Pi Face Video Presentation

Pi-Face Digital enables the Raspberry Pi to control and manipulate the real world. It allows the Raspberry Pi to read switches connected to it – a door sensor or pressure pad perhaps, a microswitch or reed switch, or a hand held button. With appropriate easy to write code, the Raspberry Pi then drives outputs, powering motors, actuator, LEDs, light bulbs or anything you can imagine to respond to the inputs.  It has the following features:

• Allows you to control lights, motors etc.
• Sense inputs
• Creditcard size, stacks on top of Raspberry Pi
• Buffered to protect the Raspberry Pi
• Easy to connect with screw terminals
• Program in Scratch or Python
• Test with onscreen simulator

Dr Andrew Robinson presented PiFace at the Cambridge RaspberryJam, here is his presentation in full. Thank you to Leon for the high quality video.  

Further details can be found at:  http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/

Big Trak Your Raspberry Pi

At the Raspberry Jam in Cambridge, one of the highlights was driving a Big Trak around the stage!  It was an amazing bit of kit and one can only imagine the possibilities of what it could be used for in future!

I've been asked quite a few questions about this project and I can now exclusively reveal that the author of the project is Leo White. Not only a whiz with RISC OS, but also has quite the talent with Electronics. Now if the following doesn't scare you, then I am sure you will be able to make your own Big Traks in no-time, but seriously this is NOT for the faint hearted. Remember Leo also enjoys hacking operating systems in his spare time...So here is what he did.

He stripped out the motor unit from the Big Trak, removing the existing controller board and then he connected a replacement motor driver chip. He then hard coded the circuit to control the motors, connected his Raspberry Pi, got that to control it and added an extra mobile phone type battery to power the Pi and extra electronics.

When he came to Cambridge, he of course tidied it all up... After all you can't be shabby when coming to the Uni!  And he told me that in the last couple of days he's been working on the rocket launcher!

You can keep an eye on his progress at his Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/107287498294316622336/posts  and he says that he'll be putting instructions together at some point, but we'd better not disturb this genius at work. 

Raspberry Jam Cambridge Presentations

Firstly I would like to thank everybody who has been involved in the Raspberry Jam and #TMEast yesterday it was an amazing success.  The presenter list below reads like a who is who of the Raspberry Pi Team and the foundation have been fantastic in supporting this event, especially Liz Upton who has helped out so much with PR for the event.

I would like to mention a few names that weren’t really at the front during the presentations yesterday, but were instrumental to making this happen, Graham Hastings who will be taking over the ‘local’ Cambridge event in September.  From the university, I’d like to thank Jon Crowcroft who did a wonderful job with the venue and Ian Burton-Palmer who also helped us with our numerous technical enquiries.  From CAS,  Simon Humphreys, Claire Davenport and Mark Dorling who very kindly sponsored the event.  Leon Cychs and Rosie Slosek who did the video and sound.   Mark Ellis from my school who was at the front constantly rewiring the system to keep the event going and kept a very cool head when we lost all sound 10 minutes before the event started.  Keith Dunlop’s RISC OS support team Bryan Hogan and Leo White.  There were four other key people who were constantly buzzing around and helping me with too many tasks to mention: Isabell Long, Neil Turner, Roeland Schumacher and Dima Tupikov, my wife Min Chee Shee, Alan's wife for giving him a day pass, Myra VanInwengan for lending me her Raspberry Pi Alpha and setting up the Lego set and finally the Preston Posse who just appeared and instantly jumped into help.

Secondly, I have tried to put together as many of the resources as possible from yesterday and I am aware that it isn’t a complete list, but I’ll edit the Blog as needs be.

Introductory Video

Presentations in Alphabetical Order

James Abela @eslweb
Using Scratch to teach Economics
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jabela/1907183
10 Raspberry Pi Lesson ideas
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1meoj23DVlfUAuFV2AKdeeLZiC5gxWzHvcp6Pugu3uXI&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000
Video:  http://youtu.be/bHD3NOAmOJk

Mark Allen @edintheclouds
Google Docs, Apps & Sites
http://www.edintheclouds.com/

Jo Badge @jobadge
Secret Google Searches

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10unxrcJ0lLViS1etsa1OdCqVHVeyJGZY2-iUQfHtb3M/mobilebasic?pli=1

Sheli Blackburn Digital @shelibb
Digital Leader Network
http://t.co/NK7YDama

Martin Burrett @ictmagic
Using sixth formers' mobile devices as an AfL tool
http://prezi.com/vskppld5jufb/teachmeet-cambridge/

Keith Dunlop
RISC OS
https://www.riscosopen.org/

Jamie Freeman @imvoto
Using sixth formers' mobile devices as an AfL tool
Website: http://www.imvoto.com/imvoto/
Presentation: http://t.co/yEKZwNE


Liam Fraser @FraserLiam

Raspberry Pi Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiTutorials/

Gary Fletcher & Alasdair Davies
Instant Wild
https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1J6Yn5-IabkjKLI_VYHLPwIFSu2_qfTLQxJYe59BoD6k&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.p13

Dr. Oliver Frey MD @DrOliverFreyMD
Teaching Health Skills
http://www.dr-frey.com/documents/Health%20Skills%20Course.pdf

