to
• Sun/air drying. Given that these forms of food many kitchens these days. From our research, dehydrate can take several hours, it doesn’t
preservation have existed for thousands of it seems that air fryers can work reasonably seem a particularly cost-effective way of
years, they are clearly proven and are easily well as food dehydrators, and some now even removing moisture, plus you’d need to
the cheapest options, if not a little slow, but have a ‘dehydrate’ function setting. If you constantly monitor progress and rotate the
we think some delicious sun-dried tomatoes have the ability to set your air fryer to a low food as required.
might be worth the effort! If you have the temperature/fan speed, then you are more
appropriate consistent and predictable hot likely to have success dehydrating foods. • DIY dehydrator. It would be remiss of us not
weather and extremely low humidity/dry air How long it will actually take to dehydrate any to mention that you can hack your very own
(sadly, not something we can rely on here food depends on your particular air fryer, the DIY food dehydrator, just as these makers
in the UK!), sun drying involves laying foods temperature that you set it at, the specific have done: [Link]/DIYDehydrators.
such as fruits outside during the day on some food you are dehydrating, etc. You’re probably one step ahead of us,
kind of tray, covered usually with a mesh, but it goes without saying that you can
cheesecloth, or something to protect them • Oven. The good old oven can also be used also use a Raspberry Pi to control the
from animals/insects. You can also buy or for dehydration, but remember that the whole dehydrating process, and it’s
make your own ‘solar dehydrator’, just like this temperature should be around or below something we may try ourselves very soon:
one made entirely from recovered materials: 60°C, otherwise you’ll just end up cooking [Link]/IoTDehydrator.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 93

With all of that digested…
Our apple slices are delicious and contain the same calories/
protein/fat/sugar/fibre as their former fresh selves. Obviously,
as with anything, ‘you pays your money and you takes your
choice’. Our appliance was a very cheap online purchase with
plastic trays, but you can spend much more and get something
far more substantial made of stainless steel with a glass door, S Some thinly sliced apple pieces prior to dehydration. We dug out our
apple corer/slicer and then thinly sliced those pieces before giving them
which will likely perform much more effectively. Either way,
a refreshing dunk in our acidic lemon/water bath. This could be done
we’d recommend food dehydration as a great way of saving
with bananas too in order to reduce the chance of browning of the fruit
money, eating healthily, and reducing food waste.

Easy foods to dehydrate

We’ve chosen some pretty easy fruit and cheaper, sweet, and slightly tart treat that is Courgettes/zucchini – wash them, slice them
vegetable projects for our tutorial, and here highly recommended. thinly, and add to your dehydrator. Season
are some more of the almost foolproof ways them with something delicious and you have
to succeed. Dehydrating fruits and vegetables Frozen vegetables – this idea was a surprise, some tasty vegetable chips that may be a little
is not quick, but it’s worth the time investment but dehydrating them is actually very easy, as healthier than other chip-like alternatives.
and, with all of these projects, make sure they are pre-cut, pre-blanched, and just ready
Whilst many foods like fruits and vegetables
you dehydrate the product well before it to throw into your dehydrator. When you want
can be dehydrated, there are also a number of
starts showing signs of turning bad, so use to use them in a soup or stew, they are then
other foods that should not be considered as
fresh ingredients: ready to go. An additional idea is that, once
suitable at all for dehydrating. The best way of
dehydrated, you can also powder them by
preserving some foods is just by freezing them.
Mushrooms – give them a thorough clean and throwing them in a blender and pulsing on a low
Here are a few to keep clear of your dehydrator:
get rid of any dirt particles with a vegetable speed, and you can then enhance dishes’ flavour
brush. Slice them up (around 5 mm in thickness) by adding the punchy nutritious vegetable
Fats/oils – foods containing high amounts of
and lay out on your dehydrator tray. Mushrooms powder to pretty much any savoury meal. In
both or either of these should not be dehydrated
rehydrate beautifully when you add them to hot fact, dehydrating any greens, then powdering
as they will likely go rancid very quickly. Examples
water/soups/casseroles etc. them, and adding them to savoury dishes is a
would include avocados, olives, nut butters, etc.
great way of ramping up everyone’s veg intake
Strawberries and raspberries – a personal without them even knowing it! The same applies
Dairy products, eggs, and meats – it is very
favourite that we use in overnight oats. to fruits too.
important to underline that the dehydration of
This author was actually prompted to start
these is not something that should be tackled
dehydrating fruit after seeing some extremely Spring onions/scallions – wash them
by a home dehydrator, to avoid things like
overpriced dehydrated raspberries in a health thoroughly, chop them up, and you’re ready to
salmonella and other bacteria developing.
food shop. Home dehydration results in a dehydrate. Could it be any easier?

94 Dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and herbs

 Tutorial

X Dehydrating
some fruit slices
or veggies for a
healthy on-the-go
snack is easy and
straightforward.
The instruction
booklet suggested
it was also possible
to dehydrate meat
and fish with this
machine, but that’s
a whole different
ball game, for many
health-related
reasons, and we’d
advise to avoid
those dehydrating
such foodstuffs
unless you really
know what you
are doing

Hardly a new idea

We’ve touched on the fact that dehydrating food is something that our With the groundwork laid, arguably the next major progression in terms of
ancestors were doing some time ago, and it’s thought that the first dehydrating came late in the 19th century, when the ‘spray-drying’ technique
dalliances into dehydration occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Middle was first described. In a nutshell, this was a way of forming a dry powder
and Far East. The lack of humidity and abundant hot sun and wind from a liquid by quickly drying it with a hot gas. Spray-drying grew in
would have naturally dried out certain foods. The ancient Egyptians popularity, with World War II seeing an increase in the use of this process
also dried out fish, poultry, and some fruits so that they could use as troops needed lightweight and nutritious meals, and dehydrating food
them long-term throughout the year, important in times of drought obviously took the bulkiness factor out of the equation. Powdered eggs and
or famine. In Europe, clearly the weather was not as hospitable to milk were rationed for the general UK population during that war too, and
dehydrating, so in the Middle Ages, ‘still-houses’ were built so that were largely used because powdered food forms prolonged shelf life and
foodstuffs could be dried inside them, usually strung across the space bypassed issues such as lack of refrigeration options.
over a fire.
Since then, major leaps have been made in improving food dehydration
Two French inventors and food preservation pioneers, Masson and Chollet techniques and many of us buy dehydrated and freeze-dried foods (a form
are thought to have invented the first automated dehydration process of dehydration where food is frozen and then dried under pressure) on
around 1800 – they heated food at a high temperature and extracted the a regular basis without even considering it, e.g. spices and herbs, stock
air at the same time to create a vacuum, evaporating water and preventing cubes, instant coffee, powdered milks, raisins, sun-dried tomatoes, and
growth of bacteria and microorganisms. It is thought that they compressed so on. And, ever since the onset of space travel, astronauts have had
the foods into ‘cakes’. dehydrated food as a diet staple.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 95

