friday fun Pirate Radio For Friday Fun this week I sat down with another of Pimoroni's Pi Zero W powered project kits. This kit was won in a competition on Pimoroni's Bilge Tank Youtube channel, but as
Raspberry Pi I'm in the mood...for hacking Blinkies...everywhere! You may have noticed, but there was another Raspberry Pi released the other day. Yes we now have the new Pi Zero W, the W stands for Wireless, obvs! So now
LED Hot Glue Madness For some Friday Fun this week, lets take a look at making custom LED lights. This all started from a tweet posted by Erin Riley. (Thanks for sharing Erin!) glue gun + silicone mold
python Hack the planet!!...With Python So I'm sat watching a film called Hackers...cheesy hacker movie set in the 1990s. But I really do like it. Sure the dialogue is really bad, and the hacking is pure Hollywood,
Raspberry Pi The Great Raspberry Pi Heatsink Test Update 15/1/2017 After a good chat with Pete Lomas it seems as though we need to consider other factors for the test to be considered reliable. Was the CPU throttled at
Linux Executable files on the Raspberry Pi An executable file is a file that can be double clicked and it will run automatically. For Windows users you will be familiar with .exe files, but for Linux, what is an executable
2016 2016 Retrospective - A Novel tl;dr - Happy New Year, Les did a lot of cool things with tech in 2016. Yeah this post is XL sized but full of cool stuff, honest Time is a relative
microbit Have Yourself A WS2812B Christmas I have an addiction to WS2812B "Neopixels", those super bright multi colour LEDs that work with almost every micro controller / computer. I recently purchased some from eBay to see if they
resources Free Resources Hello! I've just updated my projects page with six resources that have just been made Creative Commons. These resources were written approximately one year ago for Linux Voice magazine who graciously gift their
neopixel I'm dreaming of a pair of Ray Bans... Neopixel Christmas Lights Special WS2812B, commonly known as Neopixels are super bright individually controllable LEDs that come in many shapes and sizes. Neopixel Christmas lights! pic.twitter.com/Rdyx47I8HI— biglesp (@biglesp) December 10, 2016 I have
linux format Woah I've worked a lot! So I was going through the Linux Format archives and I found that I could search by author. Now I'm not a vain person but curiosity got the better of me so I
soldering Duratool D03172 Mini Soldering Station I've waited a long time for this! tl;dr: A £12 temperature controlled mini soldering station for intermediate users. Cheap, small with a precise soldering tip, but manual calibration needed for temperature. Available
hack Walking in a Winter Pounder Land I popped into Poundland today and had a look around for stuff to hack. Electronics First up, LED lights! I chose some Christmas trees and some blue spiral lights. Both take 3V in
hack Santa's New HAT (Explorer HAT Fun!) Santa always wears a funky red hat when delivering presents across the globe, but the HAT we are looking at in this post is not that. Rather it is a funky board called
recovery Search & Rescue: SD Card Recovery So I had a great day at Mozilla Festival (MozFest) yesterday. I was there covering the event for Linux Format. I interviewed lots of great people and took lots of photos....and here
Raspberry Pi Splash Hacks: Editing the Raspbian splash screen So we've all seen the new Raspbian desktop released at the end of September. I have to say it's rather nice, a "proper grown up" desktop. You will have also seen
MQTT MQTT FTW This blog post isn't really a proper post, more of a way in which I can remember how to use MQTT for future projects. Feel free to refer to this and of course
minecraft Minecraft Pi Screenshot - Revisited A long time ago I wrote a simple install script for an existing Minecraft screenshot tool called raspi2png developed by Andrew from Melbourne. My script served a purpose, in that it automated the
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
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&
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?—
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
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
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
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