William Gardiner
USB real-time PC I/O controller
http://www.heber.co.uk/gaming-amusement/xline/x10i-overview/

Maggie Hos-McGrane
Introduction to International Baccalaureate programmes
Blog: http://www.maggiehosmcgrane.com/
Prezi: http://prezi.com/6mmloukqq_wp/the-international-baccalaurate/

Andy Knill @aknill
Mishmashlearning
http://www.mishmashlearning.wordpress.com

Dr Andrew Robinson
PiFace IO Interface Board
http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/

Media

• Images by Leon &Rosie: http://www.flickr.com/photos/learn4life/sets/72157630576419214/
• Images from @biglesp  http://www.flickr.com/photos/45703688@N07/sets/72157630591148746/
• Images from Roeland  https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/111491674190149901645/albums/5765490230977206145
• Images from @JerryDHarper  http://www.flickr.com/photos/notator/
• Official video: http://www.youtube.com/user/eyebeams2 (High res video to follow at some point)
• Podcast interview with Rory & Rufus http://audioboo.fm/boos/884468-rory-ruskin147-reflects-post-cambridge-raspberryjam
• Twitter: #Raspberryjam

Blogs

• BBC News:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18853587
• CNET: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/desktops/4000-raspberry-pi-pcs-made-a-day-camera-add-on-due-october-50008622/
• Official Website: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1576
• Andrew Edney: http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2012/07/15/a-slice-of-raspberry-pi-with-the-foundation-at-the-cambridge-raspberryjam/
• Corylus  http://corylus.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/raspberryjam-cambridge-starting-point.html

Other useful Links

• Cambridgeshire TeachMeet: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/w/page/54595880/TMCambs12
• Raspberry Jam Website:  http://raspberryjam.org.uk/
• Raspberry Pi Website:  http://www.raspberrypi.org/
• Computing at School:  http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/

Getting ready for Cambridge Raspberry Jam

It is a busy week with plenty to be done for the Raspberry Jam in Cambridge. The T-Shirts are ready, the Twitter Campaign is going well and I think we'll have plenty of people coming.

We've also got a fantastic line-up of speakers including Andrew Robinson of PiFace fame, Liam Fraser of the RasPi Tutorials and Keith Dunlop who is working on RISC OS.

Then there is the panel who John Naughton is chairing with Eben and Liz from the foundation and Alan from Raspberry Jam Preston.

We then host #TMEast with another line up of fantastic speakers. We've got a team from Google, Ann who is an amazing English teacher, two cracking geographers and a really innovative Maths teacher.

So I hope to see as many of my readers as possible and I will continue to share my ideas for teaching and using the Raspberry Pi.

At the Opposite Extreme we have Chromium OS

I was super excited to hear about RISC OS making a comeback and then today I heard that they are planning Chromium OS for Raspberry Pi. Talk about opposites when it comes to OS. (Initial commit here.)  You see, Chromium is designed to make the most of the browser. It's designed for an always connected world where most of the stuff you want to do is on the Internet.


It is a great OS for the Pi, because it has the possibility of use in a truly embedded environment. It turns any semi-decent TV into a properly Internet enabled TV.   For possible consumer products it's great and if done well it will make high quality, fast, Web browsing a real feature of the Pi.

Of course that completely flies in the face of having a computer you can really play with under the hood. But the real difference with the Pi is that for the first time in a long time, it doesn't matter all you need for yet another OS is another SD Card.


That makes my OS Deathmatch lesson a whole lot more exciting...

Bringing RISC OS back to life

Picture courtesy of riscos.org

There's a team hard at work to bring RISC OS to the Raspberry Pi. They've already got a pre-alpha version up and running, which can do vector graphics using Artworks. (Became Xara) Although most people remember the operating system from the early 1990's and associated it with Acorn. It has still continued to be developed by a loyal band of developers and has a non-profit license that enables people to try it for free, but profit-making companies are charged the princely sum of £20.


Furthermore it was designed to be run on specs far lower than the Raspberry Pi, so if it can be made truly native again without the need for too many services to be emulated, then it would run extremely fast.  From an educational point of view there's a large number of pros to using the OS:

1. Large number of educational applications already in existence
2. The best version of BBC Basic
3. A mature windowing system that is highly responsive
4. Excellent task management, which looks after every last KB and values every last scrap of memory.
5. Developed for ARM processors from the start.

Acorn who made RISC OS at the time was also the birthplace of many world-class inventions including the ARM chip, Sibelius, Artworks (Became Xara), Tomb Raider and ARM linux.

Bringing back a Super version of RISC OS would be a joy to behold!

Update: The RISC OS team have confirmed their attendance at the Cambridge Raspberryjam event!

About the Author: This Blog is being written by a shamelessly biased source who actually used to work for Acorn at the time the StrongARM came out.

The future is tablets...

The future for primary schools is tablets. Think about it. They don't require their own rooms, provide beautiful colours, animations and an interface that's intuitive which weirdly is why the Pi is so important! Graham Hastings is leading the charge to make sure that what's left over gets spent on something that enables some real computing to take place. I'm really looking forward to his presentation on the 14th. I know it will be a highlight of #tmeast and what the Pi brings is room to imagine. That's what is magical about it and that's why we need to help the Pi in every way we can. Visit event page