Win The Ultimate Raspberry Pi 4 Laptop as featured in Episode 407

That's quite a prize to win

Amazing laptop

Hello There.

How about making the Pi 7" display a fully functional Drive-In movie screen?

The Walthers Skyview Drive-In plastic model movie kit for H.O. scale module railroad layout sports a cardboard cutout of a submarine for a movie backdrop. The ad on the box suggests an iPad. With the aid of a Dremel Tool the back of the movie screen was modified to accommodate Pi3B+ mounted to a 7" display. A little tape on the model housing while the glue dries and we have a movie screen.

Visitors press a button to trigger the following animation sequence. A vehicle in the lot flashes 402 size LEDs head lights and honks a horn to start the movie. The Pi then dims the parking lot lights, triggers an Arduino Nano to start a flashing LED in the projection building and then displays a 30 second video clip complete with audio. Popeye the sailor man and the dancing hots-dogs seem to be the favourite.

Just off to the left you can see a sailboat with its flashing obstruction lights. A lake mural with mountains is painted as a backdrop. The ceiling is inlaid with LED Christmas string lights to add some twinkling stars in the sky.

Laptops and tablets! I remember the first time I used a raspberry pi was with one of those pine-tops or whatever they're called, at a makerspace. At the time all I did was some basic circuits. I was wondering, why spend 35 dollars for a computer when you could use a MCU?

I learned that answer to that a few months later when I got my first Arduino and well... eventually got past the 32KB flash limit... and processing speeds...

I've built a tablet before: I believe I used one of those AIY kits(the one I used in my alarm clock thing). I have one of those DSI screens (official 7"), that I literally put into a box, glued it to the cardboard, and... stuffed a battery bank in it.

I'm a genius right? Well, I had only a few months of experience and I was feeling rather proud of myself until I figured out all the problems in my project...

Anyway, that was one of my projects. I may have made some more revisions which I've all dissembled. Learning some javascript, though, and I plan on making an inventory system for all my stuff... because I have too much parts laying around.

Now talking about screens, I seem to always have issues with them... I never get them to work... or I break them

I also at some point wanted to make a raspberry pi "laptop" that was really a tablet with a detachable keyboard

A Couple years ago I made an RPi arcade machine. Built the cabinet and added a full size screen. It took a bit of time, but the kids love it!!

It was fun to build!!

Dale W

One of my favorite "old" projects was the internet-connected photo frame I built from a first-gen Pi B. Pulled apart an 15" monitor, connected it with an HDMI-DVI cable, and squeezed the whole thing into a 17" shadowbox. I mean, this was, like, 2015--which feels like a million years ago now--and I was just getting started with the platform!

I have added displays to a couple of Pi's:

This the Pi touchscreen in a bamboo frame with 3D printed housing and speakers running Google AIY:

Demo of Google Assistant with AIY ... https://youtu.be/vFYw3CSoksk or https://youtu.be/XL349Tttlnw

This is a larger display built to monitor the Pi HQ Camera:

https://youtu.be/N9lEiqrwQe0

I had been stringing long cables across the floors in either the living room or bedroom, to connect the Raspberry Pi to the TVs.

But that didn't go over well with the other occupant of the house, so I had to look for another solution.

With space at a premium, and no other TVs available, I decided to use my daily-driver Mac computer to access the Raspberry Pis remotely.

I wrote a blog post about it, right here on element14... was that really 6 years ago?

Many of the details are likely outdated by now.

I also tried using my old monitor, connected to a Raspberry Pi 2, to play videos for my cats. But with newer OS updates I ran into issues with the sound just not working right anymore. Hopefully that was a software issue that's been corrected since, but I lost my client base:

A few years ago we upgraded the bedroom TV and I was able to swipe the little TV that was there before - perfect size for a Raspberry Pi computer! Plus the built-in speakers are a nice plus compared to using a monitor or remote desktop, AND it resolved the sound issues I was having before.

Since then that little TV has again changed ownership back to the other occupant of the house, who is now using it in her art studio.

That leaves me right back to where I started: to using Remote Desktop again.

I did also upgrade my Mac monitor in the meantime, and it allows me to picture-in-picture a second HDMI input - so in a pinch I have been using the second HDMI input while setting up my Raspberry Pi computers.

Stay well, everyone

-Nico

I used several times a Pi display in an "unusual" way but probably the two most interesting ones, IMHO, are the presentation I have done a couple of years ago for the Art-a-Tronic exhibition in Gent. For this small installation I have configured the Pi with a customized version of the MagicMirror.... without the mirror. The display, exposed as a "live manifest" of the exhibition was showing images of the operas and when someone was in front of the showcase, was showing an image of ths observer for some second as it was part of the automatica slideshow.

The most recent unusual application, instead, is using the display as a touch keyboard – integrated with a traditional 32 keys MIDI keyboard – for the Pi-Synth project. Sure who has followed the "Radio Magic" workshop remember this Pi-Synth device.