the
maker
toolset
Everything you need to set up your
own makespace

By Rob Zwetsloot

M aking is one of the most fun

hobbies in the world, even
if we do say so ourselves.
It also encompasses so many things –
from simple circuits and humble sewing
to futuristic 3D printing and post-
apocalyptic metalwork, you can express
yourself in so many physical ways.
If you’re new to the hobby, it can be
tricky to know where to start – so we’ve
put together a guide to help you get
started on your maker path with some
universal (and some less universal) tools
and resources. What will you make?

96 The Maker Toolset

 Feature

Tools for
every maker Safety Tips
Here’s how to help protect
yourself and others

Don’t get caught without

one of these essentials

Cutting mat
1. Safety goggles
Eye protection is important! Flying
shards and splashing chemicals can
Hammer Glue be really damaging.

S Wood glue and superglue

2. Proper space
are indispensable Make sure you have plenty of suitable
for making, and space for your project, along with
sometimes plastic safety gear for anything that might
Pliers
cement is useful too catch on fire.

3. Do your research
Read the manual, read the reddit, make
Screwdriver and sure you know how something works
socket set and the dangers it may represent
before using it.

T While traditionally used for

soldering, helping hands
can really help with some Vice Utility knife
other fiddly tasks

W Often called a
Dremel (named
after the brand
that also makes
rotary tools),
these are useful
for cutting and
sanding plastic,
Helping hands Metal ruler Rotary tool
along with some
drilling

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 97

Electronics
tools for
every maker
Want to make some circuits?
Here’s what you’ll need

Multimeter
[Link]/multimeter
Soldering iron (and solder) To diagnose issues with your circuits,
[Link]/solderiron
Prototyping wire in a multimeter is great, being able to
For when prototyping is complete and
various colours show you current flow, resistance,
you need to create something more
[Link]/wires and more between two spots. Also, it
permanent. You can usually get kits
Multicoloured wire can be very useful can be used around the house.
with solder suckers, little bases to
for following the logic of your own
keep your (very hot) soldering iron in,
circuit, otherwise fixing faults can be
and other tips. Check out this guide
a headache.
for how to get started before diving
Electronics starter kits
in: [Link]/soldering.

Breadboard
[Link]/breadboard Wire strippers
Setting up and testing circuits is easy [Link]/wirestrippers
Circuits need components. You can always
when you don’t have to solder them. With the wires, you’ll need to make
buy whatever a project will need; however,
We like these annotated half-size sure they can connect to the bread-
getting a small electronics starter kit is a
boards, with negative and positive board – or to other components when
good way to get some basic components
rails along each side, and 30 rows of you start soldering. Wire strippers are
that will help you with your first circuit.
connected pins between them. a necessity to strip the plastic off.

98 The Maker Toolset

 Feature

Tools for
advanced
makers
Take your making a
step further with these Glue gun
Hot glue is your friend whether you’re

accessories in a hotel room finishing up a costume

at 3am, or even if you just need to
quickly put some (non-metallic) piec-
es together. A glue gun can make your
life much easier. Our top tip is to get
one with at least two heat settings.

Workmate Hacksaw
An indispensable alternative / addi- Need to cut some metal? A hacksaw
tion to a workbench with holes and a is suited for the task over a regular
split so you can drill through things saw, especially when you don’t have
without drilling into a desk, or saw access to a big mitre saw. Power drill
through things without cutting into Handy for making and for putting up
your workbench. shelves – make sure to get a selection
of drill bits for different materials too.

Saw
When you need to cut some wood, a
G clamps classic wood saw will see you through.
When you need to hold two pieces Mitre boxes that help with cutting at Metal model files
of anything together firmly, and it specific angles are a great addition to These are great for fine detailing on
would be two awkward in your vice. a saw as well – and if you need to do 3D prints, plastics, and wood. They
Great for woodwork and for allowing a lot of precision cutting, a jigsaw is a come in sets of different styles –
glues to set and cure overnight. worthy upgrade. mainly round and square.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 99

 3D printer 3D software
accessories

3D printer Designing prints yourself can

be fairly simply depending

guide
on what you’re trying to
make. Free web-based
software such as Tinkercad
([Link]) is quite

Make your dreams a

powerful. If you need to
make something more

reality with these additive

Spudgers, nippers, scrapers, elaborate, Fusion 360
brushes, tweezers, files, ([Link]/fusion360) is

manufacturers
and more are very helpful a popular option. Models
for getting your 3D print off need to be sliced as well
the bed, and then cleaning – a process of telling the
it up ready for use. You can printer how to print the
get sets anywhere you can model – and 3D printers
buy a 3D printer, and also usually have slicing software
on Amazon. recommended for the model.

Resin printer
PLA printer Price range: £250-£3500+ / $300-$4000+
Price range: £300-£2000+ / $400-$2500+ A serious printer for advanced makers, resin printers
This traditional type of 3D printer heats up and layers plastic harden layers of (toxic) resin with UV light. It takes a
upon plastic as dictated by a 3D model. These are great for lot longer and has its own set of quirks, but the result is
prototyping cases and containers for your project, but can usually a smoother model. Printers like this are much more
be used for the final product as well! Along with a ton of little expensive and require more work to finish them, involving
life-improving knick knacks and boats you’ll find around washing the (toxic) residue off the print and letting it cure
the house like some kind of plastic Bladerunner origami. in sunlight. Rubber gloves, goggles, and sometimes a face
mask are required.
In issue 80, HackSpace ([Link]/80) did a great run-down
of the current breed of printers and how they perform. They The Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra is quite well regarded and not too
recommended the Prusa XL; however, some of the cheaper expensive – great for hobbyists printing small models –
options like the Prusa MK4S are also fantastic printers. while the big Formlabs machines will run to thousands and
are probably not great for beginners.

