Robot Club - fourth session completed

Link to Preparing post details in the parts in the kits.: http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/preparing-for-2015-after-school.html

Link to First session; http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robot-club-first-session-completed.html

Note; I did not post for the second session. There is a short summary in the Third Session post.
Link to Third session: http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robot-club-third-session-completed.html

This week we nearly had a full house.
Only 1 child missing due to illness.

The 4 who attended the previous week remember a lot of their work and code so were getting stuck into getting their robots to go around a corner.

I had a bit more fun getting drivers on enough school PCs to permit the Arduino Nano to be seen. It needs custom USB/Serial drivers that are not included by default.

The teacher who is ICT coordinator came in to see the session in full swing with robots spinning, or moving along the floor. With coding going on and due to plus and minus lines on the batteries being shorted a nice little display of black smoke and the lovely smell of burnt plastic.
No real harm done just a jumper wires plastic sleeving was melted.
I congratulated the child on making smoke as it's something we all do when we work with electronics.  They were kind of shocked.
It was great that the teacher had the same attitude so no harm done and no concern about burning down the school.
I tested their robot kit and Arduino. Nothing damaged, amazingly so did a little bit of rewiring and handed them back their robot to get working on again.

On of the kids who was in the previous session had a problem where their robot was pulling to the left.  These are small cheap kits so the motors aren't tuned and the wheels are small and have grip meaning they catch on the carpet.  Meaning they cannot reliably go straight.
We tried to fix it by turning the wheels in or our to change the resistance but no go so introduced that child to analogWrite.
A value of 235 seemed to make it all work perfectly. They had a nice straight running robot.

Once again the kids were not that eager to leave as they were perfecting their code and making it better.

At the end one of the girls who was being collected wanted to show her mother what she had done so she gave a great demonstration of her robot.  Holding down reset to stop it moving.
Set it up and let it go. She then explained the code she had made as well as giving details on some of the other parts we will be using.

Next week we will be using an input device. A small line following sensor. I will mark the edge of the room area with white paper providing a contrast with the blue flooring. The idea will be to detect the paper and make the robot turn.
This will be the first time the kids do inputs and will also require the introduction of the 'if' statement.

Looking forward to another productive session next Monday.

Egham Raspberry Jam - 25th of January

What a day. More than double the attendees. More than double the stands, more teachers and kids attending.  More fun and learning than ever before.

When the Egham Jam was announced back in December I thought we would do better than the last Jam (46 registrations) but was blown away by the response.
Maybe a lot of new Raspberry Pis were sold at Christmas.
We were not only 'SOLD OUT' but also had more people who wanted to attend as well as people who register who advised me they couldn't make it so their tickets were released.

In the end 90 attended, more than double the October event and a record for the Egham Jam.

I was also really delighted the number of educators who attended looking for ways to integrate the Raspberry Pi into their schools Computing work.

There were at least 12 show and tell standard, some of them had multiple displays making for a very interesting day.  Also, very delighted that on a number of stands children were leading the show and tells. Giving great demonstrations on what they have build.

I tried to meet everybody who attended as possible and got the chance to connect teachers and people with specific needs with others who I know from previous Jams demoed a similar project.

Below are some pictures from the event.  Lots of fun.  Roll on the next Egham Raspberry Jam.

Surrey & Hampshire Hackspace were out in force

Scrolling messages

Pirates and MiWars winner

Raspberry Pi Development solution in a box

Robots are go.  Controlled over Wifi

Kodi set up being demoed by a young engineer

PiTrol - build it yourself controller

Remote arm controlled in Python

RISCOS on an HDMIPi

Seven Segment of Pi display

Getting the Wifi network set up to demo Airplay

Minecraft and RetroPie

Scratch 

Robot arm controlled from Scratch

Seven Segments of Pi. It's a big one.

Robot Club - first session completed

Link to Previous Post on Preparing for the Club with details on Partner Used: http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/preparing-for-2015-after-school.html


Today we had the first session of the new robot club I'm running at my kids primary school.
It is for year 6, so 11-12 year olds.

The club is based on the parts from the previous post. http://winkleink.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/preparing-for-2015-after-school.html

Today the kids came in and there were 3 from last year, so 7 new which is great.
Also, the gender mix is 4 boys and 6 girls.  Sounds very positive from a gender equality then heard the robot club is clashing with football, so expect there are many boys already committed to football.

Still it was a great first session.

The goal for today was to build the chassis.  I wanted to give the kids a bit of a challenge so we worked it out together using the Chinese instructions and my previously built chassis.

A lot of bolts going in the wrong way round and parts in upside down. So, each team had to take their bits apart multiple time.

As we went through the hour I expected the kids to lose heart with the every increasing times they had to remake the chassis.  But, I was delighted that by the end they were very excited to have it built and really wanted to do more.  We had to stop as parents were waiting to collect the kids.

We wired up some of the motors and I showed that since the motors mirror each other than with the motors wired the same way that one wheel goes forward and the other goes backwards with the same red-positive / black-negative wiring.  I explained we can sort this out in code.

