Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux Users Group

Category Archives: Linux

Pi Jams – What we try and do

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With monthly Raspberry Pi jams in Paignton,  what would you like to see at these jams.  Given they are now more about just raspberry

At present we :

Help on how to get started,  what you need to get started, what to buy etc

Show you some of the many add on boards etc available for the pi

Demonstrate projects based on the PI AND Arduino systems (which will hopefully inspire your projects)

Help with getting started with programming or provide advice  on the next step for example where to go after using scratch.

We have a few laptops (with Linux)

Help with hardware projects (either stand along or linked to Pi , Arduino and similar devices)

Networking with other users

We would like to encourage young people to network with other young people and advocate collaboration and peer supported learning

We sometimes invite people in,  for example in September we had the virtually safe team in who spent some time discussing the concerns of the young people at the jam
We also try and advocate other groups and initiatives that may be of interest to young people: for example Young rewired state, coder dojos, after school clubs. Promote events for adults for example hack4good events or hackathons on services such as geekli.stWe can also help with Linux user group related activities such as install and set up help for Linux. Advice on software or general discussion on related issues.Promote and advocate the use of free and open source software and the work of the Free software foundation Europe..Advocate and promote the new school Computer science curriculum. Enguage with parents, students and teachers in order to facilitate support if needed.Promote STEMnet and Stem activities. Free giveaways such as stickers if available,  copies of Linux cd’s again when / where available.

Arm DS Development tools (Debian edition)

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The Arm DS Development tools is now available for Debian.

Quoted from the website (Which I hope is ok,  as its for promotional purposes)

The ARM® DS-5 Development Studio is a professional toolchain developed by ARM to accelerate the development of native (C/C++) Linux applications. It is available free of charge to Debian Developers and offers 32-bit (armel and armhf) and 64-bit (arm64) ARM application debug and system analysis to help make Debian packages robust and highly optimized for ARM processor-based devices. Learn more about Streamline performance analyzer and DS-5 Debugger.

Please visit:

http://ds.arm.com/debian/

For more information

 

Exeter Raspberry Pi Jam 06/09/2014

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Saturday 6th September 2014 saw another Raspberry Pi Jam in Exeter take place and what a great turnout there was!

At today’s Jam, there was lots of teaching going on with the introduction to Raspberry Pi course going on in the Fab Lab and there was even more teaching going on in the Meeting Room where the rest of the Jam took place. Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi jam July 14 – Torbay

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For anyone who missed out today,  we had another great pi jam,  Big thank you to those that turned up and the 4 young people who also made it.

Again today was a good mix,  Tom demonstrated his latest project: a face with a built in  webcam that can track a coloured ball using OpenCV!  This uses both Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

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Video

 

One of the young people showed me the fg and bg commands, so my pi-liter project can now run but be put in the background,  while it runs.  I showed him the cowsay command, and one of the other young people got cmatrix working.  These young people are uber L337.

I attempted to install Skype from Ubuntu software centre,  failed,  tried to download and then tell the installer to run through software centre,  that failed,  so just used dpkg and it worked fine without problems! I put a few notes on my website about this.

We could now do with more monitors and Pis, so we can get more people set up with Pis.  I think we may have a few laptops at a future jam.

 
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Torbay Pi jam July 14

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For anyone who missed out today,  we had another great pi jam,  Big thank you to those from the Lug that turned up and the 4 young people who also made it.

Again today was a good mix,  tom demonstrated his latest project a face with a built in webcam that can track a coloured ball using open CV,  this uses both Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

SAM_0204

Video

One of the young people showed me the fg and bg commands, so my pi-liter project can now run but be put in the backgroiund,  while it runs.  I showed him the cow say command, and one of the other young people got cmatrix working.

I attempted to install scratch from ubuntu software centre,  failed,  tried to download and then tell the installer to run through software centre,  that failed,  so just used dpkg  worked fine without problems.

 

 
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Pi jam Write up July 14

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Just got back from the Raspberry Pi jam in Exeter and have included a few photos below of some of the things on show.

 

First off is Tom Broughs Excellent Wii remote scratch game,  this uses Python to take input from the wii remote via bluetooth and pass it on to scratch, so that the cat can be controlled to move around and catch / eat falling fish.

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Still with tom, we had handy (robot arm controlled from scratch) and Bob the robot which as arduino at its heart.

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We also had Lego Rovers Devon make an appearance,  amazing what you can do with lego and the nxt block

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We also helped Chinna out with his buggy made from an old remote control car and raspberry pi.

Chinnas Blog can be found here

http://scientistnobee.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/raspberry-pi-spotter/
And a link to github for the code
https://github.com/scientistnobee/Raspberry-Pi-Spotter

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Scratch game created by one of the young people.

 

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This is the new Raspberry Pi compute module courtesy of Gordon Henderson

 

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Trevor sharp had a Self made IO board on show

 

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Demo of my own Pilte,  More info on my website at http://www.zleap.net

 

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Minecraft on the pi

 

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Arduino based distance measuring project using the ultrasonic module HC-SR04

 

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Simons pi powered music chimer.

 

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Fab lab was open, showcasing the range of things that can be made with some of their kit

 

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Xubuntu 14.04 – screen shots

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If you are using xubuntu 14.04 then pressing print screen takes a screen shot of the WHOLE screen,  this is fine in some cases but gets a pain if you want to write documentation or want to grab an application window.

The solution is to change thekey bindings

settings

Click on Settings manager

settings-search

Search for keyboard

settings-keyboard

Click the short cuts tab

settings-keyboard-shortcuts

You then get a screen like the one above.   if you look at

xfce-screenshooter -w (-w means window)  by default this is set to Alt-print screen to trigger.  I have already changed it, so click where it says Alt-print and change it to print. you may have to change the one above to something else otherwise they clash.

Press close and when you press print screen it should grab the current window.

 
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