Access an ESP32 camera module from the desktop

If you have a Raspberry Pi and wish to attach a camera to it there are a number of options available to you – including from the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves – but if you wish to use one with RISC OS, your options are considerably more limited. So limited, in fact, that until very recently I don’t think there was a working option. As of mid-May, however, that changed thanks to Rick Murray.

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QrCode rewritten, becomes version 2.00

Kevin Wells has released a new version of his application for turning small amounts of textual information into two dimensional bar codes, aka ‘Quick Response’ codes. These can provide a quick way for people to transfer information into devices that can read them – for example smart phones using a bar code scanner application – such as URLs, contact details, WiFi keys, and so on.

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Simon Wilson plans to provide Mesa 3D GPU support for the RockChip RK3399

Back in 2005, Simon Wilson – already well known for releasing driver software for a PCI TV card for use on the Iyonix, and responsible for Soundblaster drivers – released a 3D graphics driver for the computer, called IyonixMesa. With this installed, it became possible to make use of the 3D facilities provided by the graphics card used in the Iyonix, providing an OpenGL API. Stefan Fröhling has been in touch to say that Simon has agreed to work with RISC OS Cloverleaf (whose Kickstarter has now reached £7,421 or…

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RISCOSbits squeezes out some Linuxbits

And pumps out a PiAno, and a Pi 4 upgrade scheme. A number of systems on which RISC OS can be run also have Linux distros available for them, which means it’s very easy for RISC OS users to have a hardware platform for running our operating system natively, and a hardware platform for running a more widely supported OS – while only having a single hardware platform on the desk. With the Raspberry Pi, for example, it’s just a matter of changing the SD card to the OS you…

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News nybble: Another BBC BASIC graphics video

Richard Ashbery has been at it again – ‘it’ being converting graphics programs from other sources (or writing some inspired by them) to run on a Raspberry Pi in BBC BASIC, and chaining them together to produce a video of the output, which he’s uploaded to YouTube. This is part 2 of a selection, and some of the original versions were written in BBC BASIC for Windows, some from the Creative Retro Coding site (aka a gallery of programs that were posted on Twitter to be run by the BBC…

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TextEase Studio now served with a thump

That’ll be the sound of the user manual landing on your doormat Last year, Elesar Ltd managed to bring back TextEase Studio for RISC OS, a publishing suite that was first developed and published by SoftEase. The updated suite came with what was, at that point, an updated 72-page but still draft manual, supplied in electronic format. Being draft, that manual was obviously still a work in progress – and that work has now progressed to the point where the manual is no longer in draft. The software is now…

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