Ian Renton

Software engineer and builder of robots
Bournemouth, UK

Hi! I'm Ian Renton. By day, I am a software and systems engineer in the naval defence industry, specialising in command & control of autonomous vehicles and communications networks. By night I build robots and web applications, and play with radios, alongside being a husband, father, cook and gardener.

You can email me at ian@ianrenton.com.

Recent Projects

Plane/Sailing

“Plane/Sailing” is my home aircraft and ship tracker. It receives ADS-B, AIS & APRS signals via antennas on my house, processes them to share with popular tracking websites, and displays the combined results on a website using military symbology.

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Home Meteogram Display

My home Meteogram display is a passive weather and calendar display that lives in the kitchen and provides a customised weather forecast for the coming days on an ultra-wide screen.

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USV-01 “Harry Paye”

USV-01 “Harry Paye” is an off-the-shelf remote control boat refitted as a testbed for an autonomous navigation system, capable of speeds up to 40 knots.

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Famous Projects

Raspberry Tank

The Raspberry Tank was possibly the first tank-like robot powered by a Raspberry Pi, way back in 2012. It’s smartphone- or laptop-controlled, streams video from its webcam, fires plastic pellets and can navigate autonomously.

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Linux on Linx 1010B Tablet

A guide on how to install Linux, plus a few bonus operating systems, on the low-cost Linx 1010B Windows tablet.

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Roast Dinner Timing Chart

Some Javascript magic to help you cook the perfect Sunday roast. Simply select your ingredients and a time to serve, and it will generate you a list of timed steps.

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Hypixel Skyblock Bazaar Flipping Calculator

A quick weekend project to help my kid make money in the Hypixel Skyblock Minecraft server, this simple JavaScript tool has rapidly become the most searched-for of all my software.

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Older Projects

Quadcopter

Because the Raspberry Tank was confined to just the two boring dimensions, I built a quadcopter and put a Raspberry Pi on that too. It features live video streaming and is switchable between remote and autonomous control.

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All-Terrain Pi

The All-Terrain Pi is a “off-road” remote control toy fitted with a Raspberry Pi, with live video streaming, controllable by touch/tilt input from a smartphone, and capable of running programs written in Scratch.

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Lego Turtle

The Lego Turtle is an Arduino microcontroller retro-fitted onto an old Lego Mindstorms kit. It features a built-in interpreter for simple Logo programs loaded via the serial port.

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More Projects »

Blog

First Steps with Winlink

Written on Sunday 20 Aug 2023

Just in time for this week, I saw a post from W0RMT advertising a Friday Winlink net, and figured I should take part! Winlink is a digital radio system that I’d not really considered using before. In terms of digital ham radio modes I’ve mostly played with the likes of...

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Spring, Year Four

Written on Friday 5 May 2023

Spring, year four. Just like each of the last thirty-something years, the blooming of the lilac trees brings with it May Day, my birthday, and the acceleration of Spring into the coming Summer. For the first time since I was three years old, one of those lilacs is in my...

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Making Meteograms in Python

Written on Sunday 9 Apr 2023

I have a couple of Raspberry Pi computers sitting around, and given the recent situation I figured I ought to at least use one for something. I thought I would have a go at some kind of passive information display, and discovered these ultra-widescreen displays which look pretty cool. At...

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Miscellaneous

CV & Career Explorer

Find out what I've been paid to do over the years!

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Go to Career Explorer »
Photography

A bunch of my best photos over the years.

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Film Reviews (by the Numbers)

By the combined powers of Netflix and cheap cider, the Saturday Night Shenanigans crew presents… largely incoherent mocking of films!

Let's mock some films! »