Tag Archives: book

Nov 20

Friday Post: IAAPA 2015

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a day of IAAPA again this year.  IAAPA is THE worldwide Arcade and Amusement expo.  I’m fortunate that it takes place in Orlando, FL, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get this opportunity.

One of the highlights of the trade show was that Sega was there showing off the new to North America “Luigi’s Mansion Arcade”.  This has been in Japan for two years now, but this is the first time (other than one location test) that a Luigi’s Mansion Arcade unit has been in the States.  It’s a very neat game.  It’s an on rails shooter game, where your gun is an all in one flashlight and vacuum cleaner.  You stun the ghosts with the flashlight, then suck them into your vacuum.  It’s a lot of fun, and I hope it gets translated and a few places pick them up.

In Raspberry Pi related news, the Mag Pi has just released their Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book!

Pi-Projects_Cover-495x700

 https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/official-raspberry-pi-projects-book/

200 pages of things to do with your Raspberry Pi!

Enjoy all!  Have a great weekend!

-Shea

 

Jun 19

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Case and No Starch Press Humble Bundle!

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Happy Friday!

This was a long week.  I had three things to do at work.  2 of them took 20 minutes, the last one took 4 days to finish.  I’ve also apparently become addicted to Splatoon on the Wii U.

Official Raspberry Pi Case

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has come out with their official Raspberry Pi Case.  I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet but it looks really nice.

Humble Bundle

I’m a huge fan of No Starch Press, and I love Humble Bundle’s bundles.  I picked up the last No Starch Humble Bundle and it was great.  This time it’s no different.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

This bundle’s list of books:

  • Super Scratch Programming Adventure! by The LEAD Project ( A favorite )
  • The LEGO Adventure Book, Vol. 2 
  • The Manga Guide to Databases ( I had no idea No Starch published this, a great resource)
  • Wonderful Life with the Elements
  • The Art of LEGO Design
  • No Starch Summer Sampler 2015
  •  JavaScript for Kids (Was sent a review copy, very good, Python for Kids is another in the series)
  • The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder’s Guide
  •  Learn to Program with Scratch
  • Arduino Workshop
  • The Linux Command Line
  • The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book
  • Teach Your Kids to Code
  • Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

PiPlay

Mark and I have been working on our remote controller concept that I posted a while ago on the blog.  I’m really impressed with how it’s turning out.  I couldn’t ask for a better team member.  I’m excited to share that in the upcoming weeks.

Feb 25

Raspberry Pi Gaming Second Edition Published!

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Hey All,

I am VERY excited to post about this.  I have been working on this book for the better part of a year, it has truly been a blood sweat and tears kinda project.  I felt burnt out at times, frustrated, ecstatic, relieved, rewarded, and angry all during the writing of this book.  But it’s done and I couldn’t be happier.

I am pleased to announce that my book, Raspberry Pi Gaming Second Edition has been published and is now available to order from Amazon.

3673_Raspberry Pi Gaming Second Edition_cov_0 (1)

Whereas the last book was mostly a cookbook style in writing, this book teaches how to:

  • Program games utilizing the Scratch language
  • Install multiple operating systems
  • Set up your Raspberry Pi computer
  • Install and configure game system emulators
  • Control your Minecraft world with the Python programming language
  • Explore different kinds of joysticks, controllers, game pads, and other input devices
  • Install applications in Linux

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me, supported me, and given me the opportunity to make this a reality.  You all rock.  Thank you readers and PiPlay community members 🙂

-Shea

Jan 23

Friday Post: Javascript for Kids Review & iOS dev needed

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Hey All!

So my 31st birthday was great.  Got a Gamecube controller adapter for the Wii U, had some 8 player smash battles, and my wife made me an awesome Pokemon cake!

IMG_4703

PiPlay iOS App

So one of the items I have been working on on the side for PiPlay is a remote controller option.  I have the backend working.  A daemon sits on the Pi as a virtual keyboard (using udev) waiting for a specific HTTP request which is then interpreted and issued a keypress.  It’s really cool to see in action, but ugly as all get out.

This is why I am asking if anyone has any iOS design / dev experience, I would love to chat with you and hopefully work together on this as an open source project.

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My not so impressive mockup skills 🙂

Book Review: Javascript for Kids

Javascript For Kids is the next book in the “For Kids” series from No Starch Press.  When they originally sent me the Python For Kids book, I was really excited.  It was my first time reviewing a book, and it was an amazing text in its own right.  So when they told me Javascript For Kids was available, I jumped at the chance to review a copy.

I’m going to say this outright: I like Python For Kids better.

Javascript For Kids takes you from zero programming experience, all the way to programming graphics and mini games using the canvas tag.  Whereas Python For Kids was very easy to read and hard to put down, I find this book to be information dense, and a little overwhelming at parts.  The author knows his stuff, and the information is clear and well written, but I wish the book was paced a little slower.

That said the examples used are lots of fun, and the audience will probably enjoy writing and expanding on the included code.

No Starch landed a 10 / 10 on Python For Kids, which set the bar extremely high.  I’m giving Javascript For Kids a 7.5 out of 10.  It’s deserving of the For Kids title, and I eagerly await the next book in the series.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Nov 07

Friday Post: DISPMANX_vnc and Homepass

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!  I want to send a Very Happy Birthday to my Father.  This weekend is his birthday and I’m very proud to be his son.