100 The Maker Toolset

 Feature

Maker
resources
Places to learn and get tips,
aside from Raspberry Pi
Official Magazine of course
Kevs Robots
[Link]
With regular appearances in Raspberry
Pi Official Magazine, Kev is well known
in the community for tons of great
robotics projects using a Raspberry
Pi computer or Raspberry Pi Pico. He
includes videos and write-ups for his
various builds – including tiny turtle
robots, moving robot faces, and a
robot that will give you a high-five Penguin Tutor
when you need one. [Link]
Alias Stewart Watkiss, a regular in
this magazine, builds a huge variety
of simple and advanced electronics
projects using Raspberry Pi and Pico.
He also does great breakdowns of
the builds on his YouTube channel,
including where he went wrong if a
project has sadly failed. Recognising
and learning from our failures is
something we should all do.

Raspberry Pi Projects site

[Link]/projects Raspberry Pi forums #MonthOfMaking
The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s project [Link]/forums
site is full of great tutorials for people Got a burning question about an error
starting out, covering a broad range and not sure how to fix it? The forums
March is the #MonthOfMaking for
of programming, building, robotics, for Raspberry Pi are full of active and
Raspberry Pi Official Magazine! Send us
and even 3D modelling in Blender. very smart members – and they’ve
what you’re making over on our social
Several of the projects work as a probably answered questions like
medias or even via email if you wish. The
series, allowing you to build up your yours before! Just search the forums
only rules for the event are: have fun.
skills as you go. to check.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 101

 STEP INTO2025
THE WORLD
OF MAKING!
2024

200
200PAGES
PAGESOF
OFRASPBERRY
RASPBERRYPI
PI
ƒ CONTROL THE WORLD AROUND YOU WITH A RASPBERRY PI PICO
AGet
guide to getting
started guidestarted
covering Inspiring
Have someprojects to give
serious fun with
BUILD
ƒ with YOUR
every
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Raspberry
Raspberry Pi board USING OUR
you STEP-BY-STEP
your
electronics GUIDES
next big idea

ƒ All the essential

DESIGN
EverythingFOR 2Dinfo
you ANDon
need tothe
3D Upgrade
FABRICATION your
METHODS
Learn emulation
AND
robotics MAKE
with our THEM
A REALITY
brand new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 with next-gen retro gaming
know about the brand new super-simple robotics
Raspberry Pi 5 tutorial
ƒ FULL OF PROJECTS PERFECT FOR AN HOUR, AFTERNOON, OR
WEEKEND OF MAKING
Inspiring projects for your Play retro games with the
next build idea diminutive Raspberry Pi Pico

Buy online: [Link]/handbook

Buy online: [Link]/store
[Link]/BookOfMaking2025
* Raspberry Pi hardware not included
ONLY THE BEST

Mini displays
Perfect for portable projects, small
screens come in many types and sizes.
By Phil King

S ome
on-board
data,
projects

especially
require
display

not practicable or desirable to hook

to
when

the device up to a full-size monitor or

an
show
it’s
they can be used with a range of devices.
You can even get mini displays with a
standard HDMI connector.
As mentioned, there are
technology types for mini displays,
several

larger touchscreen. There are countless including LCD, OLED, and e-ink. Adafruit
mini displays available, coming in even used to sell a couple of glowing
various sizes, types, price ranges, and VFDs (vacuum fluorescent displays),
even different shapes. Some are HATs but these have since been discontinued.
that mount directly onto a Raspberry Each display type has its pros and cons,
Pi computer’s GPIO pins; others are so selecting the most suitable one for
designed to be mounted on a Raspberry your project is key. To help you out,
Pi Pico. Many displays are connected via we’ve selected a few of the best and most
individual pins, using protocols such as interesting mini displays, encompassing
SPI or I2C, offering greater versatility as several types.

104 Mini displays

 Only the Best

HyperPixel 4.0

Pimoroni > From £45 / $46 | [Link]

W This HAT is one of

the most vibrant
displays around

W e first
HyperPixel
covered
way
when, and it’s still one
of the best Raspberry Pi displays
around. This is the rectangular 4-inch
the
back
HATs, but the I2C pins are broken out so
you could connect a sensor.
The 800×480 display is stunning,
running at 60 frames per second with
great pixel density and 18-bit colour
model, but there’s also a square version.
It also comes with optional capacitive
(enabling 262,144 shades). Unlike most
similar screens that use the standard
Verdict
multi-touch if you need that. SPI protocol, it uses a high-speed DPI If you want a
Whichever version you choose, this is interface that enables it to shift five display HAT, this
a HAT that mounts onto any Raspberry times more pixel data. Note that to use is one of the best.

9/10
Pi computer’s GPIO header. Since it uses it with the latest version of Raspberry
nearly all the pins to communicate, that Pi OS, you’ll need to add a line in the
does mean it can’t be used with other [Link] file to use the kernel drivers.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 105

1.9˝ 320×170 Colour IPS TFT Display – ST7789

Adafruit > £17 / $18 | [Link]

A s used in the Photon 2 Lander project showcased

last issue, this lovely little LCD has vibrant colour.
The only caveat is that since the LCD was designed
to be used in smartwatches, you should add your own plastic
or glass overlay to protect it.
While the EYESPI port on the rear is for an FPC ribbon cable,
there’s also a breakout header for connecting it to Raspberry Pi
or Pico using seven individual pins and the SPI protocol. Since
the display has a built-in frame buffer, it works well even with
smaller microcontrollers with little memory of their own.
Verdict
The LCD itself is of the TFT (thin-film transistor) kind and A vibrant little
uses IPS (in-plane switching), which means the viewing angles LCD, but it’ll need
are great: up to 80° off-axis in any direction. Its ST7789 TFT a cover.

9/10
S This impressive driver is supported by the Arduino library, but can also be
LCD works well with driven by Python with a user-space Pillow-compatible library,
a variety of devices and by CircuitPython using a displayio driver.