The best comment of the day from one of the girls was. "Today is the first time I don't want to leave school."

She was very curious about the 4x4 keypad, so I explained how it works.
Send a signal into each horizontal pin one after another and seeing which pin it comes out at.

Metal Note: try to bring a white board market next time.  Teachers take them away after their classes.


In preparation for next week I have to get all the chassis sorted. One of the motors had the tab ripped off so lucky I have a spare motor.

Then add the L298N H-Bridge and Arduino Nano compatible so coding can start next week.

Goals for next session.
Understand the wiring.
Code to make it go forward, backwards and turn.
Program to go around the centre section in the room.

Roll on next Monday.

Egham Raspberry Jam report for Sunday 20th January

Having caught Raspberry Pi fever and attending the excellent Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam on a couple of occasions I approached my employer about running a Raspberry Jam at our offices in Egham. After a bit of explaining what a Raspberry Pi is and what a Raspberry Jam is they gave the green light and we put the 20^th of January in the calendar as the date for the Raspberry Jam.

Eventbrite page was set up to allow registration to keep the numbers to a reasonable level and started to promote the event on the Raspberry Pi forum and on Twitter through my @Winkleink account. Through retweets from @Raspberry_Pi and @Teknoteacher we got 50 registrations with over a week to go.

I put out the call for presenters and two people stepped forward

Dave Ackerman the Pi in the Sky man offered to present on sending balloons into the stratosphere and using a Raspberry Pi transmitting live images from the flight.

Stephen Cornes offered to present on using a hard drive as your primary drive and also connecting to the Raspberry Pi over serial using the GPIO serial connection.

The 20th January rolled around and after snowing for 3 days I expected the day to be a flop.
Giving myself loads of time I got there for 12:30 with a 2:00 start and began getting things organised.

Then to my joy Dave arrived about 1:00 with 3 boxes of bits and a presentation so I knew it wasn't only going to be me.

We both got ourselves set. Dave in the boardroom with the projector and the theatre seating and me the main area where the show and tell activity was going to go on.

I’d spent the week getting a small cheap remote control car to be controlled through Scratch (see previous post) but due to my mad/bad wiring when I set it up interference between the wires meant the car always wanted to go left. I could show the wheels spinning forward and backwards but the grand plan of having people try to figure out how to program Scratch to get the car to navigate an obstacle course did not materialise.

Alongside my nearly working demo Dave set up his ballooning bits.

Paschal Egan showed using the GPIO to produce 433MHz home automation control signals to switch on and off domestic appliances.

Ian Law brought along his set up to see if someone could help with debugging the Python snake game he was working through from the Raspberry Pi Users Guide.

Robin Fordham set up his circuit that expanded the GPIO pins using I2C controls.

At the far end Leo White brought along his Raspberry Pied BigTraks with robotic arm and webcam.

In the end over 30 people made it out in the snow to attend. An amazing turnout considering the weather. Ranging in age from 15 to a much older.

Once most people had arrived Dave presented Pi in the Sky. I was so wrapped up I failed to keep him to time so we got a lot of details on what was involved.

Then Stephen presented on using a hard drive as your main file system and also connecting over GPIO using serial. His impetus for both was issues with SD cards giving errors and not wanting to have to attach the Raspberry Pi to a screen. If you connect over serial then you even get to see the boot sequence. This is not the case if you SSH in over the network as networking has to be active for the SSH connection to happen.

Stephen kept to time and by the rush of people to the front after he finished his presentation was of interest to a number of people attending.

After the presentations we went back to the show and tell area. Where we mingled and chatted. Those of us with demos answered questions and tried our best to explain what we did, how we did it, why we did and what use it was.

I must admit seeing the BigTraks with the robotic arm controlled by the PS3 controller over Bluetooth and live streaming to a browser was fantastic. It really showed the power of the Raspberry Pi and the number of things it can do at the same time.

There was a crowd around Ian’s Raspberry Pi trying to figure out what was wrong with his code. In the end Robin Fordham came to his rescue and worked out there was a rogue file in the directory with the program causing problems. Once this was deleted then everything worked as it should after a simple typo error was fixed.

From the feedback people have provided it sounds like the event was enjoyable and achieved its goal in inspiring people to do more. One person has invested in a Raspberry Pi, another purchased a Pi Cobbler and others found answers to their questions that would allow them to continue with their projects.

From my point of view as an organiser of a Raspberry Jam I must admit it was quite painless. Just set things up. Let people know it’s on. Manage registration on Eventbrite and then play host on the day.

A few things I would tweak are

Maybe have each person do a 10-20 second intro (name, own a Pi, what done so far, what do you wish to do) so people can connect and also any gaps in the official(ish) agenda can be filled by meeting like minded people.

Keeping presentation to 30 minutes. Extra detail for those interested can be do one on one in the show and tell area.

Have people demoing put a sign or sheet out showing what they are demoing so it’s easier to figure out which projects are of most interest.

Encourage others to take pictures and videos as I was either presenting or running around so took very few photographs and no video.

Here’s looking forward to the next Egham Raspberry Jam.