Les Pounder - bigl.es (Page 13)

Les Pounder

Tinkering, tailoring with a Raspberry Pi

November was another full throttle month, especially due to print deadlines for Christmas. So what happened? Firstly We won an award! I've been working with Mereside Primary School, Blackpool, for about 18 months and in this time we have created some great work with the kids. * PiBeacon -

Robots, Pi & Biscuits

October has been a busy month :D Oggcamp## It started with Oggcamp, all the way down in Oxford. Oggcamp has been around since 2009 and is a great event for hackers and makers to get together and share skills. Since 2011 I have been the Oggcamp Chief, and 2014 was

Biscuits, Turtles and Dojos

This week has been totally non stop for me, and it's going to be like that for the next week or so with Oggcamp and print deadlines to hit. Am I complaining, not a chance I love it! Dojos Last Saturday saw the return of our monthly Coder

Podcasts, Pi and Python

Podcasts Earlier this week I was interviewed for episode 18 of the Raspi.Today Podcast, hosted by ex Linux User and Developer magazine editor Russell Barnes. Russell was keen to know more about my work with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms and how I found being a freelancer. Russell

A month at full throttle

It has been another busy month in my still young freelancing career. The Raspberry Pi has been my main work horse once again. I even pitted the Pi against the many other development boards on the market. But honestly my go to board is always a Pi. Here's

Unicorns wearing HAT

No I haven't gone mad, I have a unicorn wearing a HAT on my Raspberry Pi. Ok let me explain, the Unicorn HAT is a new board designed especially for the Raspberry Pi B+ The B+ has extra GPIO pins and two of those pins are used with

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

I am a lucky, lucky lad. Companies send me samples of unreleased kit to play with and in the last couple of weeks I have been playing with three very special bits of Raspberry Pi kit. Kano Kano is a Raspberry Pi powered kit that comes with a series of

An interview with Hamish Cunningham

In this last interview from this year's Raspberry Jamboree, We hear from Hamish Cunningham about his kickstarter project MoPi. Which was successfully funded and is now a available for purchase Interview Les Pounder: Hamish, thanks for talking to me, can you tell us, what is MoPi? Hamish Cunningham:

Blackpool Makerspace gains a 3D printer

Thanks to a kind donation from Paul Court Blackpool Makerspace have their first RepRap 3D printer. The Makerspace team are excited to learn how this printer works and will be spending a few sessions hacking around a learning how to print and what are the best tools for Linux. At

Building a Raspberry Pi computer lab

Busy day at the "office" today. My good friend Tom Sale, from Mereside Primary School needed a hand building a Raspberry Pi powered computer lab. Mereside Primary School are no stranger to the Raspberry Pi. They have recently taken part in the PA Consulting competition, coming second in

Raspberry Pi Camera - An interview with Dave Jones

In February 2014 I had the chance to attend the second Raspberry Jamboree. The Jamboree is an annual event where hundreds of Raspberry Pi enthusiasts meet to discuss and show their latest Pi powered project. I was lucky enough to meet and interview a number of makers and hackers and

Arduino Arcade Controller - Updated 11/9/2014

I really do love Arduinos. These small electronic prototyping platforms provide a wealth of connectivity options and they are really easy to work with. Today at Blackpool Makerspace I worked on an Arduino Leonardo based controller for an art installation project in Blackpool. The premise is that the Arduino emulates

Migration

Hello world For the last few weeks I have been nursing my Digital Ocean VPS running WordPress until it started to cough and splutter last night. Last night I received a hiedous message Error Establishing Database Connection Which is typically caused by a mySQL having a breakdown behind the scenes.

2013 – A Year In Review…or how the Raspberry Pi Changed My Life!

It’s traditional at this time of year to reflect on the past 12 months and to see how much you have changed in that time. In 2013 I went from being in full time employment to becoming a freelancer and I have to say that it has been the

It all started a year ago - May 2013 to May 2014

Yesterday I reached an anniversary, one year as a freelancer and I survived! Les advising customers about computing in Liverpool I started my freelance career in May 2013, with just one client, Linux Format. I then contacted other people and organisations and talked with them about what I could do

Raspberry Pi – Advent Calendar

Sat at home, watching TV with MrsP last night and I had an idea. “A Raspberry Pi Advent calendar where each door in the calendar is a component in a much larger project.” Over the 24 days leading up to Christmas, each window reveals a component and an explanation via