Month: October 2019

Raspberry Pi 4 Can Now Overclock to 2.147 GHz. Here’s How.

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The Raspberry Pi 4 is much faster than every prior Raspberry Pi, but what if you could squeeze much more than the base 1.5 GHz out of its Broadcom BCM2711B0 CPU? Fortunately, it’s easy to overclock any Raspberry Pi and you can do it just by tweaking a few lines of text in the /boot/config.txt file. Now, with the latest firmware, we were able to reach a speed of 2,147 MHz, which we believe is a new high.

With prior firmware, the Pi 4 B’s processor was limited to a maximum overclocked frequency of 2 GHz, which is pretty good all by itself. However, the latest update let us push it up another 147 MHz. We were also able to increase the GPU clock speed to 750 MHz, a big boost over its 500 MHz stock speed and the 600 MHz we had overclocked it to previously.

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Build an Omnidirectional Self-Driving Robot with a Raspberry Pi and Mecanum Wheels

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Berlin-based mechanical engineer Patrick Hallek has created an excellent omnidirectional self-driving robot known as Forki, which is designed around the Raspberry Pi, sensors, and a set of Mecanum wheels that can turn on a dime.

Under the hood, Forki is outfitted with four 60mm Mecanum wheels, four 12V DC metal gear reducer motors (130 RPM), a pair of L298N Dual H Bridge DC stepper motor driver modules, a 72.V battery, and an LM2596 DC-DC converter. Driving the robot is a Raspberry Pi 3 B/B+, four HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensors, and four Decawave DWM1001 ultra-wideband sensors, all packed within a 3D-printed shell.

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This Holographic Watch Actually Fits on a Wrist—Sort of

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Science fiction movies, television shows, and books have had us drooling over holographic displays for decades now. The idea of having a three-dimensional display being projected in real space is an alluring one. Unfortunately, nobody has quite figured how to achieve that in a practical way. The closest we’ve come are 3D TVs and volumetric displays. But YouTuber JLaservideo has devised a method for projecting a holographic display from a watch—and it even mostly fits on a wrist!

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Intel vs AMD: Which CPU is better for cooking pancakes?

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Who makes the best CPU for gaming? Generally speaking, Intel wins out in pure framerates, though many other factors come into play. With AMD’s latest Ryzen 9 3900X and other 3rd Gen CPUs, the battle is far closer, and both companies have their strong suits. 

Both companies also make HEDT (High-End Desktop) CPUs for ‘enthusiasts,’ but with the higher core counts now available in Ryzen CPUs, HEDT is difficult to recommend as a gaming solution. But what about as a pancake cooking solution? Our friends at Tom’s Hardware recently set out to determine which CPU was best for cooking pancakes. As a result, Tom’s might also be looking to buy a new CPU when the Black Friday deals roll around.

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SmartCan Rolls Trash to the Curb for You

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As I write this, it’s Monday, and my mind immediately jumps to whether or not I need to take the trash out — which actually doesn’t happen next until tomorrow. It’s a small thing, but yet one more task that I need to think about over and over, meaning brainpower and a small amount of physical work that could be better used for fun projects… or writing another Hackster article. If only there was a robot that could do this for me?

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