Monday grab bag
I’ve been sent links to a lot of cool stuff the community’s been working on over the weekend. Here are a few items which really tickled me.
@Jojoreloaded has ported Frontier, the sequel to Elite (David Braben, who developed both games, is one of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s trustees), to the Raspberry Pi. Frontier, unlike Elite, has a shareware licence; I hope @Jojoreloaded also shares his code so we can all have a go! It’s a DOS game, so the last time I saw a working version (curse you, ubiquitous Windows) was on a friend’s Amiga at school.
Matt at Exaviorn has come up with RasPiWrite, an Mac OS X script which automates the preparation of your Raspberry Pi SD card. I’ve been using it myself, and it does what it says on the tin; I think it’s the first such tool available for the Mac, and it’s extremely straightforward. Just follow the instructions he’s put online.
Quentin Stafford-Fraser has put together a nice little embedded hardware app for changing the bandwidth on a couple of webcams so he can press a button to switch from a monitoring state, where the cams take pictures every second or so, to a state where they’re taking several FPS if he needs a closer look at whatever’s going on. (There are flashing LEDs too!) He uses the framebuffer interface in PyGame – there’s no need for XWindows or any of that jazz.
Click to view a larger version on Twitter.
Richard Leggett has been using Cortex to do genome assembly and variation analysis on E.coli using the Raspberry Pi. We’re pretty sure this is the first genetics application we’ve seen running on the device. 7pm – I stand corrected! Here’s a forum thread I was pointed at in the comments that says otherwise.
If you’ve been doing something cool with your Raspberry Pi (or have spotted someone else online doing something you think should get a wider audience) and you have some video or screenshots you think we’d be interested in sharing with the community, please drop me an email at liz@raspberrypi.org.
20 comments
m0ntala
Although I am really old (!!) and can remember (and played) Elite on my BBC Micro, I have to confess that I have no recollection at all of Frontier!
I do love the idea though of being able to play it on the Raspberry Pi, and would appreciate a few more details on this… and also on the rather neat little screen it is being displayed on.
All great stuff though!
liz
So would we! Unfortunately, the only info we got was what was in the YouTube video. I’m hoping that the guy who uploaded it will read this and fill us in.
Eros
I have managed to build glFrontier on the Raspberry Pi, though it required me to do part of the process on a x86 linux PC to do part of the process. I had an issue with the assembler compiled during the build process segfaulting when it was being called.
Anyway, the performance of it on Raspbian was not so great, so id be very very interested in how it was done in this video as the video playback looks great.
Gergmchairy
No very photogenic, but my PI was supplying the music for a friends wedding reception over the weekend! Running Debian, with DHCP server and samba it was able to supply a couple of sonos boxes with IP addresses (they dont like life if they can’t get an ip) and also supply a network share loaded with mp3s! worked like a dream!! :-)
liz
That is *lovely*. If you ever write anything about the setup we can link to, let me know.
Gergmchairy
Hi Liz, i’ll have a ponder and get some words on paper for you ! Greg.
Shane Hudson
I have never played Frontier or Elite but that music is fantastic!
RorschachUK
In addition to running Braben’s Frontier, I don’t think I’d seen a Pi with multiple monitors before (is it using both the HDMI and analogue video out? Can you do that?), and also it looks like it’s running on some old flavour of Ubuntu, which I also hadn’t seen done before (that’s the Ubuntu logo in top left on the terminal monitor, is it not?).
Sven
It ‘s much more likely that the first monitor you see is connected to a laptop or desktop PC and that the person shooting the video has logged onto the Raspberry Pi using SSH in a Gnome Terminal window.
RorschachUK
That does sound more likely, yes!
AndrewS
“We’re pretty sure this is the first genetics application we’ve seen running on the device”
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6846 says otherwise ;)
fryguy128
The automated dd for mac is amazing. It is so much quicker and easier than just typing ‘dd if=… of=…’ with all of the disk finding.
Jim Barber
I used the RasPiWrite and it worked. The only thing I would like to see added is to know that it is checking sha1sum, before it writes to the sd card. Good job writing that, thanks!
Wombat
The Pi made BBC news…..(well the web site)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18301670
Shame the child complained about no case….. given that the september ones for schools are due to have cases!
SimonFD
Odd the RS guy didn’t mention the case would be there for the Education release. Perhaps he didn’t get that memo.
On the other hand, kid’s will moan about everything…….. ;-)
Wombat
Quentin, where did you get the prototyping case for the PI?
Aideen
It’s from SK Pang Electronics. I’d better order one before there’s a rush!
Rohan Kapoor
Liz, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you via email/twitter regarding using the Raspberry Pi as an AirPrint Server for iOS Printing (My demo video and tutorial). Have you gotten it?
Martin
Great stuff! GPIO things are the best, if you are interested in my creations, read my blogpost: http://www.st.fmph.uniba.sk/~habovstiak6/blog.php?show=00012_pi
E
I’ve never played Frontier either. Be cool to see it on the Pi.