Minecraft For RPi Released

February 11, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 12 Comments

Mojang, the folks behind Minecraft, have officially released Minecraft: Pi Edition. This free version of the popular game is optimized to run on the Raspberry Pi hardware, and has an API that exposes the game’s internals to a variety of programming languages.

Mojang intends this release to be an educational tool for teaching and learning programming. Since the API provides instant feedback in the game, it could be an interesting way to make learning to code fun for people of all ages.

Having access to the API on a RPi also means that the game can be connected to the real world. For example, using Python and the RPi.GPIO, pins on the GPIO header can be used for output or input. This creates a slew of possible hacks that interface with the game.

Any ideas on what you’d like to do with Minecraft on a RPi? Let us know in the comments. Also, we coincidentally just printed a minecraft pick on our 3d printer. There’s a time lapse video of it after the break!

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LED Tells You When Your Server Has Melted

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

LED

One of the benefits of writing for Hackaday is the ability to command at will a legion of readers to descend on unsuspecting web servers. Most of the time a server can handle the load of thousands of connections. On the rare occasion, though, a server is turned into a pile of slag and dross to the satisfaction of us here at Hackaday and to the ire of admins everywhere.

Checking to see if your server is still running or not isn’t terribly interesting, though. [Eric] thought it would be cool to have a proper physical visualization of how busy his server is, and ended up using a blink(1) USB-controllable LED to display his current server load.

The blink(1) is a small, USB controlled RGB LED that can be used as a universal indicator light. [Eric] had the idea of plugging it in to one of his servers and having the brightness of the LED change in response to the load on the server. He did this with a Python script that queries the Google Analytics API and returns a value from 0 to 255 in response to how popular his server was in the last 10 minutes.

Of course, there’s always a chance Hackaday could Slashdot his server. In that case, the blink(1) glows a steady red, alerting [Eric] to his popularity.

Programming In 3D With 3DPL

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

cubes

Here’s an interesting tool for making simple 3D games. It’s called 3DPL, the 3D programming language, and it’s a real-time interpreted language that allows you to create cubes and other primitives that respond to user input and internal logic. Not only that, but you can build 3D versions of breakout and asteroids very simply with only a few lines of code.

3DPL is based on Unity with a lot of JavaScript influences. Building a cube in 3DPL is as simple as declaring it with a name and position in 3D space. There are a few functions that can be applied to these cubes – they can be made to rotate at the press of a key, or translated in space to collide with each other.

It’s still a very early build, but looks to be pretty interesting for an ‘introduction to 3D graphics programming’ perspective. You can grab a copy of 3DPL to try out over on [amigojapan]’s github. Hopefully we’ll see a gravity method soon for a proper 3DPL Tetris implementation.

Turning An IPhone Into A Karaoke Machine

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

setup

Instead of booking an MC for your next karaoke party, take a look at [Paulo]’s build that turns any iPhone into a karaoke machine.

There are thousands of YouTube videos out there of songs with lyrics – a much more advanced version of the mainstay of any karaoke get together, suitcase full of CDs and a video monitor. The only problem in turning these YouTube videos into a karaoke party is putting a drunken slob into the mix. [Paulo] recently solved this problem with a karaoke mixer that adds a microphone input to any analog audio feed.

But this is only halfway to a karaoke machine. To finish the build, [Paulo] created an amplifier (with a fabulous Manhattan-style PCB) for an iPhone’s audio output. The video output can be sent directly to a monitor, allowing for the full karaoke experience.

Since [Paulo]’s karaoke mixer uses an XLR jack for the mic, it’s still possible to make karaoke worse by adding vocal and other miscellaneous effects.