A Kit A Month Soldering Subscription Service

Posted on 2015-02-22 by simon

CALLING ALL ELECTRONICS ENTHUSIASTS!

A company called Pocketmoneytronics who made the Raspberry Pi GPIO Christmas Tree in late 2014, have got a new Kickstarter campaign running called A Kit A Month.

A Kit A Month is a subscription service where you will subscribe and receive some easy to solder kits, such as a robot that has light up LED eyes powered off a 9V PP3 battery.
That’s not all, included in the parcel you will also receive some other components to experiment with, such as a bag with some LEDs and resistors.

I think this is a great service, as this is great to help people learn to solder while learning about electronics at the same time. I could see this also being useful in educational establishments such as running an after school electronics/solder club.

You can check out the campaign here

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – Feb 15

Posted on 2015-02-14 by Paul Sutton

This months Pi jam was a real gem, lots of things being demoed and some excellent progress being made with various projects.

Tom, brought along his Marco 2 robot, which if you are following this blog or are a regular attendee of jams. This has now been updated to allow control via a web interface.

More information on this is on the Feb 2015 Exeter Jam write up blog post. So I will let people go there for more info.

Tom also brought along Freddie and after some basic set up this worked fine, following a green ball with his eyes.

Video taken back in July

Doodle bot also made an appearence this is really good as it works without any user interaction and can draw (or try) to draw what it has been programmed to.

We also helped a lady get up and running with her new pi,

Here is the pi being installed from the NOOBS install tool

And a picture of the pi running the Raspbian OS after install.

I also demonstrated my Minecraft Pi coding with python. I will post a video to youtube and put this on my website blog.

We also helped out a user who had an older install of GNU / Linux on his PC (Debian) and wanted a newer GNU / Linux installed so flash player would function properly.

We were unble to help fully however he will be back at the next jam iwth his PC backed up so we can install Linuxmint 17.1

One of our younger members also worked on getting a cluster of computers up and running and thanks to a router / switch donated by Rick at Wifispark he got 2 laptops and my Pi up and running and proved that by sharing the load calculations can be performed quicker. There is a dedicated page for this on the website. Where results will be posted shortly.

We also had a Dan from the TDA drop in to see what was going on with the view on how they can help further and perhaps involve some of the local hi tech companies.

So a BIG thank you for everyone involved today and everyone who came along to support the event. Hopefully next month will be more of the same and perhaps even bigger and better.

We also had Sarah from Inspiring Dreams, Achieving Change, who offered to help promote what we are doing.

The word on the Pi jams IS spreading. which is a good thing.

See everyone on the 14th March 2015 at Paignton Library. 13:00 to 15:00

January 2015 Pi jam

Posted on 2015-01-10 by Paul Sutton

Another pi jam today which went well, We had the 3 young people come along who are more serious hard core hackers so get on really well with each other

At present to get a laptop or PI to connect to the network we need to connect to the Libary wifi and enter a UID password then agree to the terms in a browser window

We tried to see if there was a different way to do this with a wifi router acting as a bridge so 4 laptops could connect to the router and that would provide a bridge between the wifi and the 4 wired Ethernet ports.

This didn’t seem to work 100 percent even though I did see the wifi router on my net book with 100 percent signal strength, compared to about 74 percent for the library wifi, So this project will carry on next month probably.

In another project they young people had a multi player mine craft game set up using the Pis.

Using the Model B for anything reminds you that if you plug and unplug things it can reset due to power issues,.

Jonathan who is an IT apprentice also came along to support and help and said he would ask about if there are any solutions to the wifi / network connectivity so that we can connect easier.

We had Raymond and his wife drop in for a chat and I showed them the DVD I am working on to explain about Creative commons / free software and the 4 freedoms.

Myself and Jonathan also helped Melvyn with his new phone and to check to see if it would charge when plugged in to his net book.

One of the visitors from last month came back and asked about suitable monitors etc so I advised him on a few options. including using a TV which i suggested is a good option if you want to use the media centre software. Some TV’s also have the VESA connectors at the back to which pi’s can be attached.

Photos are available on Mediagoblin

https://goblinrefuge.com/mediagoblin/u/zleap/collection/january-2015-pi-jam/

The next jam is on 14th February

Jan PI jam Poster

Posted on 2014-12-14 by Paul Sutton

Here is a poster for the January Pi jam. If anyone is able to print off or display on their website I would be very grateful as this really helps to promote.

Torbay Pi jam – 13-12-2014

Posted on 2014-12-13 by Paul Sutton

Another pi jam today and it went very well highlights as follows

We helped on visitor get up and running and ended up re-creating an sd card with raspbian (1)on in order to get the Pi up and running. In the end Tom got everything up and running, with some help from myself as I seem to have an array of adapters and other bits and pieces which always seem to come in handy. Including various images on my netbook.

