Couple really cool things going on right now. First of all, I got the physical copy of my book in hand. I’m so proud! Also Adafruit linked to my blog. I was so surprised when I got the email, thanks for the link!
This past week I’ve been having tons of meeting about software our team has been working on. It’s really validating to have our projects get the attention of the higher ups and other vendors. We work on cool things that help our 50,000 students learn in new ways. I love working for a place that allows us and encourages us to make a difference!
Orlando Mini Maker Faire
Tomorrow is the Orlando Mini Maker Faire at the Orlando Science Center. There will be 4 floors of makers showing off their creations, and that includes myself and FamiLAB. I will have a ton of pictures tomorrow, but if anyone is in Orlando, I encourage you to go.
I have awesome news! My book, “Raspberry Pi Gaming” has been published this week. The eBook version is currently available on Amazon.com, and the hardcopy should be available next week.
So I’ve been playign with trying to do a boot image or a boot movie with the Raspberry Pi for a while now, and all the comments and tips keep going back to a tutorial on how to boot a static image. It works, but there are a lot of problems with it like failing gracefully and not returning the console window back if you aren’t booting to X. So I decided to come up with another way. This is based off the tutorial found here: http://www.edv-huber.com/index.php/problemloesungen/15-custom-splash-screen-for-raspberry-pi-raspbian and looks like this when finished:
Instead of using the program fbi, we will use omxplayer to playback a video file while the Raspberry Pi is booting in the background.
First off, you will want to copy the 15 to 20 second movie file to your Raspberry Pi device. Anything shorter and the video will end before it’s finished booting and you will continue to see the kernel messages. You can use any video file that omxplayer can play back, but I like .mov and .mp4 files.
You will need to edit your /boot/cmdline.txt file:
sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt
Add quiet to the end of the line. It will look something like this:
Press ctrl-x, type y to confirm save, then press enter to return to the command line.
Copy your video somewhere to the Raspberry Pi. I keep mine in /home/pi/ and call the video video.mov
You will now need to create a startup script that will run omxplayer at bootup. I have modified the script from the above link.
sudo nano /etc/init.d/asplashscreen
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: asplashscreen
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:
# Default-Start: S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Show custom splashscreen
# Description: Show custom splashscreen
### END INIT INFO
Happy Friday! Long week. This week at work I learned how to deploy a Django app to an old Solaris server (Read: spent way too much time reading the error log because of incompatible SPARC modules). It was good though, because now I know of some really good debugging methods and have more Apache experience.
Xin-Mo Dual Controller and PiMAME
One of the louder feature requests for PiMAME is getting the Xin-Mo Arcade Encoder modules working. A link to a guide on how to patch the kernel and making a new module for the Xin-Mo was posted to the PiMAME forums. My Pi has spent the last night compiling the new kernel, and it seems to have worked. I will be posting a beta version of PiMAME for users to test with this new kernel and that should get these Xin-Mo encoders working right!
A few posts ago I mentioned that Linux New Media had published a Raspberry Pi Handbook and included a little blurb about PiMAME (yay!). They just announced that they are publishing a bimonthly magazine dedicated solely to the Raspberry Pi. The name could use some work, but I’m going to give it a chance. It’s called the Raspberry Pi Geek. Use code RPGOTHR10 to get 10% off.
I don’t have a problem, I can stop collecting these any time…
A new release of PiMAME is being uploaded. This time it’s 0.7.9, and the biggest edition is DGEN, a Sega Genesis emulator. PiSNES now supports 2 players, and the script was updated to not overwrite some of the config files. You can use the update.sh script right now to upgrade. I’ll update this post once the new image is on SourceForge.
Pokemon Rumble U
So, I’m a sucker for collectibles. Make little collectible figurines, add NFC, and let them interact with a video game, and I might as well just hand over my paycheck to the developer. I have so far kept myself away from Skylanders, and Disney Infinity, because I KNEW I would spend too much, but now Nintendo has come into the market with Pokemon Rumble U.
It’s an inexpensive Wii U game. Download only. It’s like a combination of Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, and bullet hell games.
