Les Pounder

soldering

The "Essentials" Soldering Kit

Disclaimer - This kit was provided free of charge by CPC I love soldering! I only learnt to solder about 2-3 years ago, but since then I have enjoyed the hobby. Yes even the bits where I botch something up! Soldering is a basic maker skill and essential for those

Raspberry Pi

Nexdock - Initial Impressions

On Friday 9th September I finally got my hands on the Nexdock, a recent crowd funded project that I backed. @biglesp showing off his new @nexdock at @bplraspjam #rjam pic.twitter.com/ZKfS3ARxJS — Pete Lomas (@PeteLomasPi) September 10, 2016 Nexdock is a laptop with no hard drive, CPU, memory. Just

python

Enabling a Python script to launch when booting a Raspberry Pi

Hello, this blog post was inspired by Dave Darch... @biglesp @martinohanlon @LegoJames @guru What's best way to launch a .py file at boot, headless. Eg. drums.py from Explorerhat...systemd? — Dave Darch (@davedarch) August 22, 2016 There are many ways to run a Python script at boot, but

eBay

Cheap Soldering Station - Updated With Fix

June 3 2017 Update - Fixing it! Today at Blackpool Makerspace I finally fixed the soldering iron, largely thanks to a video from Big Clive which explained the fault. So what was the fault? The connection between the iron, a DIN type connection, and the PCB is the only mechanical

pimoroni

Red Alert - Work in progress

My love of Star Trek is well known and so when I got the chance to play around with Pimoroni's new Mote lights, well there was only one thing to do. Simulate alert statuses! Pimoroni's new Mote kit is a light control board powered by an

Raspberry Pi

Using SPI on the latest Raspbian Jessie

--UPDATED 28/7/2016-- This post is more an aide-memoire after I spent a day trying to get SPI working on a Raspberry Pi 2 running the latest Raspbian Jessie release. Back it up Les, what is SPI? No it's not another Police forensic series, well to quote

GPIO

One ruler to errr rule them all!

tl;dr Alex has just announced his Kickstarter for this ruler, and I heartily suggest you head over and get one. Everybody wants to rule(r) the world! At high school I had a swanky Helix 30cm ruler that folded in half, I thought it was the height of cool!

robot

Johnny 5 is alive!

It's no secret that I love robots, and when Liz Smart, Code Club Coordinator for the North West asked me along to the Big Bang Fair North West along with some robots...I jumped at the chance! So here is Johnny 5, a Pi Zero robot controlled using

chip

Chips, dips and Doom

I recently took delivery of a $9 computer, called C.H.I.P, a kickstarter project from 2015. I opted for Pocket CHIP, a Gameboy-esque case that provides a full keyboard and touchscreen interface along with a battery. I wanted to have a quick play about with the kit, right

hacking

Blinky Lights

LEDs are wonderful things! The humble LED provides us with illumination, it indicates when a device is on standby and it can teach anyone the basics of controlling a physical device with a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Codebug or micro:bit. LEDs are great and I always need them, so when

kano

Competition Time - Win a Kano Display!!

Hello readers. A little something dropped through my letterbox the other day. Yes the Kano Screen kit, which I reviewed in Issue 209 of Linux Format. This portable yet robust display comes with an impressive 1280 x 800 resolution and can be used with any HDMI device. The display can

general

Three Years

In 2013 I took a big step, I left full time employment and decided to go self employed.... The first Tuesday after the early May bank holiday in 2013 was not a good day for me. Where I was working at that time, was not working out for me, sure

keyboard

Bluetooth Keyboard Shenanigans

If you have followed my antics long enough then you will know that I am a little frugal. Some would say "cheap", well both are true :) So on Hot UK Deals the other day, I saw a cheap Mac style Bluetooth keyboard that I thought would be perfect

microbit

micro:bit - Hacking the GPIO - Updated!

So yesterday on the train...I saw this tweet. Just had GREAT yr4 after school club using #bbcmicrobit 😀 BUT trying2do traffic lights & struggled w/ short circuits pic.twitter.com/xsp1upJs3q — Ben Smith (@ManchesterBudo) 23 February 2016 It got me and a few other geeks thinking of ways to hack

microbit

BBC micro:bit - Gesture controlled blinking lights

I've been tinkering with the new BBC micro:bit computer, especially the Micro Python editor Mu. I love how flexible the board is, especially for getting down to hacking in very little time. To test out the micro:bit I thought that I would write a simple script

Raspberry Pi

The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Handbook

Since 2013 I have written a lot of Raspberry Pi content for Future Publishing and sometimes this content is collected into special "bookazines", magazines devoted to one topic that cover 100+ pages. For Future's latest bookazine they produced 180 pages of Raspberry Pi projects, reviews and

Raspberry Pi

BETTer late than never...

It was a tale of two cities, a game of two halves or some other euphemism. But BETT 2016 seemed centred on bringing the Maker Movement into the classroom. At one end of the hall we saw the hard sales of smart whiteboards, IT service plans and high speed / high

android

Using Android To Help Stroke Patients

As you may already know, my Wife's aunty had a stroke in July 2015 and this has had a major impact on our family. I won't go into too much detail but suffice to say our aunt has lost most of her ability to speak and

hacking

Hacking Poundland

My love for cheap electronics is well documented and the various Pound shops in Blackpool feed my need quite well. Today at Blackpool Makerspace I worked with young hacker Josh to build a Christmas Ray Gun! Using a Santa badge that plays Christmas songs and lights up a series of

oggcamp

The Chief is dead, long live The Chief

To my crew, Your hard work and enthusiasm has made Oggcamp 2015 the best Oggcamp ever and I am proud that you are my crew. It is heartening to see that so many of you have returned year on year to help Oggcamp run so smoothly. I may have been

hacking

Geekery and tinkering

I'm a geek I know far too much about Computers, Electronics and Star Trek, don't get me started on Galaxy class starships! So this makes me a geek, which is cool because just like the original meaning of hacker, we are taking the term geek back

Raspberry Pi

Museum in the making

On August 28 and 29 I was part of the team showcasing the best of Blackpool’s history for an upcoming Blackpool Museum. The event was called “Museum in the making” and merged a typical museum exhibit structure with a series of interactive exhibits that mixed live actors with activities

Raspberry Pi

Using Raspberry Pi in museums

Blackpool has a long history of entertainment with many big names coming to Blackpool during it's "Golden Age". I was recently asked by Blackpool Council to provide a Raspberry Pi workshop as part of a two day unveiling of a new project. The project would see

Raspberry Pi

Origins

I’ll let you into a secret. I’ve not always been a programmer, in fact I’ve only been programming for a few years. Ok compose yourself, get a brandy or a cup of tea and carry on reading. I know it’s hard to believe but just over

python

Trinket - Hacking Python in the browser

Hacking Python in the browser! At a recent Code Club regional meeting I learnt of a very handy way of writing Python in the browser. Trinket.io is a browser based Python editor that enables educators to quickly get started with Python. It includes a number of Just like Python