An Interview with Raspberry Pi at Maker Faire Rome 2022
It was great to catch up with some of the team from Raspberry Pi at Maker Fire Rome. They were sharing their booth with Melopero, an authorized Pi reseller who were celebrating the launch of the Cookie RP2040 board.
The last time we saw folks from Raspberry Pi in person was back at Embedded World in June 2022, and it was just a few days before the release of the Pi Pico W. This was the first event where they had them to hand - along with a bunch of Pi 400s set up to show off various projects.
What really stood out was the lightsaber. I mean, of course it did. It's a lightsaber. It's a saber. Made of light. We chatted to Toby Roberts, Raspberry Pi's Maker in Residence, about what makes their wonderful whizzing and whining lightsaber tick!
In short, it's an Adafruit RP2040 board, which is the perfect accompaniment to a project like this due to its built-in battery management system and stackable "wing" shields. The rest is taken care of with an IMU module, LED strip, small speaker, and some good old baking paper as a diffuser - not a soldering iron in sight!
Raspberry Pis and Lightsabers. Some things just go together.
Ian Buckley is a writer, musician, and perpetual tinkerer. Commonly found surrounded by hobby electrical components, he's also a keen programmer and likes to build crazy-sounding instruments with microcontrollers. In addition to Electromaker, Ian writes over at MakeUseOf and has bylines at the likes of Online Tech Tips as well as Help Desk Geek.
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