Cambridge Raspberry Jam – 7th December 2013 – Live Streaming

CamJam-4_smMy apologies for being a little quiet of late – myself and Tim Richardson (@geeky_tim) have been finalising arrangements for the Raspberry Jam that is happening this Saturday!!! and it’s been taking up all the time I would use to blog. Speaking of Tim, he’s been tremendous for this Jam (as he was for the last one) and has picked up a lot of the jobs I should have done but ran out of time to do! One of the World’s Great Organisers if you ask me!

I just thought I’d blog about the fact that we are, once again, