My favorite part was the update at the end, so I had to quote it here as well. 😉
We met Stuart Pemberton about four weeks ago when we were installing some art at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Stuart is an electrical contractor at Heligan, and as we cut and trimmed wires, discussed onions, went up and down ladders (him, not me) and shot the breeze our common Raspberry Pi interest came up. Unlike me with my 34 long years of coding experience, Stuart is strictly a wires and volts guy, and had not yet written a line of code in any language. But he had stepped up to the plate in a big way and volunteered to get to grips with enough Python to put together a hardware / software project for Heligan Halloween – an interactive exhibit with infra-red sensors, audio playback and owls. And I like a nice owl, so I thought the whole thing was dead cool, and was very interested to hear how it all went on.
And here we are, four weeks later, back at Heligan to deinstall some art, and flipping heck, he’s only gone and done it! Dude!!! In a remarkably serendipitous bit of timing, Stuart had just finished attaching the final wire and run the final tests when we bumped into him at lunch yesterday, so we had to take a look.
There’s a grey box with a Pi, an audio amplifier, a PIR sensor to detect passing warm bodies, and a loudspeaker up a tree. Some Python, an OMXplayer, a recording of a tawny owl hooting, and hey presto, instant Halloween attraction, with passing children enchanted by the hooting owl and wondering a) where it is and b) how come it hoots every time they walk by. Brilliant!
…UPDATE!!! We just heard from Lorna at Heligan that in fact the project was too successful – gardeners and visitors wandering around at dusk were triggering the recording, which was then attracting actual female tawny owls to the tree! Nice if you want to see a female tawny at dusk, but not at all fair – not nice if you’re a girl owl looking for a guy and all you can find is a loudspeaker, and of course it may stop other owl pairs breeding in the area if they think a dominant, hooty male is in residence. So the recording is now of a wolf. A nice, non-British sort of animal. And werewolves are very Halloween. We trust the wolf sound is sufficiently alien that none of the native wildlife is either concerned by, or taken in by the sound!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
We are angry, frustrated, and in pain because of the violence and murder of Black people by the police because of racism. We are in the fight AGAINST RACISM. George Floyd was murdered, his life stolen. The Adafruit teams have specific actions we’ve done, are doing, and will do together as a company and culture. We are asking the Adafruit community to get involved and share what you are doing. The Adafruit teams will not settle for a hash tag, a Tweet, or an icon change. We will work on real change, and that requires real action and real work together. That is what we will do each day, each month, each year – we will hold ourselves accountable and publish our collective efforts, partnerships, activism, donations, openly and publicly. Our blog and social media platforms will be utilized in actionable ways. Join us and the anti-racist efforts working to end police brutality, reform the criminal justice system, and dismantle the many other forms of systemic racism at work in this country, read more @ adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — The Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Adafruit CLUE, Nina and Thea, and much more! #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython @circuitpython @micropython @ThePSF
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!