Brian Carrigan found the remains of a $500 supermarket barcode scanner at a Scrap Exchange for $6.25, and decided to put it to use as a shopping list builder for his pantry.

Upcycling from scraps

Brian wasn’t planning to build the Wunderscan. But when he stumbled upon the remains of a $500 Cubit barcode scanner at his local reuse center, his inner maker took hold of the situation.

It had been ripped from its connectors and had unlabeled wires hanging from it; a bit of hardware gore if such a thing exists. It was labeled on sale for $6.25, and a quick search revealed that it originally retailed at over $500… I figured I would try to reverse engineer it, and if all else fails, scrap it for the laser and motor.

Brian decided that the scanner, once refurbished with a Raspberry Pi Zero W and new wiring, would make a great addition to his home pantry as a shopping list builder using Wunderlist. “I thought a great use of this would be to keep near our pantry so that when we are out of a spice or snack, we could just scan the item and it would get posted to our shopping list.”

Reverse engineering

The datasheet for the Cubit scanner was available online, and Brian was able to discover the missing pieces required to bring the unit back to working order.

However, no wiring diagram was provided with the datasheet, so he was forced to figure out the power connections and signal output for himself using a bit of luck and an oscilloscope.

Now that the part was powered and working, all that was left was finding the RS232 transmit line. I used my oscilloscope to do this part and found it by scanning items and looking for the signal. It was not long before this wire was found and I was able to receive UPC codes.

Scanning codes and building (Wunder)lists

When the scanner reads a barcode, it sends the ASCII representation of a UPC code to the attached Raspberry Pi Zero W. Brian used the free UPC Database to convert each code to the name of the corresponding grocery item. Next, he needed to add it to the Wunderlist shopping list that his wife uses for grocery shopping.

Wunderlist provides an API token so users can incorporate list-making into their projects. With a little extra coding, Brian was able to convert the scanning of a pantry item’s barcode into a new addition to the family shopping list.

Curious as to how it all came together? You can find information on the project, including code and hardware configurations, on Brian’s blog. If you’ve built something similar, we’d love to see it in the comments below.

The post Scanning snacks to your Wunderlist shopping list with Wunderscan appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

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Stream your video gaming exploits to the internet at the touch of a button with the Twitch-O-Matic. Everyone else is doing it, so you should too.

Twitch-O-Matic: Raspberry Pi Twitch Streaming Device – Weekend Hacker #1804

Some gaming consoles make it easy to stream to Twitch, some gaming consoles don’t (come on, Nintendo). So for those that don’t, I’ve made this beta version of the “Twitch-O-Matic”. No it doesn’t chop onions or fold your laundry, but what it DOES do is stream anything with HDMI output to your Twitch channel with the simple push of a button!

eSports and online game streaming

Interest in eSports has skyrocketed over the last few years, with viewership numbers in the hundreds of millions, sponsorship deals increasing in value and prestige, and tournament prize funds reaching millions of dollars. So it’s no wonder that more and more gamers are starting to stream live to online platforms in order to boost their fanbase and try to cash in on this growing industry.

Streaming to Twitch

Launched in 2011, Twitch.tv is an online live-streaming platform with a primary focus on video gaming. Users can create accounts to contribute their comments and content to the site, as well as watching live-streamed gaming competitions and broadcasts. With a staggering fifteen million daily users, Twitch is accessible via smartphone and gaming console apps, smart TVs, computers, and tablets. But if you want to stream to Twitch, you may find yourself using third-party software in order to do so. And with more buttons to click and more wires to plug in for older, app-less consoles, streaming can get confusing.

Enter Tinkernut.

Side note: we Tinkernut

We’ve featured Tinkernut a few times on the Raspberry Pi blog – his tutorials are clear, his projects are interesting and useful, and his live-streamed comment videos for every build are a nice touch to sharing homebrew builds on the internet.

So, yes, we love him. [This is true. Alex never shuts up about him. – Ed.] And since he has over 500K subscribers on YouTube, we’re obviously not the only ones. We wave our Tinkernut flags with pride.

Twitch-O-Matic

With a Raspberry Pi Zero W, an HDMI to CSI adapter, and a case to fit it all in, Tinkernut’s Twitch-O-Matic allows easy connection to the Twitch streaming service. You’ll also need a button – the bigger, the better in our opinion, though Tinkernut has opted for the Adafruit 16mm Illuminated Pushbutton for his build, and not the 100mm Massive Arcade Button that, sadly, we still haven’t found a reason to use yet.

For added frills and pizzazz, Tinketnut has also incorporated Adafruit’s White LED Backlight Module into the case, though you don’t have to do so unless you’re feeling super fancy.

The setup

The Raspberry Pi Zero W is connected to the HDMI to CSI adapter via the camera connector, in the same way you’d attach the camera ribbon. Tinkernut uses a standard Raspbian image on an 8GB SD card, with SSH enabled for remote access from his laptop. He uses the simple command Raspivid to test the HDMI connection by recording ten seconds of video footage from his console.

