Computer Science added to core subjects of English Baccalaureate – Hope for #RaspberryPi? @Raspberry_Pi

Raspberry Pi and Comp Sci: Is IT teaching back on track? | ZDNet

Computer science has been added to the list of core subjects that make up the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) qualification, which is used as a measure of success for school league tables in England.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said today: “It is great news that Google is helping the brilliant Raspberry Pi project. We are replacing the old-fashioned ICT curriculum with a Computer Science curriculum. This will combine with the Raspberry Pi project to spread teaching of computer coding which is so educationally and economically vital.” A full statement from the Department of Education can be read here.

More details on ZDNet: Raspberry Pi and Comp Sci: Is IT teaching back on track? | ZDNet.

Whether this has any relevance for the Raspberry Pi remains to be seen. In fact, it relies a lot on the Raspberry Pi Foundation and it’s efforts to get the Pi recognised as a realistic tool for the teaching of computer science in schools. The recent appointment of Clive Beale as Director of Educational Development at the Foundation can only help to enhance their efforts. I wish him well in taking on the Department of Education and the education community as a whole.

For myself, I believe that the Pi has a good chance of being recognised in this fashion. It is, as has been said over and over again, a cheap platform that is very accessible to those who are serious about computer science. If a student chooses Computer Science as a core subject for the EBacc, I would expect them to have a reasonable commitment to studying it, and the Pi is not only gadget-y and ‘cool’ but also easily available now, thanks to the sterling efforts of Farnell (in particular).

If anyone reading this blog is intending to bring the Pi into their Computer Science courses, please feel free to comment – it’d be great to engage with people in education. I’m a strong believer in the power, so to speak, of the Pi in education and would love to hear of some success stories, or even some valiant attempts!

Live Webcam running on a #RaspberryPi / @Raspberry_Pi

I wanted, as part of a new project, to be able to stream live video from my Pi to the internet.

I followed some tutorials. First of all, I wanted to get my Webcam (a little XBox Live Cam) working. So, I followed Calin Crisan’s PiEye post on his blog. An English translation via Google can also be viewed.

Secondly, I followed Rhys Streefland’s tutorial on creating a small, fast web server using nGinx. I had to follow an instruction in the comments of that blog post in order to get my set-up working correctly.

Next, I followed my own tutorial on setting up a DNSDynamic.org domain name so that it was easily accessible from the outside world.

The results can be seen by visiting http://recantha.dnsdynamic.com. The website won’t always be up as I’m continuing to experiment.

If the webcam is up, hopefully the image will be displayed below and you’ll get a lovely live stream of my dog, Max, as he luxuriates on his chair!

I’m also going to display the live picture on my blog, just for the hell of it.

 

Research into Stepper Motors with the #RaspberryPi

I’ve decided that my next project with the Pi will involve motors of some sort. At the very least I’d like to work out how to control a motor and have it do… something. I’d like, ideally, to create some kind of remote-controlled vehicle. But, I know this isn’t exactly an original idea so it’ll be interesting to see if I can come up with something a bit unique. Whether I control the motor direct from the Pi or have some kind of Pi-Arduino interface is up for debate!

So, this post is all about research and will be a collection of links and tidbits that I’ve collected on the subject.

Some basic research…

First of all, over at tigoe.net, we have a blog post describing the different types of motors including unipolar, bipolar etc. Read the article.

Scrap to Power has a good article on connecting a stepper motor to the Pi. Read the article.

Francois Dion at Raspberry Pi Python Adventures has written some excellent blog posts on getting various motors working. Browsing around his site is great and he is the only blogger I know who posts in multiple languages! Read an article about stepper motors and another one about H Bridges.

Patrick Cambria has worked out how to run a uni-polar stepper using the Pi and Python. Read the article and watch the video.

Georgia-based John Jay has developed a board  http://mypishop.com/Stepper.html and Robert Savage has written an article about setting it up.

Raspberry Pi Spy has an article about using a ULN2003 board and a 28BJY-48 motor. Read the article. The RaspiRobot blog has implemented the steps in the article and blogged about it.

Andy at PiStuffing has blogged about his experiments trying to create a TurtlePi and also a quad-copter. Read his blog.

Now for some videos

A video from Peter Szabo in which we see a stepper motor controlled by a ULN2003 control board.

A video from BitWizardNL that shows an SPI driver board running off the SPI header on the Pi and driving a motor:

Finally, some eBay lots and Online Shop items which might prove useful

L298N Controller board

Lots from Georgia-based 9030plc

EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver from SK Pang (requires 7V power supply)

L293D from Adafruit

L293D on eBay from Shock Waves Shop

Bits n Pieces

An example of running a motor on the GPIO but using Java.

 

QuadCopter with the #RaspberryPi – SkySpy

Interesting first-look at a project by Andy at PiStuffing. This is a quad-copter controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Eventually, he wants to add a second Pi as a controller. The blades are spinning at the moment, but he has yet to achieve take-off. I feel lots of maths coming on as he tries to work out how to stabilise it. Eventually it will also use the long-awaited Raspberry Pi camera.

Presenting the SkySpy | PiStuffing.

Raspy Juice Rev.1 Beta Board for #RaspberryPi

“Raspy Juice is an experimentor’s expansion board to power supply a Raspberry Pi (RPi) host computer with a DC-DC SMPS buck regulated +5V from a wide-range voltage source (such as batteries, 12V power adapters, solar batteries, etc). The board also contains an RTC real-time clock, an RS232 level translator to breakout the host console GPIO UART serial port, and an expansion AVR ATmega168A microcontroller (MCU). This expansion MCU interfaced to the host computer as an I2C slave device, provides the services of controlling 4 channels of RC servo outputs, an RS485 interface, and a half-duplex software-based RS232 interface. Additionally, the spare pins of the MCU are brought to an expansion header which may be used for other purposes. The MCU firmware is upgradeable by the host computer and may be reprogrammed for other application-specific purposes.”

Raspy Juice Rev.1 Beta Board | 2-Watt Elements.

The board costs 42 SGD (which is about £21) plus 10 SGD (so another £5 ish) for shipping. Not bad for a board that gives you all that.