Snowstorm In Chicago Delays Hundreds Of Morning Murders CHICAGO—The city of Chicago is steadily recovering from an overnight snowstorm that delayed hundreds of murders on Friday morning and will likely continue to push numerous homicides across the city drastically behind schedule, public authorities announced. “As we speak, maintenance crews are working diligently to restore public transportation, de-ice roads, and clear back alleyways so that Chicagoans can quickly resume murdering again,” Department of Streets and Sanitation spokesman Dave Michelson said of the heavy blizzard, which caused numerous homicide cancellations this morning at peak murder times. “Unfortunately, we’re backed up by about 35 deadly shootings at the moment, but we hope to restore regular death tolls as soon as possible. We apologize to anyone forced to postpone shootings or other killings today and assure concerned murderers that they will be able to resume slayings by the early afternoon.”
Raspberry Pi, Python & Arduino After the other night’s wonderfully slow detour into Processing, I thought I’d try the Raspberry Pi’s “native” language of Python to control an Arduino. This worked rather well, though I don’t have a slick GUI for it yet. pyFirmata is the magic that allows an Arduino running Firmata to talk to Python. Get the required packages:sudo apt-get install python-serial mercurialDownload the pyFirmata code:hg clone cd pyfirmata sudo python setup.py install (If this succeeds, you can delete the pyfirmata folder.) Using pyFirmata is a bit different from other Arduino applications: Analogue reads and PWM writes are normalized to a 0 .. 1 range, and not the standard Arduino 0 .. 255 and 0 .. 1023.You really need to start a separate iterator thread to stop old readings overflowing the serial bufferSince the Arduino is read asynchronously, make sure that the pyFirmata connection is fully initialized before reading from ports. The output from this might look like:
Azeez märkmed: Ehitus Vaarika Pi Cluster - 2. osa The Grand Finale In a previous post on Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster, I wrote about how we built a cluster using several Raspberry Pis. This cluster was used for hosting the WSO2Con App. The project was unveiled at WSO2Con 2013, London & was an instant hit. Power Supply Like I mentioned in my previous post, we had to build a custom power supply that can cater to the voltage & current requirements of the Raspberry Pi cluster. USB Power Board Shown below is the USB power distribution board which could power up to 8 Raspberry Pis, or a single row in the rack. The +5V & GND lines in the board were connected to the power supply. Raspberry Pi Cluster Rack - the finished product The rack had to be very lightweight, and being able to easily disassemble it was a prerequisites since we had to carry the setup from Colombo, Sri Lanka to London, UK. The rows containing the Pis were slanted at about 15 degrees for aesthetic reasons. The final product, a 24 Raspberry Pi cluster, is shown below.
The Zeer Pot - a Nigerian invention keeps food fresh without electricity The Zeer Pot - a Nigerian invention keeps food fresh without electricity Musa Elkheir, Scidev.net [DARFUR] Hawa Osman is a farmer in Darfur, Sudan. In the hot weather of Darfur, Hawa used to lose half of the crops she hoped to sell each day in the market of Al Fashir, the capital city of North Darfur, because of inadequate storage facilities — and no electricity or refrigerator — in her small canteen, the shed made out of wood and palm leaves in which she displays her products to clients. But these days she is selling fresher produce and making bigger profit. The zeer is a large pot inside which fits another smaller pot with a clay lid. Each zeer can contain 12 kg of vegetables, and costs less than US$2 to produce. Experiments assessing its ability to extend shelf life show that tomatoes and guavas can be kept for 20 days, compared to just two without. Hawa was the first person to use the zeer technology in her canteen. Preservation is a key issue for food security. More information:
Spark Linux Tablet Up for Pre-Order, Dev Discusses Economics of Project The upstart Spark Linux tablet is up for pre-order at makeplaylive.com for a target price tag of 200 euros (about $263 USD). You can indicate how many tablets you’re interested in, and your priority number will ensure you’re among the first to receive yours. The Spark folks are hoping to get a strong sense of device demand before the tablet launches. Developer Aaron Seigo also posted a new blog today discussing the financial aspect of the project. Overall, the idea is to put money that comes in back into the project and to Free Software (especially those around open devices) in general. “Where these funds will be targeted will depend on what needs doing, what needs supporting the most and how successful the products are in the market,” said Siego in the post. Seigo notes that part of that will be investing in partnerships with other people and companies that can create software and technologies that enhance Spark.
Raspberry Pi en Southampton The steps to make a Raspberry Pi supercomputer can be downloaded here [9th Jan 2013 update]: Raspberry Pi Supercomputer (PDF). You can also follow the steps yourself here [9th Jan 2013 update]: Raspberry Pi Supercomputer (html). The press release (11th Sept 2012) for our Raspberry Pi Supercomputer with Lego is here: Press Release University Page The press release is also here (PDF): Press Release (PDF). Pictures are here - including Raspberry Pi and Lego: Press Release (More Pictures). We wrote up our work as a scientific journal publication where you can find further technical details on the build, motivation for the project and benchmarking. The reference to the paper is: Simon J. Iridis-pi: a low-cost, compact demonstration cluster Cluster Computing June 2013 DOI: 10.1007/s10586-013-0282-7 These are some links you may find helpfulul
Samsung ditches own AMOLED and EXYNOS inside new Galaxy S IV : Android With Raspberry Pi and Cotton Candy, Linux Launches a Revolution All the world may be agog over Microsoft's Windows 8 previews this week, but at the same time a quiet revolution is taking place. It's powered by Linux, it costs a fraction of Windows' price, and its first tangible evidence is now available in not just one but two “sweet” forms: Raspberry Pi and Cotton Candy. Like the idea of freedom from the upgrade treadmill and a price that won't put you behind on your rent? Then you may want to check out this new category of computing devices. The Raspberry Pi There's been talk about the ARM-based, education-focused $25 Raspberry Pi for quite some time already, but this week the diminutive device made its official debut. That's been nothing if not exciting to watch, particularly because the launch was so successful that it brought the UK-based project's site to its knees amid overwhelming demand. Premier Farnell and RS Components have both signed up as licensed manufacturers of the devices, the first run of which apparently sold out within an hour or so.