I wanted to mount the Pi vertically to show off the intricately beautiful circuit board (and possibly to take up less space, but this thing is tiny!) and I’ve used window bricks that line up with the Pi logo. For my first attempts I tried designing a case using the lego designer – but beware, many of the bricks aren’t available from the pick-a-brick store. I’ve had to use 1×1 tiles stacked in groups of 3 to make the corners, and 2×1 tiles for the top.

It’s a bit bigger (4 bricks wide on the inside) than my original design – the GPIO pins stick out slightly too far to fit with 2 bricks wide. Windows and arch bricks form the holes for the various plugs, with the USB and Ethernet cables emerging from the top. I’ve used the mini USB power supply from Amazon Kindle combined with a remote controlled socket for power.

The latest version has the coloured bricks at the bottom, and more clear bricks at the top to refract the light from the various power / activity indicators. It also stands a little bit taller to allow for the USB mini power plug and a grip to hold the Pi motherboard in place.

Total cost is about £30, but I do have plenty of bricks left over for other lego projects…

I’ve been on the lookout for a cheap as chips digital camera for a while now, with the purpose of using it for things like underwater photography / space program / CHDK hacking. I was able to buy a nice PowerShot A480 for about £30 on ebay (they’re about £100 new on Amazon). It’s small, light, and works off AA batteries – although is a bit fussy about what type of AA battery it takes (prefers NiMh). Imagine a box brownie type camera for the noughties – cheap and super simple to use.

The A480 has a ten megapixel sensor and was launched in 2009 – although newer cameras are now in the 14 megapixel+ range a lot of this is besides the point since lens quality starts to become a limiting factor. It even has a 3.3 zoom, although with a camera like this it’s generally easier to take a few steps forward. It’s still infinitely better than the camera in my mobile phone.

CHDK is a download that sits on the SD card in the camera – the software loads off the SD card when you switch the camera on. It sits fairly neatly alongside the existing camera firmware (you can still access all your normal menus), and if you switch to an SD card without CHDK your camera reverts to it’s default state.

There’s a really easy to follow guide on the CHDK website – the only hitch I encountered was having to use a loader script since I’m using a mac – other than that everything worked smoothly.

The difference it’s made to the camera is incredible – it can shoot in RAW format, and you have complete control over aperture, exposure, ISO and a whole load of more advanced things like colour balance and flash power. There’s a huge array of settings to discover and play around with, but for me the real killer feature is the scripts.

Accessed through  CHDK you load a script from the Scripting parameters -> load script from file menus, and then run the script by hitting the shutter button whilst the <alt> text is displayed. I did a bit of experimenting with the time lapse script and created the animation below.

This is the sort of movie camera functionality that I always dreamed of when I was little – back then the only option was cine film / video, and even with that it wasn’t really in the budget of a 10 year old. It’s a blurry first attempt, but I’m quite into creating doodles.

CHDK alone is a really good reason to invest in a simple Canon compact, and although the site comes with lots of disclaimers, as I’m sure it voids warranties / Canon will come and hunt you down etc etc it’s a fairly easy way to dip your toe into the world of hardware hacking. Long may it continue!

After playing around with the Kindle for a week I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a brilliant ebook reader. The screen is uncannily like paper (even if it is grey paper rather than white). The black flash when refreshing isn’t as annoying as I thought it would be, and I don’t miss having a touchscreen, although sometimes the buttons feel a bit clunky. It’s a simple, if not super-fast machine to use. In some ways it reminds me of the minimalist word-processing applications that are available; by removing distractions like fonts, formatting, and that bloody paperclip, you can get on with the task of concentrating on your writing, or in this case reading.

What’s of particular interest is the bundled web browser software. With the 3g Kindle bundling in free web access you can surf wherever, whenever – even globally.  Amazon do downplay this feature, labelling it as experimental and sticking it in a menu away from the homepage, and it is a bit slow to put it mildly. The following is my previous post viewed on a Kindle in web mode:

Surfing the web, early 1990s style

But for a free ‘extra’ it’s not bad. Sites render properly and you can either choose the slow click and zoom option as above, or read a site in article mode:

Surfing the web, early 1900s style

Article mode plays to the strengths of the Kindle as a ereader by removing a lot of the formatting and displaying text at a comfortable size. Amazon also offers a web blog subscription service where (for a fee) you can subscribe to a blog which has already been formatted neatly for the device – offering a way for Amazon to cover the costs of 3g and authors to make money. This service is only available with a US bank account so for the time being here’s a generated preview of publishing for blogs mode:

Surfing the web, 1890s style

There’s not much between article mode and publishing for blogs mode, although the latter may be the price we have to pay for free universal 3g access.

What’s also interesting about this is that it opens up the mobile web for a new generation of people who perhaps would have never considered it before.  Of the 68% of the people in the world with a phone, 17% have a smartphone of which 2% are iPhones –  yet mobile web design and optimisation is usually aimed at the these devices. I know personally several people who own a smartphone, but I also know many more who don’t own one and have no interest in getting one. Moreover, a Kindle doesn’t require that you own a computer at all; it’s a completely self reliant machine – thus opening up the web to previously unconnected people. Only time will tell if ereaders challenge mobile phones as kings of the mobile web.

NB you can take a screenshot on a Kindle with shift-alt-G, although Minesweeper is more fun with shift-alt-M.