As an early christmas present to myself, I've bought a second Raspberry Pi and a UnicornHat to play with (as my original model B doesn't have enough pins).  I went for an A+, and couldn't possibly comment on rumours that this was simply due to the coupé case being purple...

Anyway, what can you display on an 8x8 grid?  Lots of stuff. How about a snowman:

Or a christmas tree with flashing lights, which sat on the dinner table and then mantelpiece, and happily ran for many hours off dad's portable power bank.  Technology is great!

The light logic isn't going to win me any prizes, as it simply picks however many co-ordinates from the tree and changes them to red for a short amount of time.  Sometimes it picks the same one twice, or ones right next to each other (as pictured!).  But not bad considering I wrote the whole lot in about 10 minutes.

tags: Raspberry Pi xmas