There are 649 in game Pokemon to catch/befriend/see, but the real fun comes with these:
There are 18 different figurines to collect, and each one levels up as you play. When you bring them to a friends house, you can place the little figure on their wii u gamepad and it brings over all your stats and moves.
It’s using NFC tags inside the figure’s base to read and write this data, and if you hold it up to an Android phone with NFC, it will try and read the data. So far I have been unsuccessful getting a good data dump, but it would be neat if I could back up my figures stats and try moving them to blank tags.
I have one week until the Fall semester starts at UCF. Everyone in our department is rushing to make sure we are all ready, everything is updated, and everybody’s happy. I’m excited. I think this semester is going to be wonderful.
Leap Motion
Over the week I bought a Leap Motion device. Ever since I saw the preview of it, I was awe struck. This device has the ability to make a huge paradigm shift in the way we provide input and controls to our computer systems. It makes me even sadder to say that I returned it. I had such high hopes for the device, but, there were just too many things wrong on the software side.
The hardware is top notch. It just works. The software was crummy at best. It requires a lot of CPU power to run. I tried it on a Core 2 Duo, and the input lag was horrible. On a Core i5 it was fine, but I shouldn’t require that much CPU power just for an input device. The app store was also disappointing. There were a lot of apps available, but the vast majority cost money. The third party free mouse driver software wasn’t top notch. It made using the computer a chore. In reality, the software made it feel like a poor man’s kinect. 🙁 I am willing to give it a second chance, because the hardware is top notch. They just need the dev team to put some polish on the UX.
Raspberry Pi Pip-Boy
This is really cool. Panda from Hardware Libre posted this in the comments and on the PiMAME forums. This is a homemade Raspberry Pi Pip Boy.
Raspberry Pi Camera NoIR
So, last week at FamiLAB, Gordon Hollingworth, Director of Software at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, paid us a visit and talked to us about hardware, software, and a cool version of the Raspberry Pi camera that is being released.
It’s called the Pi NoIR, and it’s the Camera Board without the IR filter. Without the IR filter, you are able to capture part of the infrared spectrum, which you can test out by pointing your TV remote to the camera and pressing a button. What is invisible to your eye will show up on the camera sensor, and on your screen. A flashing beam of light coming from the remote control. There is a whole genre of IR photography, and this will allow you to get started in it.
That’s all for this week, I hope you all have a good weekend!
Squid has released another awesome emulator port for the Raspberry Pi. This time it’s Final Burn Alpha, which is a CPS1, CPS2, System 16, and NeoGeo emulator.
Marvel Vs. Capcom runs great on it. Expect this to be in PiMAME ASAP!
Excuse the delay, I’ve been having connection issues all day.
Hey All!
Happy Friday!
This has been a trying week. The wife and I are now house hunting, and the endeavor has been…exhausting. Oh well. Onto some good stuff.
Book Reports
The book I am writing is currently at the review stage, which is awesome. Hopefully only another month or so and the finished copies will be available! While we wait for that to be released, I have some other books I have been reading and I think this community will enjoy.
This book has a really interesting background. It was created by created by The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups and the MIT Media Lab. The book teaches you how to “program” in the Scratch language/IDE.
Scratch is really neat as it’s a drag and drop visual language that is aimed at young / new programmers. You learn programming concepts as you place blocks of “functions” in various areas to perform actions.
The book itself is well done, with comic book style artwork, narrative, and learning modules. It’s an easy read, and a good start for a young programmer.
Packt Publishing has just published this book about using the Minecraft API for the Raspberry Pi with Python. I have a soft spot for Packt, as they are the ones publishing my book, but so far I have enjoyed this book.
From the beginning you are thrown into the Python interface and start manipulating the Minecraft world on your Pi. It is relatively short, only around 50 pages, but I find that to be a good thing. It’s to the point. You go from nothing to building a full Revsersi game by the end.
I showed it off at the Orlando Science Center with FamiLAB last saturday and it was really neat to see the amount of children who ran up to see anything related to Minecraft. Some of the parents were enthusiastic about being able to bring education to a video game.
I hope you have a good weekend and hopefully enjoy these books.
I got a few requests for a BerryBoot image of PiMAME. I followed the instructions and generated an image that should be compatible. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet since I don’t have a Pi with BerryBoot installed.
