Brilliant beginner builds

At this time of year, lots of new Raspberry Pi users are wondering what to do with the tiny computer they were gifted at Christmas. The excellent team behind Raspberry Pi Official Magazine thought ahead and included a collection of fun, beginner-friendly projects for you to try in the latest issue. Happy #MakerMonday to all of our new friends.

Do citizen science with Raspberry Shake

Help map tremors around the world with this simple kit

raspberryshake.org

This seismometer kit includes a special geophone sensor that lets you study the Earth and its movements very accurately. Not only that, but you can hook it up to a network of like-minded amateur — and professional — seismologists and see how seismic activity spreads around the world, in real time.

Add to a global network of citizen scientists monitoring seismic activity

Assembly is very easy — just connect the geophone to the add-on board, put the board on a Raspberry Pi, then assemble the acrylic case. There’s a handy video that runs you through the process, too, and goes on to cover the software setup.

The kit for Raspberry Shake is nice and compact

Monitor your plants with Pico

Get a text when your hydrangeas need some hydration

rpimag.co/picoplant

Home automation doesn’t just have to involve controlling your lights and heating — you can also use similar techniques to maintain your plants. Moisture sensors are a very common component for Raspberry Pi projects, and the Grow HAT from Pimoroni makes it easier to use them.

A Grow Kit monitors the soil moisture

The extra trick to this project is that it will send you emails with updates — inspiring messages in the morning, as well as reminders that your plant needs a bit of water. This project also makes use of a little hack to get a Raspberry Pi HAT to work with Pico — it uses a lot less power than a full Raspberry Pi too, making the project much greener.

A Perma-Proto HAT is used to connect Pico to the Grow HAT

Record stop-motion videos with a Camera Module

Become a movie-maker with some Lego and a lot of patience

rpimag.co/stopmotion

We can show you how to take simple pictures or videos with a Raspberry Pi and a Camera Module, but we think it’s a lot more fun to create a hybrid setup that aids in stop-motion photography.

Orange you glad you made a film?

Very simply, this project lets you take a photo at the press of a button, and then waits for you to press the button again for the next photo. In that time, you rearrange what’s in the preview window on your monitor, creating a frame of animation each time. You can then stitch these together with some code to create a final product. With a few programming tricks, you can even have a ghostly version of the previous frame on screen to aid you in setting up the next shot.

Create a robot

Make a friendly automaton with a suite of custom sensors

rpimag.co/buildbuggy

The CamJam EduKit 3 is the perfect introduction to building your own robot. It’s a small and inexpensive kit that pairs with a full-size Raspberry Pi or Raspberry Pi Zero to create a customisable machine that you can either use as a remote-control car or to experiment with robot automation.

A 3D-printed chassis is available, but you can actually use the box from the kit to make the robot

It comes with an ultrasonic distance sensor and line followers — classic robotics sensors used for navigation. Assembly is fairly straightforward, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s tutorial even makes use of the box it comes in to build it; no parts wasted!

There are a lot of parts, but minimal soldering involved

Build a smart mirror

Check on yourself and your day with one futuristic piece of furniture

magicmirror.builders

Smart mirrors, aka magic mirrors, are one of those projects that every Raspberry Pi maker needs to do once. On the surface, it may seem like a complex and advanced project; however, it’s actually fairly straightforward. The hardest part can be constructing the frame, which, if you can’t find a suitable pre-made frame at IKEA, involves a simple bit of carpentry.

There aren’t many components to a smart mirror

Putting some reflective two-way mirrored wrap on a big old TV and installing the Magic Mirror software are the other main steps; the latter is very easy to configure and has plenty of add-ons too.

A small IKEA frame with a compact monitor does the trick for a smaller version

This article is from Raspberry Pi Official Magazine #161

You can grab this issue from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available from our online store, which ships around the world. And you can get a digital version via our app on Android or iOS.

You can also subscribe to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W!

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