1.3-inch OLED Display Module for Raspberry Pi Pico

Waveshare > £11 / $10 | [Link]

A n alternative to an LCD screen is an OLED (organic

light-emitting diode) one. Based around an organic
compound film that emits light when an electric
current is passed through it, this results in a bright display
without the need for a backlight. That’s why the tech is also
used in many high-end TVs.
This 1.3-inch example is monochrome and limited to a 64×128
resolution, but offers great value for money and is fine for
Verdict
showing info like sensor and weather data. It’s designed to be A bargain option
mounted onto a Raspberry Pi Pico (with pin headers attached), for your Pico
so is fairly easy to set up and program with MicroPython, project.

8/10
C/C++, or Arduino IDE. It uses the SPI protocol by default, but
S This OLED screen mounts directly onto can be switched to I2C by modifying a resistor on the rear.
Pico’s pins Other size versions are also available.

106 Mini displays

 Only the Best

Inky pHAT

Pimoroni > £26 / $27 | [Link]

T his is one of many electronic

ink
displays
(e-ink, or
available,
vary greatly in size and come in
monochrome and colour types. The
e-paper)
which

big advantage of e-ink is that is uses so

very little power – none at all to maintain white or yellow/black/white) of the
the same image/text on the screen – Inky pHAT takes around 15. Still, that
making it ideal for portable projects
that only need to update the display
splash of colour adds a bit of interest
and you can show images so long as
Verdict
every so often, such as a calendar or they’re saved in a special Indexed colour A small and
weather display. mode and exactly match the size of effective e-ink
The downside is that refreshing an the display: 212×104 pixels. Despite its display.

8/10
e-ink display isn’t instant: a typical smaller, Raspberry Pi Zero-style form S This tri-colour
monochrome takes a second or two, factor, the Inky pHAT will work with any e-ink display uses
while the tri-colour version (red/black/ 40-pin model, communicating via SPI. very little power

HyperPixel 2.1 Round

Pimoroni > £54 / $55 | [Link]

M ini displays don’t have to

be rectangular or square.
This 2.1-inch screen
perfectly round – essentially a 480×480
square display minus the corners – and
is
pixel data, with a 60fps
frame rate. As well as
18-bit colour, it has
an impressive 229ppi
pixel density and
W It’s an all-round
impressive display!

has a real wow factor. A female header IPS for excellent

enables you to mount it straight onto
the GPIO pins of a Raspberry Pi. You
viewing angles
(up to 175°). It’s
Verdict
can even fit a Pi Zero onto the rear so it also a touchscreen Pricey for its
doesn’t show from the front. (so long as you use size, but has the
Like its 4-inch sibling, the HyperPixel a legacy version of wow factor.

8/10
2.1 Round is a really high-quality LCD Raspberry Pi OS), so you
screen with a high-speed DPI interface could potentially use it for
that enables it to shift five times more a smartwatch project.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 107

3.2˝ IPS HDMI LCD Display

Waveshare > £32 / $30 | [Link]

W You can mount

this HDMI screen
on the rear of a
Raspberry Pi

W hile most mini displays

must be connected to
Raspberry Pi via its GPIO
pins, some have an HDMI port so
you can use them just like any other
LCD with a decent 800×480 resolution,
although it’s not a touchscreen.
With IPS, the viewing angle range is
good at around 160°. There’s also an
adjustable backlight enabling you to
standard monitor. As well as ensuring alter the brightness using a couple of

Verdict a high frame rate, this has the major

advantage of freeing up all the GPIO pins
side buttons.
Using the supplied standoffs, the
A versatile mini to use in a project. It means the screen screen can be mounted on the rear of a
display with HDMI. can also be used with other devices with Raspberry Pi, with the latter supplying

8/10
an HDMI output. its power via a couple of pogo pins
This Waveshare example has a full- – or you can use its USB-C port for a
size HDMI port on the rear and a 3.2-inch separate supply.

FOUR-DIGIT SEVEN-SEGMENT DISPLAY

The Pi Hut > £3 / $3 | [Link]

If you just need a basic digital display for showing sensor readings, you
Verdict
could always go old-school with a seven-segment one. Just like an old Cheap but not so
digital clock, this one has four digits – each with a decimal point – that easy to use.

7/10
light up in red. As it’s a multiplexed, common-cathode one, you can control S For when you only
all four digits with eight GPIO pins – or fewer if you use one or more need a simple
74HC595 8-bit shift registers. digital display

108 Mini displays

109
ED-IPC3100
An industrial computer based on
Raspberry Pi CM5. By Phil King

EDATEC [Link]/ipc3100 £232/$288 (3120 model)

Q
SPECS
uick off the mark, EDATEC
FEATURES:
has already integrated
Compute Module 5, custom motherboard,
the recently launched
metal case with built-in heatsink, RTC,
Raspberry Pi Compute
reset button, status LEDs, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
Module 5 (CM5) into a new range of
(optional), 4G LTE (optional)
industrial computers. The ED-IPC3100
CONNECTIONS: comes in four main flavours along with
2 × RS232, 2 × RS485, 2 × USB 2.0, HDMI, 2 × numerous possible configurations for
Ethernet, 9V-36V DC two-pin power; interior: RAM, eMMC flash, and connectivity.
M.2 B, 10- and 40-pin GPIO headers, RTC The unit we’re reviewing here is the
battery holder; 3120 only: 3.5mm audio, MIPI IPC3120 model with 2 × RS485 and 2 × RS232
DSI, MIPI CSI, stereo speakers, FPC HDMI serial COM ports (as on the 3110), plus a
3.5mm audio jack and internal connectors
RAM / STORAGE:
for MIPI DSI, MIPI CSI (camera), stereo
2GB, 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB (CM5) DDR RAM;
speakers, and FPC HDMI video – although
16GB, 32GB, or 64GB eMMC; optional SSD /
all of the models feature an external HDMI
microSD card
port. It also boasts Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
connectivity, along with 8GB of DDR RAM,
a 16GB eMMC flash drive (you can have up
to 64GB), and 4G LTE cellular connectivity.
X This industrial
The other main models in the range
computer is
offer a variation on the serial ports: the
housed in a metal
3130 has 3 × RS485 and 1 × RS232, while
case with built-in
ribbed heatsinks the 3140 has 4 × RS485. The arrangement
and screw-in that you choose depends on what kind
antennas for Wi-Fi of industrial-standard add-ons, such as
and 4G LTE sensors and relays, you wish to connect.