Our younger visitors were busy with various projects Arduino (6) hacking and getting Arch (2) Linux up and running in a virtual machine, (Virtual box) (3))

I have loaned out my pi-liter (4) to one of the younger visitors so he can demonstrate at school

1.) http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

2.) https://www.archlinux.org/

3.) https://www.virtualbox.org/

5.) http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/pi-liter-8-led-strip-for-the-raspberry-pi/

6.) http://www.arduino.cc/

Support repositories for the pi liter

https://github.com/zleap/RaspberryPI

and

https://github.com/zleap/compgroup

Which has some ladder board source code, but should demonstrate the use of the GPIO.

You can also download the pi liter data sheet from the website http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/pi-liter-8-led-strip-for-the-raspberry-pi/

However you DO need to install python-pip with

sudo apt-get install python-pip

For some reason the data sheet instructions missed out this step.

The next Pi jam is on 10th January so if you get a Pi for Xmas come along and we can help you get started or show you what you can do with it. We don’t BYTE 🙂 and are happy to help.

Exeter Raspberry Pi jam – 1/11/2014

Posted on 2014-11-01 by Paul Sutton

Today was another excellent pi jam up in Exeter, and well attended, the word is getting out there.

Highlights

Tom Brough demonstrated the parity bit trick and also had some coloured cones to demonstrate how a bubble sort works, you can try this take about 8 cones of different sizes and put them randomly in a line now sort them one by one so the line goes from biggest to smallest.

I spent some time, with some help working on getting scratch to talk to the pi liter, once done (not too difficult) we spent some time then creating a program that is the same as the chaser type program written in python. This works really well, further enhancements allows the user to interact, chance speed as well as stop / start the routine.

I also had a chat with another user who showed me his chromebook running lubuntu. This was also connected to the Pi with vnc, the performance was excellent.

Ivan was also showing various projects and we had minecraft running on another pi. In the fab lab was the usual beginner work shop where you can learn to light up leds on a bread (project) board using the raspberry Pi GPIO

So in all excellent, Looking forward to next week as it is the Torbay Pi jam from 1 – 3 at Paignton Library, good news is that the 3 sd cards (well micro + adapters) arrived to day so these are all ready for next week, I may look at preparing at least one with Noobs, as this may save time next week.

Thank you to Simon and Exeter library for hosting another pi jam and everyone who attended.

Exeter Raspberry PI jam

Posted on 2014-09-28 by Paul Sutton

Final reminder, Exeter Raspberry Pi jam Saturday 4th October 2014 : 10 – 12 at Exeter Library

Pi Jams – What we try and do

Posted on 2014-09-22 by Paul Sutton

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.

September Raspberry Pi jam

Posted on 2014-09-14 by Paul Sutton

Torbay Raspberry Pi jam – Write up 13^th September 2014

This month we had the usual mix of projects, help and advice.

First off :

Tom Brough brought along freddie and bob, to demonstrate, Freddie now has a user interface, written in python and I guess tkinter. This allows control over features, which colour the web cam detects OR you can control freddies arms with the interface. Again this proved popular and there could be some interest to run a build your own freddie activity at a future event.

Gordon was on hand to demonstrate some of his ever increasing array of add on boards for the Pi, this is now looking rather impressive esp with the pi-moroni kit to look at.

We also had the virtually safe people along in a tie in to advise people on internet safety, while we didn’t get anyone in specifically to see them, they did talk to the 3 young people and discussed issues that concerns them e.g swearing in chat rooms. The young people also showed them their projects, including a minecraft clone in scratch. We also installed minetest which is the free MC clone.

So a big thank you to the two PCSOs from the virtually safe team. I think you gained something from the chat with the young people which is a good thing. I will discuss getting you back in, in the mean time we have some flyers for the next Pi jam.

http://www.torbayvirtuallysafe.co.uk/

The Pi jam now have 3 laptops for people to use, the idea here being that these are extra computers to either run scratch, or perhaps use for remotely accessing a Raspberry Pi.

I helped a young lad and his dad with some advice on what is needed to get started with a Pi, where to buy from and what can be done with a pi, and then left them to have a go with scratch / Python.

A big thank you to everyone involved, and especially Dan S for bringing two laptops and a stack of Maplins flyers down. Thank you also goes to Rob Beard for PAT testing the PSU’s this means they are certified as safe for people to use.

The next Pi jam in Devon is 4^th October at Exeter library 10 – 12

The next Pi jam in Torbay is 11^th October, this is the same week as European code week, so the Jam is listed on the codeweek website.

Please tell friends, teachers, work colleages, children / young people lets get lots of people to the events in October.

The event is slowly building up, we took positives from today so we are working on a few items behind the scenes.

Next time expect more of the same, I am hoping to demonstrate ToriOS which is a minimal Linux based operating system based on Ubuntu 12.04 (http://www.torios.org/)

There is more to a Pi jam than simply Raspberry Pi. It is also about coding, education, help & advice and keeping safe while coding.