This weekend I was lucky enough to be involved with hosting the second Raspberry Pi Jam event that Hull has seen. Through Twitter, Claire Garside and myself got talking and a tweet of my Raspberry Pi robot I was building one weekend, led to a discussion about re-igniting the Raspberry Jam events in Hull.
Thanks must go to Claire and the Leeds Raspberry Jam team for the loan of all the equipment which allowed our event to go ahead. Thanks also must go to Malet Lambert and Stephen Logan for allowing us to use their space.
The event kicked off with an introduction to the Raspberry Pi and allowed people to get hands on setting up their Pi and getting everything running. They then had a chance to hack a Scratch game and try to improve it.
After this, we moved into another space for the “Show and Tell” section of the day. I was up first, demonstrating my Raspberry Pi robot, (which had, in part, kick-started the whole event!). My robot was built using the fantastic CamJam EduKit 3 robot kit available from The Pi Hut. You can see my slides from my presentation here:
After my presentation, my friend and colleague Dave Grainger shared the #QMSkyPi project we had recently completed at our school. Working with a group of students from our school, we launched (and retrieved!) a high altitude balloon with a Raspberry Pi payload attached. Dave’s slides are here:
After the show and tell discussions, we moved back to the Raspberry Pis and began to hack around with the Sense Hat add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi. This saw people writing Python code to access the temperature sensors on the board as well as programme the LED matrix to change colours and react to the movement of the Pi!
We then looked at hacking Minecraft using Python and seeing what we could come up with; after all, the only limit is our imagination!
The event saw a group of people getting together and learning about the Pi through fun and play; and I truly hope we see this become a regular event here in Hull. It looks like we will be having the next event in June / July, so keep an eye on the @HullRaspJam twitter feed for more details.
A number of people were asking for details of where they could get hold of the different kits and equipment used during the event and in the projects Dave and I showed. Dave’s slides have links to all the relevant sites to get the kit and software to carry out a HAB launch. My robot was built using the CamJam EduKit3 available here. For more general resources and kit here is a list of sites worth checking out to get going with the Raspberry Pi:
- Raspberry Pi Foundation – The official home of Raspberry Pi – check out their resource, community and swag store sections of their site too!
- The Pi Hut – Stockists of the fantastic CamJam EduKits and loads of other great kit!
- Pimoroni – Stockists of all things Pi and “maker” projects