110 ED-IPC3100
 Reviews

The ED-IPC3100 comes

in four main flavours
along with numerous
possible configurations

X The front panel

has status LEDs, a
two-pin DC power
input, 3.5 mm
To access the internal connectors, you’ll audio jack (3120
need to open the case with a screwdriver. model only),
S The rear of the unit has a standard DIN rail
As well as the aforementioned connectors RS232/RS485
mount, along with slots for a nano SIM and
connectors, and
microSD card for the 3120 model, you will find an M.2
two Ethernet ports
interface to connect an SSD, a ten-pin
Custom board breakout, full 40-pin GPIO header, 5 V and
Designed for use in challenging industrial 12 V 1A outputs, and holder for a CR1220
settings, the ED-IPC3120 houses a CM5 battery to power the real-time clock.
on a custom motherboard inside a robust Verdict
metal case with built-in heatsinks. The Booting up
rear has a standard DIN rail mount, nano Connected to an HDMI monitor, it booted A very capable
SIM and microSD slots, and a micro‑USB up quickly into the desktop version of CM5-based
port for flashing the eMMC. On top of Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm. We found we industrial
the unit are connectors to screw in the needed to configure the Wi‑Fi connection computer range
supplied antennas for Wi-Fi and 4G. On via the raspi‑config menu, because the with plenty of
the bottom, you’ll find a full-size HDMI desktop tool wasn’t responsive, but we configuration
video port, two USB 2.0 ports (sadly not soon got it working. Connecting it up to options to suit
USB 3.0), and a handy reset button. 4G (with a nano SIM card inserted) takes a various use
On the front are two Ethernet ports little configuration via the Terminal, but cases, it also
(one Gigabit, the other only 10/100M), the is explained in the online manual. offers good
RS282 / RS485 serial connectors, 3.5 mm To test out the unit’s passive cooling connectivity
audio (3120 model only), and an array of capabilities, we ran a 30-minute stress options and
status LEDs. You’ll also find the only power test on all four CPU cores. It reached a excellent
input: two pins with a removable terminal maximum temperature of just 48.8°C – passive cooling.

9/10
block to connect VIN+ and GND wires from nowhere near the level requiring throttling,
a suitable source. The good news is that it and an improvement on the IPC3020 (CM4)
supports a wide range: 9 V–36 V DC. model we tested in issue 142.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 111

10 amazing:
Raspberry Pi 5
accessories
Power up your Raspberry Pi 5
with these incredible add-ons
that enable extra functionality
01

R aspberry Pi 5 is a powerful machine, capable of

incredible feats for such a tiny device; however,
it’s not omnipotent. While there’s no God HAT to
grant it this special power, there are various add-ons that will
help improve it and widen the scope of what it can do.

01. FlightAware Pro Stick 02. USB sound card 03. Flirc 04. 4˝ HDMI Round 05. PiFi
Aircraft tracking Stereo sound Remote control Touch Display Personalised router
[Link]/flightaware [Link]/usbstereo [Link]/flirc Circle vision [Link]
£45 / $47 £9 / $9 £19 / $20 [Link]/rounddisplay £35 / $35
It’s a fun little project to Raspberry Pi 5 lacks a An easy way to add remote £89 / $93 Turn Raspberry Pi 5 into a
create a live flight radar – headphone jack. With this control support to Raspberry A very different kind of Wi-Fi router with PiFi – it
it’s also a decent primer USB sound card, you can Pi 5, great for media centre display for your Raspberry also includes VPN and
on how radio signals work, add proper speaker ports setups using Kodi. You Pi 5 – it’s actually quite large ad-blocking for a better
and what kinds are freely and even microphones. simply need to program the too! Maybe it could be an browsing experience when
available to use. inputs on another computer. interesting alarm clock or you’re out of the house too.
07. Home Assistant small wall clock?
06. ICE Tower Plus Cooler Connect 08. TEMPerHUM 10. IR Thermal Imaging
Serious heat dissipation Easy home automation Environmental sensor 09. RetroFlag 64Pi Case Camera
[Link]/icetower [Link]/haconnect [Link]/temperhum Ultra protection Hot photos
£19 / $20 £30 / $31 £29 / $36 [Link]/64pi [Link]/
This is a little overkill for Adding a wireless home There are various ways £28 / $35 thermalimgcam
cooling your Raspberry Pi 5, automation standard can to add temperature and Raspberry Pi 5 has a 64-bit £110 / $114
but it does look pretty… rad. sometimes involve special humidity sensors to processor, so why not While there are many official
You thought we were going add-on board upon special Raspberry Pi – basic sensor secure it in a see-through and unofficial IR cameras
to say cool, right? Shame add-board, but with this USB components via GPIO, the plastic case of the most for Raspberry Pi 5, this one
on you. stick you immediately get Sense HAT, and also this famous 64-bit games hooks up via USB-C instead
Zigbee support. USB stick. console ever? Nostalgia sure of the CSI port, keeping the
is a powerful drug. latter free for… a different
camera perhaps.

112 10 amazing: Raspberry Pi 5 accessories

 Resources

08
07

09

04

10

02

05

06
03

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 113

 KiCad is an amazing piece of free and open
source software that allows anyone, with
some time and effort, to make high-quality
PCB designs.

