Build a Raspberry Pi Pico smart home with The MagPi magazine #123

Build a Smart Home

There’s been a boom smart home projects that feature Pico W at the heart. Use the new Wi-Fi connectivity found in the new Pico W microcontroller board to wirelessly control devices around the home. This month, PJ takes a look at the best home automation kit, projects and walk-through setting up smart lighting with Pico W.

Pico-powered Christmas Lights

Get ready for the Holiday season with our guide to using Pico to control Christmas lights. This tutorial will walk you through decorating your tree, controlling lights with code and adjust the RGB colour values to create your own patterns.

PoleFX

The networking power of Raspberry Pi is used to create light-illuminated poles for acrobatic dancing. With OpenCV image tracking and thousands of LEDs this unique project is incredibly detailed.

CyberDog Smart Saddle

If lighting up poles in a dance studio isn’t enough. How about lighting up your dog and taking it for a walk? We chat with the maker of this Smart Saddle that uses hundreds of LEDs to create a rainbow saddle for when a loveable hound goes for a walk!

Arribada Penguin Monitoring

How work at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) led to a project designing digital ‘traps’ to photograph animals. This then led to a project designing a camera setup that could with standard an Antarctic winter and snap photographs of penguins every hour.

BMOctoprint

BMO is a character from the animated fantasy Adventure Time [according to Rob at least – Ed] and BMOctoprint combines this cute retro-inspired character with a powerful OctoPrint server for controlling 3D printers.

Build a weather dashboard

Anvil’s dashboard enables you to quickly build a web dashboard and connect it to Raspberry Pi Pico. Phil’s tutorial will show you how to set up Pico W as an internet connected temperature and environment sensor and use it with Anvil to remotely monitor weather settings.

Petoi Robot Dog Bittle review

We love robots here at The MagPi and have tested a wide range of wheeled, walking and clasping buddies.  This month we were particularly taken with Bittle, a new robot dog that takes inspiration from the larger dogs being developed by industry. It’s not the easiest build, but it’s great to take for a walk.

Sophy Wong interview

We catch up with a multidisciplinary designer who crafts wearable tech into incredible projects. Sophy’s projects have adorned The MagPi and our sister magazine, HackSpace and this month we find out what drives her passion.