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From one of this week's PCAuthority.com.au junk emails ...
For those who don't know, the Raspberry Pi is a very cheap and small, almost kit-set style computer - just the main circuit board (there's no case, no screen, no mouse, etc. and no software - you write your own). It's sort of bringing back the early days of the hobbyist computers like the Apple I.
This Raspberry Pi-controlled R2-D2 is the droid you're looking for
PhD student builds voice-controlled R2-D2 for his girlfriend's birthday, making everyone else look bad.
Computer science PhD student Lingxiang Xiang has comprehensively one-upped all would-be wooers with his girlfriend's birthday prezzie – a working R2-D2 controlled by a Raspberry Pi.
Xiang packed the tech into a toy replica of the astromech droid, endowing it with speech recognition in English and Chinese, face recognition, motion and distance detection, and the ability to record and play audio messages. We can only hope he's working on adding a holographic projector to Artoo, so he can recreate the "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" scene.
Want to build your very own R2-D2? Xiang is planning to release blueprints and a tutorial for budding Anakin Skywalkers in February.
For those who don't know, the Raspberry Pi is a very cheap and small, almost kit-set style computer - just the main circuit board (there's no case, no screen, no mouse, etc. and no software - you write your own). It's sort of bringing back the early days of the hobbyist computers like the Apple I.
