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(^166) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
Feature THE BIG BUILD
wo of the superstars of the maker scene are Noé Ruiz
and Pedro Ruiz, otherwise known as the Ruiz Brothers.
They’ve done many amazing projects for Adafruit,
including a lot of 3D printing and wearables, which always go
down well with the community. So it’s surprising to hear they’ve
only been in the maker scene for about five years.
“My brother and I purchased our first 3D printer in 2012 and
quickly started using it in our work,” Noé tells us. “While looking
for a way to integrate lighting into our 3D-printed designs, we
discovered Adafruit and the Arduino platform. We built some
projects using their parts and came up with some unique ideas.
We went on Adafruit’s weekly live show-and-tell show, and the
rest is history.”
What started off as a load of cool hacks that added LEDs to
existing products or enabled you to create great light-up projects
quickly evolved into doing more. Part of this was to do with the
introduction of the Raspberry Pi.
“Our first project with the Raspberry Pi was the DIY Wearable Pi
with Near-Eye Video Glasses,” explains Noé. “We were interested
T
PIGRRL HISTORY
How the PiGRRL project has evolved
PIGRRL
The original PiGRRL celebrated the 25th anniversary
of the Game Boy and used the original Raspberry Pi
Model B to power it. It’s a lot bigger than the version
we’re building, although it more accurately matches
the size of the original Game Boy.
PIGRRL 2
This should look familiar – this is the version we’ve
based ours on! It’s an upgrade over the PiGRRL as
it uses a lot more custom components, including a
custom PCB for the controls instead of a repurposed
SNES board. You could easily switch a Pi 3 / 3B+ in
there if you wanted a bit more power.
We talk to the original creators behind the Pi GRRL and many other amazing Adafruit projects
MEET THE
RUIZ BROTHERS
PIGRRL ZERO
The latest version of the PiGRRL is a tiny device,
reminiscent of the GBA or the Game Boy Micro. It
uses a Pi Zero and a series of other small components,
all squeezed into a tiny little 3D-printed case.
The Pi Zero is still powerful enough to run a lot of
emulators, though.