Previous Jams
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14th June 2014
Another good meeting, for those who didn’t make it, here is a quick write up on all the goodies you missed out on.
Tom Brough demonstrated his Scratch game that can be controlled with a Wii mote. A full write up on how this works will be available at sometime in the future. You missed out on a real gem with this.
Gordon Henderson brought along a range of add-on boards, Arduino boards and had a good discussion with some visitors.
Meanwhile, I was helping a young lad with programming until one of our other young members turned up and carried on. Thanks to Tom as he managed to get OpenCV working, he was also working on a robot made with motors and wheels from an old radio controlled car.
Another visitor needed help with some code, which as far as I am aware, was helped by our younger visitors. I also advised on getting a printer working, and directed him to the cups control panel browser page. I didn’t get to demo much again but was kept busy, it’s a good job I have a good box of bits with HDMI to DVI cables, etc. These prove to be useful to share out.
It is worth noting that out of the 3 young people that attended, only one was actually from Torbay, in fact most of the people at the event were from outside Torbay. Hopefully the word will get out as I am sure there must be more than 1 Raspberry Pi user in the whole of Torbay, so if you know anyone please please let them know about the Jams.
We had a demo of a iPod, running Linux and a game boy emulator. Pretty cool.
Contacts were also shared, e-mails shared so hopefully the younger visitors can keep in touch and help each other out more.
A big thank you to everyone who came to the event, and a thank you to Tom and Gordon who both contributed to the £10 insurance fee for the event.
Next Pi jam in Torbay is 12th July, 10 – 12. if you can’t wait that long then there is always Exeter on the 5th July 10 – 12.
10th May 2014
This is a pi jam, however we now have more Arduino based projects than actual Raspberry Pi’s, anyway the Jam is about learning, education etc so why not. Especially as the Arduino and Pi can work together. So maybe the jam should be a PI / Arduino jam instead.
This was the table nearest to the door, with lot of project bits on it. The table beyond has lots of stickers on from various companies.
The new frapper bot, expect more of the same and improvements as the months go by. If anyone wants to have a go at b uilding these then its Arduino based.
Bob returns, future plans, hopefully he will have lights in his mouth at a future jam, work is carrying on, again tom is the man to see.
Well the pi jam is meant to be about the raspberry pi, one of our younger regular visitors gave another user a tutorial on programming the Raspberry pi with Python.
So what else happened, I helped Raymond with his camera and Pi, I also gave a young lad and his Dad a demo of scrach, and attempted to do one for python and minecraft pi, but for some reason something wasn’t working properly I just left minecraft running the young lad just played minecraft, but they went away more confident as to what can be done with a Pi, start simple with scratch and then work up.
Advice was also given to another user who is just starting out with a Pi. so lots of help, hacking and other cool stuff taking place, we are hoping to be able to give some sort of demo in the main library area next time.
The pi jams will be a place to get help / support with all this,.
12th April 2014
Again we had a mix of things going on, Tom Brough brought Bob along, with more improvements / enhancements from last time. He can walk and was set in guard dog mode, which those of you who attended the last Exeter Jam will know he just sits there until activated by movement detected by the ultrasonic sensor. Most of the enhancements are with the walking mechanism.
Gordon Henderson Demonstrated the Fuzebox, with more enhancements to FuzeBASIC, it now integrates with Minecraft and has a host of other features, so any school getting Fuzebox will have lots of great things to do with it. It looks well worth the investment.
Myself and Tom also got Xubuntu 13.10 up and running on a old netbook, not quite pi but the pi jams double up as Linux user group meets so we can still support anyone with Linux related issues (the Pi runs Linux, after all). So that is another Windows box that may well one day not run windows. 🙂 I also demonstrated Toms Helicopter game and gave one of the young people the github details to download it (see link above). There is a screen shot below from a previous pi jam demo.
Thank you to Dan Smith for donating an old laptop I left this running scratch and one of the young people attending spent some time on this.
A big thank you also to the following companies who sent us stickers and to Dan smith for sending out e-mails to get these for the jam.
http://www.4tronix.co.uk/store/
Thank you also to everyone who attended either as part of running the event or just came along, your support is really appreciated.
Looking forward to the next Jam on 10th May.
The raspberry pi jam is hosted by Torbay Library service and is a family friendly event. The Rpasberry pi is aimed at Children / Young people so if anyone wants to come along and demonstrate a project, learn more, get help with coding or just want some help on getting started please come along.
As always if you need more info I can be found on twitter @zleap14 or my website or on irc as zleap.
For any young people out there, who are already coding, this may be of interest : Young rewired state – festival of code which takes place End of July / Start of August in Plymouth, well the final is in Plymouth which is useful.
