MORE ABOUT Raspberry Pi

If only we could say that "No StromPi 3 was harmed during the making of this review“ we would be happy, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way. Power supply HATs for the Raspberry Pi are nothing new and some may even question why we are reviewing a new version of the StromPi and not a PiJuice or Pi UPS + HAT? To answer that question, this review looks into what the latest version of the StromPi brings to the table and shows how we can use it...

When you experiment with the Raspberry Pi on a regular basis and you connect a variety of external hardware to the GPIO port via the header you may well have caused some damage in the past. A voltage that’s too high, or an electrostatic discharge, blows up the port and you can say goodbye to your cherished credit card sized computer. The Raspberry Pi buffer board described in this article prevents all this!

The objective of the PaPiRus ePaper Screen HAT for Raspberry Pi is to make ePaper technology available to anyone, which is why it is a fully open source product with schematics and source code at GitHub. Besides the ePaper display, the HAT also has four pushbuttons, a real-time clock (RTC) and a temperature sensor.

Whether you are a professional electronics technician or are developing your own projects in "Homelab", electronica is once again a must-attend event in 2018. We have exciting innovations, interesting lectures and of course the latest hardware from our laboratory up our sleeve!

This new Elektor book describes how an Android mobile device can communicate with a variety of hardware platforms — including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and the ESP32 processor — over a Wi-Fi link or by using SMS text messages. All the Android projects in this book were developed using the B4A programming language.

RISC OS, the original OS for ARM processors is now available as a fully Open Source operating system (OS), via the Apache 2.0 licence under the continued stewardship of RISC OS Open Ltd. A high performance, low footprint OS, incorporating the world-renowned "BBC BASIC" provides a modern desktop interface coupled with easy access to programming, hardware and connectivity. RISC OS was one of the first operating systems to support the massively successful Raspberry Pi, for which it remains an ideal companion. Now truly Open, RISC OS make an ideal choice for royalty-free ARM-based projects.

After a little delay the Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Power over Ethernet HAT for the Raspberry Pi 3B+ model. This can provide up to 2.5 A at 5 V to the system. To see what it is good for, we take it out of the box for a short review.

4D Systems’s gen4-4DPI series of LCD display modules now support the Raspberry Pi family of single board computers. Available in three different screen sizes, 4.3, 5.0 and 7.0 inch, the display modules connect to a Raspberry Pi through a 30-pin FPC cable and an adapter board that conforms to both the Raspberry Pi expansion header pinout and Pi’s HAT device identification standard. Designed to be the primary graphical display, replacing the use of an HDMI or composite display, the display modules are available with resistive or capacitive touch control options.

Linux will always face a challenge. However, the emergence of many ‘minicomputers’ such as the Raspberry Pi (and variants), the Beagle Bone, the DragonBoard and the Odroid, which all use a Linux operating system, has given a healthy boost to the number of Linux users. If you haven't joined them yet, here is an interesting and simple application to get your teeth into: hangman.

Thanks to 3D imaging sensor technology, the Walabot RF short-range scanner with its 15 RF antennas detects tubes, lines, wires and cables behind walls. Walabot works like a radar. It transmits radio waves and receives their reflections. The RF scanner generates a 3D image of the environment in real time and displays it on a monitor. Depth, type of material and position are also determined. Walabot even detects moving rodents that may be hiding in dry walls.