Once you have the Pi receiving video from your console, you can connect to Twitch using your Twitch stream key, which you can find by logging in to your account at Twitch.tv. Tinkernut’s tutorial gives you all the commands you need to stream from your Pi.

The frills

To up the aesthetic impact of your project, adding buttons and backlights is fairly straightforward.

To run the stream command, Tinketnut uses a button: press once to start the stream, press again to stop. Pressing the button also turns on the LED backlight, so it’s obvious when streaming is in progress.

The tutorial

For the full code and 3D-printable case STL file, head to Tinketnut’s hackster.io project page. And if you’re already using a Raspberry Pi for Twitch streaming, share your build setup with us. Cheers!

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Hi folks, Rob from The MagPi here with the good news that The MagPi 69 is out now! Nice. Our latest issue is all about 3D printing and how you can get yourself a very affordable 3D printer that you can control with a Raspberry Pi.

Pi-powered 3D printing

Affordability is always a big factor when it comes to 3D printers. Like any new cosumer tech, their prices are often in the thousands of pounds. Over the last decade, however, these prices have been dropping steadily. Now you can get budget 3D printers for hundreds rather than thousands – and even for £99, like the iMakr. Pairing an iMakr with a Raspberry Pi makes for a reasonably priced 3D printing solution. In issue 69, we show you how to do just that!

Portable Raspberry Pis

Looking for a way to make your Raspberry Pi portable? One of our themes this issue is portable Pis, with a feature on how to build your very own Raspberry Pi TV stick, coincidentally with a 3D-printed case. We also review the Noodle Pi kit and the RasPad, two products that can help you take your Pi out and about away from a power socket.

And of course we have a selection of other great guides, project showcases, reviews, and community news.

Get The MagPi 69

Issue 69 is available today from WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda. If you live in the US, head over to your local Barnes & Noble or Micro Center in the next few days for a print copy. You can also get the new issue online from our store, or digitally via our Android and iOS apps. And don’t forget, there’s always the free PDF as well.

New subscription offer!

Want to support the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the magazine? We’ve launched a new way to subscribe to the print version of The MagPi: you can now take out a monthly £4 subscription to the magazine, effectively creating a rolling pre-order system that saves you money on each issue.

You can also take out a twelve-month print subscription and get a Pi Zero W, Pi Zero case, and adapter cables absolutely free! This offer does not currently have an end date.

We hope you enjoy this issue! See you next month.

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HackSpace magazine is back with our brand-new issue 6, available for you on shop shelves, in your inbox, and on our website right now.

Inside Hackspace magazine 6

Paper is probably the first thing you ever used for making, and for good reason: in no other medium can you iterate through 20 designs at the cost of only a few pennies. We’ve roped in Rob Ives to show us how to make a barking paper dog with moveable parts and a cam mechanism. Even better, the magazine includes this free paper automaton for you to make yourself. That’s right: free!

At the other end of the scale, there’s the forge, where heat, light, and noise combine to create immutable steel. We speak to Alec Steele, YouTuber, blacksmith, and philosopher, about his amazingly beautiful Damascus steel creations, and about why there’s no difference between grinding a knife and blowing holes in a mountain to build a road through it.

Do it yourself

You’ve heard of reading glasses — how about glasses that read for you? Using a camera, optical character recognition software, and a text-to-speech engine (and of course a Raspberry Pi to hold it all together), reader Andrew Lewis has hacked together his own system to help deal with age-related macular degeneration.

It’s the definition of hacking: here’s a problem, there’s no solution in the shops, so you go and build it yourself!

Radio

60 years ago, the cutting edge of home hacking was the transistor radio. Before the internet was dreamt of, the transistor radio made the world smaller and brought people together. Nowadays, the components you need to build a radio are cheap and easily available, so if you’re in any way electronically inclined, building a radio is an ideal excuse to dust off your soldering iron.

Tutorials

If you’re a 12-month subscriber (if you’re not, you really should be), you’ve no doubt been thinking of all sorts of things to do with the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express we gave you for free. How about a sewable circuit for a canvas bag? Use the accelerometer to detect patterns of movement — walking, for example — and flash a series of lights in response. It’s clever, fun, and an easy way to add some programmable fun to your shopping trips.

We’re also making gin, hacking a children’s toy car to unlock more features, and getting started with robot sumo to fill the void left by the cancellation of Robot Wars.

All this, plus an 11-metre tall mechanical miner, in HackSpace magazine issue 6 — subscribe here from just £4 an issue or get the PDF version for free. You can also find HackSpace magazine in WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and independent newsagents in the UK. If you live in the US, check out your local Barnes & Noble, Fry’s, or Micro Center next week. We’re also shipping to stores in Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Singapore, Belgium, and Brazil, so be sure to ask your local newsagent whether they’ll be getting HackSpace magazine.

The post Hackspace magazine 6: Paper Engineering appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

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