The Smarter Desktop in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 156

3D printing has come a long way. Once upon a time you’d have to spend countless hours sanding everything that came off your print bed, and you could have any colour you wanted as long as it was beige. Now you can send a design off to a factory and get industrial-quality prints for pocket-money prices.

We’re continuing our streak of tutorials combining Raspberry Pi with traditional crafts with a look at flower pressing. Without wanting to get all John Keats on you, with his musings on the transient nature of beauty, it’s a way to capture the fleeting perfection of nature’s artworks. And you can add a moisture sensor and a Raspberry Pi Pico to control it automatically.

If you’ve used a Raspberry Pi to monitor any sensors, you’ll understand that it can do so much more than just hobbyist builds and education. Find out the unlikely places that it’s popping up in industry, keeping the wheels turning and the conveyor belts moving.

It’s not Raspberry Pi, but we thought we’d bring it to you anyway: this reflecting telescope, partly built using a piece of drainage piping, uses an ESP32 to control the servos that move it around and up and down. The user can enter coordinates of stars or star clusters, and the machine moves until those stars are in focus. It’s brilliant, and it’s completely home made with simple, affordable electronics – just the sort of thing we like!

Do you want an 8-bit homebrew retro computer? Would you like it to incorporate a brace of Raspberry Pi Picos? And would you like it if you could download the design files, send them off to be manufactured, then slot the whole thing together with a few commonly found components and no soldering? Of course you do – that’s why we’ve brought the Picocomputer 6502 to your attention this month.

There’s a whole heap more for your perusal in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine – grab your copy today, or subscribe to never miss an issue.