If you want to get started with coding then a good place to start is code.org and a go at the exercises or ask your teacher at school about this. You can also goto codeclub and see if your school is running a code club or ask your teacher if the school is doing something similar. Codeclub starts off with scratch.
8th March 2014
Following on from last month, we one again had a good mix of projects on offer. Gordon Henderson brought the fuze box, a project to help get the pi in to schools, pi inside a custom case with keyboard, and a recess with built in breadboard and access to the gpio header, you also get a box of components with it. The main demonstration was of the built in fuze basic which is a more full featured version of return to basic written by Gordon Henderson. But written for the fuzebox.
Tom Brough had his will remote helicopter game working, after trying and failing to get this working on my pi due to it not being installed. However tom also brought the robot arm, doodlebot and marco robot, to demonstrate, all of which went down well despite technical problems.
Elsewhere we got a new user up and running with a new pi, and we had 2 talented young people writing a program for Gordons ladder board having borrowed mine for an hour + they had achieved a lot in a short space of time. Good job that git hub wasn’t blocked as I showed them some of my code which I had written and commented so they knew which pins linked up to which LEDs, something that took me a while to work out. One of the reasons you comment code of course, saves time later.
Gordon also brought a long some new toys such as the PiBrella. which is aimed at beginners and boasts a big, button, leds and a buzzer and ports for adding more components.
Looking forward to the 12th April, and in the meantime there is a Pi jam in Exeter on the 22nd to prepare for.
15th February 2014
Another successful pi jam, Tom set up his latest project, on the pi, which uses a wii remote to control a helicopter flying over open street maps, this works very well and you can move around the map area, which was set for the locality of the Pi jam.
With a video too
Note: The above video was made on my desktop. Using record my desktop.
Another area was helping a new user set up a pi, I advised a visitor on where to get a pi kit so they can get set up and started with programming. So we got one pi fully working and another pi user leaving with a good idea of what he needs. Hopefully next time we can start some programming or similar.
Another user brought his pi, and robot kit, after some work, and suggesting changing the pi so it had its own static ip address, this was then done successfully By ediing the pi configuration by putting the sd card in to the pi, and editing from there, then putting back in the pi and booting with the altered configuration. The pi was then attached to a breadboard with several LEDs, and transistors so that the pi could control the LEDs via the GPIO port.
Tom also brought along his robot arm and robot.
Another good afternoon. We now need to get some hdmi to dvi cables so that we can set up more pis.
The pi jams are getting better, hopefully we will start seeing the same people and new people each time. and build up a nice group of users, like there is in Exeter. Which on that the next Exeter Jam is on the 22nd so if you missed the 15th you can always come up to Exeter on the 22nd between 10 and 12 and see more projects etc.
11th Jan 2014
Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – By Paul Sutton
The 2nd Raspberry pi jam in Torbay took place on the 11th Jan at the Library. A few projects were demonstrated. One of the projects being demonstrated was by Tom Brough, he built a raspberry pi robot last year and has been adding enhancements etc to it ever since. The robot now has the ability to scan a printed qr code, store it’s contents and then read these back and then move around.
Gordon Henderson also attended and showed off the Fuze box again, this is essentially a purpose built case + build in keyboard, with a section in the top that houses a breadboard. It is designed in such a way that makes the gpio accessible for the breadboard so you just need a few jumper wires. The back of the case has network, usb and power in as well as other connectors for composite and hdmi out.
Fuzebox also comes with a version of BASIC written for the Fuze box, called Fuzebasic (written by Gordon). So any parents out there who remember programming on the ZX Spectrum, C64 et al should feel in familiar territory here. The fuze box is mainly aimed at education.
There was also a demonstration by Dan Smith of google coder. Coder allows web development using HTML, css and Javascript. Coder runs on the Pi, creates an ad hoc network which you connect to from PC or laptop.
The next Pi jam is on Saturday 15th February at the Library. Details can be found on the Devon and Cornwall Linux user group website at http://www.dcglug.org.uk/torbay-pi-jam/. If you would like some more information please get in touch.
A big thank you to Paignton Library for helping us to host the event.
The above article was also submitted to the Beach hut for the Feb issue
14 December 2013
A big thank you goes out to all who attended, helped and especially to Torbay Library services for all their help and Paignton Library for hosting us.
ModmyPI sent us some cases and stickers, we have some left over so they will be saved for the next event.
At the meeting we had demos of :
Fuze box and Fuze basic (file photo) Demo by Gordon Henderson
Tom Brough brought his robot along to demo, This is a regular feature as each time we can see any improvements. (file photo)
Tom also brought his robot arm along (file photo)
Exeter PI jam 23rd November
Photos from the Exeter pi jam on the 23rd November can be found here.