I’ve been very busy these past few weeks,  I’ve been contracted to write a second edition of my Raspberry Pi Gaming book, and it’s taking up a lot of my time.  Even though its a subject I’m very familiar with, i’m finding out tons of new things I can do with the Raspberry Pi that have cropped because of my need to record and capture things coming from the Pi’s framebuffer.

I’ve been using a few tools, mainly ones involving DISPMANX to copy the framebuffer into a png file.  It’s called raspi2png and it works really well.  Sometimes its difficult to trigger raspi2png at the right time though.

One thing I have always wanted was a way to ssh / tunnel into the actual console terminal.  Not a new tty device, and not from XWindows, but the one that displays on /fb0.  Enter dispmanx_vnc.  I had never thought of using VNC to tunnel the framebuffer,  but Hanzelpeter has done just that with dispmanx_vnc

There’s definite input lag, and I can only achieve about 15fps, but it is the best way I’ve found to record and capture straight from the framebuffer right now.  I can ssh into my Pi, run the dispmanx_vnc command, then use a VNC viewer (I used tightvnc) to control the main display.  I’m so excited about this 😀

Other news, if anyone has a 3DS, then you know about StreetPass.  It’s a way to virtually meet others who are around you with their 3DS.  There are a bunch of mini games built into the 3DS that require you to meet people using Street Pass in order to advance. There is also Street Pass Relay, which Nintendo created last year.  This allows those who are connected to a Nintendo Zone wifi access point to StreetPass with others from around the world, who are also connected to a Street Pass Relay. So of course this has been reverse engineered, and you can now turn a Raspberry Pi into a “HomePass” StreetPass relay.

Original instructions here .  There is a premade SD card available here, but I have yet to try it out.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Mar 14

Friday Post: Book Stats

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!  I got an email this morning from Packt giving me the stats for my book sales from October to December of 2013.  I’m happy to report that I have sold over 200 copies.  Thank you all so much!

This weekend I will be doing a last minute presentation of PiMAME with FamiLAB at the Orlando Science Center.  I will then be preparing for PyCon in Montreal, where I will be doing a poster session on how PiMAME was built in Python.  I will also be attending Instructurecon in Utah and speaking about LTIs and how we program and implement them at UCF.   It’s going to be a fun two months of traveling 🙂

I have gotten some great feedback on PiMAME 0.8, and I am going to be working on some fixes this weekend (these are my two low hanging fruit goals to complete):

  • Tankstick / Numpad support
  • Configurable Buttons through config.yaml

Have a good weekend all!

Dec 13

Friday Post: Speechless

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Hey All,

Happy Friday!!  This week marks the end of the semester.  Finished my finals and got an A!  Pushed a lot of work code to our production servers, and waiting for them to turned on on Sunday.  Months of hard work finally coming online.  It’s been an exciting week.  Been playing around with joysticks and working on some issues.

I was also featured on the front page of the Raspberry Pi official site!

Cool things on the way! Have a great weekend.

Sep 27

Friday Post: Raspberry Pi Gaming Published!

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Hey All,

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.

3231OS_mockupcover_instant-how to (2)

 

Raspberry Pi Gaming at Packt Publishing

What you will learn from this book

  • Install a Raspberry Pi operating system
  • Set up PiMAME
  • Install RetroPie
  • Emulate PlayStation, SuperNES, MAME, and Atari 2600 games
  • Create your own Minecraft world and extend it with the API
  • Play in Open Arena matches with your friends
  • Go on an adventure with Cave Story
  • Fix common issues and troubleshoot your device
  • Keep your Raspberry Pi up-to-date

I hope you all enjoy.  I’m very excited and proud of this project!

-Shea Silverman

Sep 20

Friday Post: Editing

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Hello All,

This has been a fun week.  Trying to fight of the germs going around now that everyone is settled into classes.  This is usually when the colds start going around.  A few coworkers are already coughing.  I may need to put up a fort around my desk. On the plus side I am seeing Yellowcard this weekend!!!

The PyCon call for proposals deadline passed.  I put in 2 talks and a poster session.  I am volunteering this year as part of the program committee, and I am really excited about going.  I hope one of my proposals makes it.

I caught all of the Pokemon NFC figures.  Yeah, I have a problem.  The Gamestop near me allowed me to bring in my Wii U and scan the Pokeballs before buying them so I could pick out the ones I needed to complete my collection.  Some Gamestops really are awesome.

In exciting news,  I saw the final pdf of my book, and it is being sent to the printer now!!!  In a few days I’ll have the Amazon link to post.

The laser cutter at FamiLAB bit the dust.  The controller board’s heatsink fell off causing a short and frying the board.  I had some prototypes I wanted to cut so I ended up uploading my SVGs to Ponoko.com and getting them cut there.  They quoted me $18 to print out a prototype DeskCade, which isn’t bad considering the amount of space I had left free on the material.  I could probably have printed two for the same price if I spent more time rearranging the parts.  On the plus side, they said it would take 10 days for cutting and 5 days for shipping.  I ordered it on Thursday and it was shipping by Wednesday, so I’m really happy about that.

I can’t wait to see the quality of the parts!

PiMAME update should be soon.  This will be include a custom kernel for the Xin-Mo controller.

That’s it for now.  Have a great weekend!