the piccolo

I've been going on about the software project I've been working on based on a Raspberry Pi for ages. But never produced any pictures. So here is the picture of the piccolo and surrounding stuff.

The thumbnail shows the actual raspberry with a custom built daughter board. The pigtail antenna is the radio link. The green USB stick to the left is not a thumbdrive but also a radio device which can be plugged into a laptop to communicate with the piccolo. The pi can be powered by a standard USB phone charger - but hey we have proper power supplies that show numbers etc, so that is what we use here (the big box in the background with the numbers on it). The two white boxes on the very right are two spectrometers. The spectrometers work like a digital camera only that they measure a single pixel  of light but at different frequencies. The cables behind the two spectrometers are fibreoptics that have a small shutter at each end. These are controlled by the piccolo via the light blue cables. Finally, the two googly eyes in the middle cover the optics. 

Don't ask me about the actual science behind the measurements, as I am a bit vague about it. Still, pretty cool to work with this stuff.

I also got up slightly earlier today and took #2 across the road into the cemetery to watch the Flying Scotsman fly past on the Edinburgh Sub (see extra). Really cool to see it pass so close to home. I really hope that the suggestions to reopen the Edinburgh Sub to passenger traffic really happens. It would be great to be able to take a train from Cameron Toll to Haymarket to travel onward. I have also updated my website with the photos of the Flying Scotsman I took over the last couple of days.