Skip to main content

MagPI Magazine - aiy project

When it comes to technology we tend to be a household of early-ish adopters and one area we've really been exploring recently is home automation. Sonos and Hue feature throughout our rooms and are certainly put through their paces at times - even more so when you factor in our dodgy broadband! I guess it stands to reason really, both my husband and I work in the computing sector, him at an international software house, me, on a smaller scale in a secondary school IT department. Therefore we find it much easier to purchase technology than all those more mundane household expenses we really should be looking into!

So when a colleague of mine reminded me about the MagPi magazine and drew my attention to their home automation edition my interest was piqued!  Even more tantalising was the fact it was out of stock!  We ended up spending a couple of weeks waiting for more to come in and having a mad scramble to order one before they all went again before we finally secured an issue.  It was worth the hassle!

A post shared by Amy Collishaw (@binksbzz) on
The magazine itself is jam packed full of information and ideas about the Raspberry Pi.  It's not your usual geeky magazine either.  The pages were well laid out, the information clear and encouraging to even a novice, without being dull or patronising to those with more experience.  One thing that particularly struck me was how few adverts it contained in a somewhat substantial publication - yes it was £5 to buy but really, for what you got for that it's well worth the money! Unbelievably they also offer a free downloadable version for all on their website!  Having only had a quick scan through at breakfast I'm already excited to try out some of the ideas they presented - got to get me a dash button for one thing!

And then onto the Automation kit.  This is billed as a starter pack for anyone wanting to explore Google's voice recognition and digital assistant services and it certainly meets this target.  The kit contained everything you needed in an easy to assemble form and the magazine gave a step by step tutorial to get you to a finished product.  Whilst the coding side of things is a bit beyond the six year old, the build itself was perfectly accessible, likened much to the Lego instructions he's used to following these days.  It was lovely to see him and daddy follow and help each other create the system.  Daddy completed the tricky install and code setup and then the whole family had much fun trying it all out!

I don't think I can praise this magazine and issue enough right now, it's educational, fun and perfect for our whole little family.  We've already bought the next edition and are definitely looking into subscribing in the near future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wobble board

When it comes to toys in our household we've always tried to keep the number we own down.  Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of toys!  Many of these have been inherited from an older cousin and others, like the lego collection have grown because we get just as much enjoyment from it as the six year old does!  With the baby I'm trying to make more of a conscious effort to limit what we get her, specifically the plastic tat.  She has a lot from the boy obviously, but most of her new toys have been chosen to stimulate imagination rather than directed play with flashing lights and limited functionality. I'm also more conscious these days of the impact throw away toys have on the environment and also on their effects when children are exposed to some of the nasty chemicals they can contain.  With this in mind, recently most of our toy purchases have been of a wooden nature: peg dolls, balls, eggs, puzzles... you get the idea. Unfortunately, a lot of these ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artemis and Xena

So, in my quest to find the perfect subscription box, this month I decided to give a little known box called Artemis and Xena a go. At first glance I'd dismissed this one as it appeared to be aimed more at a younger teen market and, sadly, I'm very much not in that demographic these days! However I kept coming back to it as it looked like it might meet my desire for a little bit of everything. My experiences with Treatbox and Birchbox had taught me that I don't like just getting makeup (which rules out so many boxes!) but do like getting a bit (which rules out Treatbox); I like getting a little something to eat, a bit of jewellery, a bit of stationary... Yeah, I'm pretty fussy really aren't I?!? A & X looked like it might have this heady mix. It didn't disappoint! At the beginning of the month I have to admit I got a little nervous, my box was late despite a prompt dispatch notice on the first of the month and I began to wonder if I'd been draw...
Post a Comment
Read more

Birchbox - July 2017

I've uhmed and ahhed about posting this one, you know, if you haven't got something nice to say then you shouldn't say it kinda thing, but after seeing others be really disappointed with Birchbox and frequently seeing their offers designed to entice you in I've decided to put this out there. Maybe I'll return to them one day but this is where I'm at right now... I had a really bad month in July (seems to be a running theme at the moment, life is very trying right now) and, in a moment of weakness, I’m ashamed to say I fell for one of Birchboxes two for one offers.  These involve you purchasing their box of the month and them sending you a mystery box with another five items.  I partly justified this to myself because I fancied trying one of the products in July’s box and partly because I had a plan for the additional two drawer boxes they send their product in. I won’t be making the mistake again (seriously, I’ve even hidden them from my facebook feed beca...
Post a Comment
Read more