Create a schematic for a microcontroller board using

Raspberry Pi’s RP2040

Select the right components

Customise the hardware for your needs

Lay out and route the PCB design

Prepare your board for manufacture and assembly

Write software to get your design working

Buy online: [Link]/kicad2040

 NetworkChuck
Chuck teaches folks how to be an IT
professional and part-time tinkerer,
one video at a time

Name Chuck Keith

Occupation UC engineer
Community role YouTuber
URL [Link]/networkchuck

Y ouTubers can come from

anywhere. In
NetworkChuck’s case, he
Chuck

sold toilets. However, growing up he’d

been a bit of a tech kid. His dad was in
of
“The reason I love tech – especially
things like Raspberry Pi – is that they’re
not only fun, but they translate to real-
world skills,” Chuck continues. “The
projects you build with something like
IT and would being back old hardware a Raspberry Pi can lead to incredibly
that both would tinker with. fulfilling and lucrative careers.”
“I got back into tech – partly out
of necessity and maybe a little bit of How did you get into Linux?
survival,” Chuck says. “My wife and I Networking led me to Linux. While
had just had our first daughter, and the most of my time as a network engineer
pressure to provide was getting real. In was spent with Cisco IOS, some of the
between sales calls, I would crack open newer switches had a Linux back end,
my CompTIA A+ study guide, hoping to and Cisco phone systems used Red Hat. I
earn my first IT certification and land my was tasked with spinning up a few Linux
first job in IT. And that’s exactly what virtual machines for the development
happened. I started as a junior helpdesk team, and Linux kept popping up
support specialist (I didn’t know you everywhere. I was terrified.
could be lower than tier 1 helpdesk) and I knew I had to learn Linux, but I
knew almost nothing. But for the first wasn’t quite ready to take the leap yet.
time ever, I didn’t hate going to work. I Then I heard about Raspberry Pi – these
became obsessed! I’d stay late to study small, lightweight computers people
and help the system and network admins were using for fun projects – and I just
with their projects. It was a whole couldn’t resist. One afternoon, I took
new world for me. I had always loved my lunch break, drove to MicroCenter,
technology, but I had never experienced and bought my first Raspberry Pi, a
this level of nerdiness.” 2 [Model B].

116 NetworkChuck
 Raspberry Pi community

S Chuck got hands-on with Raspberry Pi 5

for its release
W A classic Raspberry Pi project – retro
gaming via RetroPie
T Using home automation to make your
home very spooky

I had no idea what I was doing, but as

I fumbled my way through setting it up
and tried a few projects, I got addicted.
The Raspberry Pi was my gateway drug
to Linux.

What do you usually use

Raspberry Pi for?
Everything. I use it for home automation
with Home Assistant, running a DNS
server with AdGuard, hosting a Time
Server with TimeBeat, turning it into
a travel router and a travel NAS, and
even as a wireless hacking tool with
Kali Linux. been on the platform since the very It’s where the idea of NetworkChuck
beginning. My personal channel was was born. I was encouraged by Jorge’s
What’s your favourite classic early YouTube stuff: stunt videos channel, but there wasn’t much else like
thing you’ve made with with my siblings and friends. it out there. In fact, he was the only one
Raspberry Pi? I tried daily vlogging with my family I could find talking about tech this way.
Even though it didn’t get many views, when that was hot, but it just wasn’t I knew it was time to pick up the camera
my favourite Raspberry Pi project our thing. I loved YouTube, but I needed again and make content that would help
was building a haunted house. I used to focus on my career, so I put down others find a fulfilling job in IT.
multiple Raspberry Pi, sensors, cameras, the camera. My first video was filmed in an IT
and legit haunted house props to make a Then I started watching a YouTuber closet at work, documenting me setting
walk-through experience for kids in my named Jorge Almazan. He made content up a fleet of Cisco Firewalls.
neighbourhood on Halloween. about his IT journey, documenting how
he got Cisco certifications and how they What is one security tip you’d
How did you start out helped his career. It was so encouraging, give everyone?
YouTubing? and it gave me a massive boost of Know your attack surface and routinely
I’ve always loved YouTube and have motivation in my own journey. audit yourself (and your family).

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 117

#MakerMonday
Amazing projects direct from
social media!

E very Monday we ask the question: have you made

something with a Raspberry Pi over the weekend?
Every Monday, our followers send us amazing photos
and videos of the things they have made.
This issue we’re saying goodbye to #MagPiMonday, and
welcoming in the new #MakerMonday, so remember to follow
along at the hashtag #MakerMonday!

01. The train set gets yet more upgrades, thanks to a bit of experience

02. The electronics in a game like Operation may be simple, but that
doesn’t make the buzzer any less scary

03. It’s so powerful it’s emitting lightning! Wow!

04. An interesting new take on a voice assistant

05. A nice, more robust, and probably cheaper alternative to the Sony
frame, we say

06. We love truly autonomous robots, and they’re only getting

more powerful. 01

07. As usual, be careful with CRT units, but this is very nice.

08. Hmm, has technology gone too far this ti-… oh wait, it’s time for
tubby custard

09. We love the simple representation of the ISS flying across the globe.

10. Water deterrent just sounds like you’ve made a squirrel super soaker.
We want one.

02

118 #MakerMonday
 Raspberry Pi community

08

04

09

05

06

03

10

07

04

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 119

Events in pictures:
Raspberry Pi Meetup &
Workshop #5 Puchong,
Malaysia
Machine learning with
Scratch at community 04

Raspberry Pi events

D
ecember of last year saw makers and students get
hands-on with creating machine learning models in
Scratch to recognise patterns, exploring how machine
learning works in real time with real world applications. They
sent over pictures to prove it too!
Find out about more community events on page 124, and 03
submit yours at [Link]/events for special Raspberry Pi
support packages.

01. Creating ML models in Scratch is a very real thing!

02. Registering your event will allow you to get support packages for the
event itself, complete with Raspberry Pi merch

03. The Raspberry Pi Meetups in Puchong are held every few months
02
04. A variety of folks attended the workshop

Find o
ut ab
month out next
’s eve
and p n
op-up ts
s on

01
PAGE
124

02

120 Events in Pictures

 Raspberry Pi community

Crowdfund this
Great crowdfunding projects this month

Eight 24-Bit ADC 8-Layer BerryBot

Stackable HAT

If you need a serious number of various data inputs into Raspberry Pi, this Another take on an educational programmable robot for Raspberry Pi,
stackable HAT has you covered. Sequent Microsystems reckons it will be BerryBot is programmable in Python and Arduino IDE, and is controllable via
great for environmental monitoring, robotics, industrial/home automation, a smartphone app. This one hasn’t launched at the time of writing, but we
and scientific research. eagerly await to see when it is.

f [Link]/4jUXrN4 f [Link]/berrybot

Together we can
make a difference
Give young people the opportunity
to learn about technology

The Raspberry Pi Foundation enables young

people to realise their full potential through
the power of digital technologies, but we can’t
do this work without your help. Your support
helps us give young people the opportunities
they need in today’s world. Together we can
offer thousands more young people across
the globe the chance to learn to create with
digital technologies.
Generous donations from organisations and DONATE NOW
individuals who share our mission make our
work possible.

Donate today to make a difference: [Link]/donate

Your
Letters

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

As one can see on pages 128 and 129 of The MagPi magazine We really enjoyed the vibrant chat that you sparked on our
issue #150 ([Link]/150), starting with the next issue, 151, forums ([Link]/forums) about our new name. And we hope
The MagPi will now simply be named Raspberry Pi Official you are enjoying the new magazine now that you have a copy. In
Magazine. This raises some questions: What will happen answer to your questions, we are going to use #MakerMonday.
to MagPiMonday? Will the [Link] domain still work in And yes, the old [Link] link still works, and we are using a
the future? Is it safe to rename a magazine in times where new [Link] link from now on. We think this is the right thing
print magazines are on a decline? to do to ensure our new readers can find us. Making magazines
is precarious, though, and we urge readers to subscribe to the
Stl1988 via the forum new magazine ([Link]/subscribe).

What the stack?

You shared a nice stack online for Argon DATATERM M.2 NVMe SSD (128GB),
learning AI. Is this part of a training Argon OLED Module, and Argon ONE V5.
program or education effort? I'm We’re putting together a test bed for
curious what is in the bottom box. I Raspberry Pi AI projects that we will be
think I found the others. covering in-depth in the next issue, and
we are also working on a Raspberry Pi AI
Jon Morss via LinkedIn book available later this year. The Argon
ONE V5 has now become a home server
Glad you liked it (see image). This was and automation unit (awaiting ZigBee
a high-end stack of Raspberry Pi kit we compatibility) and PJ Evans is writing up a
are putting together that combined a review for our next issue. The Raspberry Pi
variety of top-flight components. From 16GB and AI HAT have become a separate
S A stack of high-end Raspberry Pi
top to bottom, they are: Raspberry Pi 5 build with an AI Camera attached. We do
equipment
with 16GB RAM, Raspberry Pi AI HAT+, love our jobs!

122 Your Letters

 This month in Raspberry Pi

Sharing projects

USA SPECIAL!
Hey! I have been working on a project that is like a long-
range communication station that works on Pico W. Here
are some photos; let me know if you are interested in this.
Would love to share this project with others.

6 ISSUES
Roberts Treize via Facebook

Hi Roberts. Thank you so much for sharing the photos with us of

FOR $43
your project. We suggest that you put together some information
describing the build so we can share it with our readers. And
we hope to do a Project Showcase on this in a future edition.
In the meantime we’d be delighted to share a photograph of it
with our readers.

FREE
RASPBERW RY
PI PICO

S Roberts Treize’s long-range

communication station
Subscribe online:
Contact us! [Link]/subscribe
[Link]/twitter
@raspberrypimag
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Not included with renewals. Offer subject to change or withdrawal at any time.
[Link]

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 123

Community
Events Calendar
03
01

Find out what community-organised

Raspberry Pi-themed events are
happening near you…
01. R
 aspberry Pi JAM: Discovering Tiny 03. 7
 th Annual Raspberry Jam
Tech with Buttercup West Virginia

Saturday 8 March Saturday 15 March

Bessie Branham Recreation Center, Atlanta, GA, USA Geary Student Union, Charleston, WV, USA
[Link]/dtt151 [Link]/rjwv151

Join Buttercup STEAM at the Bessie Branham Recreation Center Raspberry Jam WV is an exciting event celebrating creativity,
in the Kirkwood neighbourhood for an exciting Raspberry Pi JAM! innovation, and hands-on learning! Open to ages 10 and up, it
Dive into physical computing with Raspberry Pi, creating projects offers free programming workshops where participants can dive
with lights, motors, and sensors. Learn to code, tinker with tiny into coding and tech. Explore the exhibition area, where makers
computers, and discover the fun side of tech! Ideal for kids, teens, and software engineers showcase their projects, and connect
and families. Let’s get creative with coding! with sponsors dedicated to advancing STEAM education in West
Virginia. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a curious learner, or
a supporter of education, Raspberry Jam WV has something
for everyone!

02. I ntroductory Workshop on IoT using

04. R
 aspberry Pint
Raspberry Pi
Tuesday 25 March
Saturday 15 March Online
TSSCAR, Madurai, India [Link]/pint151
[Link]/iot151
Most Raspberry Pint presentations are about building personal or
Visit the event for an exciting hands-on workshop on the Internet professional projects with Raspberry Pi and other maker technology.
of Things (IoT) using Raspberry Pi! Designed for beginners, this They also welcome presentations about skills and techniques such
session will introduce the fundamentals of IoT, Raspberry Pi, and as website design, PCB design, software development, 3D printing,
how to build simple IoT applications. Participants will gain practical soldering, etc. Occasionally, they have had presentations about
experience in setting up and programming Raspberry Pi, interfacing deep learning, big data, IoT, etc., and would love to hear about what
sensors, and connecting devices to the cloud. No prior experience you do in your hobbies or professional life. All makers and all kinds
is required – just a passion for learning and innovation! of digital making welcome — the quirkier, the better.

124 Community Events Calendar

 Raspberry Pi community

FULL CALENDAR
Get a full list of upcoming
05 community events here:
[Link]/events

02

05. Embedded World 2025 Official

Raspberry Pi
Event
Messezentrum 1, Nürnberg, Germany
Tuesday 11 March to Thursday 13 March
[Link]/ew2025

The Raspberry Pi team is looking forward to returning to Embedded World

in 2025. There you’ll be able to meet us and experience demos from across
the full spectrum of Raspberry Pi products, including Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our
AI product range, RP2350-based solutions, and our latest industrial device:
Compute Module 5.
You’ll be able to see how companies around the world use Raspberry Pi
to support their industrial applications and discover how Raspberry Pi can
help you with your own solutions.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 125

Competition

Win 1 of 5
PiFi kits
Turn Raspberry Pi into a wireless router with VPN

and ad-blocking capabilities with the PiFi kit, a

dongle and software set that you can control via

your smartphone. We have five of these excellent

kits to give away.

Head here to enter:

[Link]/win
Learn more:
[Link]

Terms & Conditions

Competition opens on 26 February 2025 and closes on 27 March 2025. Prize is offered to participants worldwide aged 13 or over, except employees of Raspberry Pi Ltd, the prize supplier, their
families, or friends. Winners will be notified by email no more than 30 days after the competition closes. By entering the competition, the winner consents to any publicity generated from the
competition, in print and online. Participants agree to receive occasional newsletters from Raspberry Pi Official magazine. We don’t like spam: participants’ details will remain strictly confidential
and won’t be shared with third parties. Prizes are non-negotiable and no cash alternative will be offered. Winners will be contacted by email to arrange delivery. Any winners who have not
responded 60 days after the initial email is sent will have their prize revoked. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter (X) or any other companies used to promote the service.

126 WIN: PiFi kits

BUY ONLINE: [Link]/picobook
 Reach a
global community!

Advertise in
Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

Our readers are passionate about

technology and the Raspberry Pi
ecosystem. From DIY enthusiasts to
professional engineers.

Your advertisement can sit alongside

our cutting-edge tutorials, features
and reviews. And we have flexible
advertising options for
a range of different businesses.

Take the next step –

advertise with us today!

Email Charlie Milligan at: [Link]@[Link]

 Next Month
Editorial

Editor
Lucy Hattersley
lucy@[Link]
Features Editor
Andrew Gregory
#152 [Link]@[Link]
Features Editor
Rob Zwetsloot

Raspberry Pi AI rob@[Link]
Sub Editor
Phil King

Running LLMs, image detection, Advertising

Charlotte Milligan
speech-to-text, language translation, [Link]@[Link]
+44 (0)7725 368887
and more!
Design

On sale 27 Mar Head of Design

Jack Willis
Designers
Sara Parodi, Natalie Turner
Illustrator
Sam Alder
Brand Manager
Brian O Halloran

Contributors

Chris Boross, David Crookes, PJ Evans,

Rosemary Hattersley, Jo Hinchliffe, Nicola King,
Phil King, KG Orphanides

Publishing

Publishing Director
Brian Jepson
[Link]@[Link]
Director of Communications
Helen Lynn
CEO
Eben Upton

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This magazine is printed on paper sourced from

sustainable forests and the printer operates an
environmental management system which has been

PLUS! assessed as conforming to ISO 14001.

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is published by
Raspberry Pi Ltd, 194 Cambridge Science Park, Milton
Road, Cambridge, England, CB4 0AB. The publisher,

Who put CarPlay in a McLaren F1 editor, and contributors accept no responsibility in

respect of any omissions or errors relating to goods,
products, or services referred to or advertised in the
magazine. Except where otherwise noted, content in

Rediscover the SCART cable this magazine is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

The A-Z of Raspberry Pi ISSN: 2977-4403 (Print)

ISSN: 2977-4411 (Digital)

Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 129

 Meet Tim Toady
Not invented here syndrome is not
welcome round these parts

A s well as being features

editor of Raspberry Pi Official
Magazine, I’ve recently taken
on a new role: tech support. Unpaid
tech support to my parents, that is. They
processing, email, and web browsing.
They’ve now got a perfectly functional
Raspberry Pi 500 doing the job, which for
them also comes with free tech support
including home visits.
need is a set of speakers and you’ve got
a hi-fi; some of them have gold-plated
connectors, though none that I’ve seen
have had the electrons brushed in the
same direction to reduce noise (I swear
recently had a computer fail on them, and The Raspberry Pi 500 isn’t a perfect this comes from a press release I saw once
were about to buy something grossly over- replacement for what they had before, extolling the virtue of a gold-plated cable).
specced and over priced to replace it. I kid though. In many ways it’s better – faster, All this goes to illustrate the truth of
you not, they even asked me whether I’d no viruses – but it is lacking a 3.5 mm audio an old piece of programming wisdom:
recommend a Mac. jack. And it’s this that’s really got me TIMTOWTDI, or There Is More Than One
Of course, as they already had a mouse, thinking this month. While researching Way To Do It. Whenever you’re stuck with
and a screen, and a load of cables, there ways to get around this problem, I’ve something on a Raspberry Pi, or even if
was no need to spend ridiculous sums of come to the realisation that there are you just want to go beyond its normal
money on a machine destined to word loads ways around it. You can get cheap capabilities, there is always more than
USB-C to 3.5 mm cables. You can buy one approach that will work. Thanks to

All this goes HDMI to 3.5 mm adapters. There’s always

Bluetooth connectivity, if you don’t
open hardware, free PCB design software
such as KiCad, and affordable PCB

to illustrate mind having your devices run out of

power occasionally.
manufacturing services, you can even
design your own add-ons. The future’s

the truth of an bright – the future is Raspberry-coloured.

So. Much. Hardware
old piece of For audiophiles, there’s a range of digital-
to-analogue converter (DAC) modules. Andrew Gregory – Author
programming These are boards that plug into the GPIO Andrew is working on a Raspberry Pi and artificial
pins of a Raspberry Pi and turn the digital intelligence system that will identify and zap slugs
wisdom: signal of an audio file into something on his allotment.

TIMTOWTDI that an amplifier can work with. Some of

these have amplifiers built-in, so all you [Link]

130 Final Word

HIGHPI PRO
The new case from the [Link] team

Rapid tool-free assembly and disassembly Secure microSD card cover

Large internal volume for HATs VESA mount support
Compatible with Pi 2/3/4 Molding-configurable output ports
Multiple lid options customizable for volume orders
Passive & Active Cooling options Printed logo for your branding

Available at these great Pi stores:

Contact your favorite Pi store if it’s not listed here

PiKVM
Manage your
servers or PCs
remotely!

PiKVM V4 Mini
Small, cost-effective, and powerful!

Power consumption in idle mode: just 2.67 Watts!

Transfer your mouse and keyboard actions
Access to all configuration settings like UEFI/BIOS
Capture video signal up to 1920x1200@60 Hz
Take full control of a remote PC’s power

PiKVM V4 Plus
The most feature-rich edition

More connectivity
Extra storage via internal USB 3.0
Upgraded powering options
More physical security features
Extra HDMI output
Advanced cooling solution

A cost-effective solution for data-centers,

IT departments or remote machines!

Availableatatthe
Available themain
mainRaspberry
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resellers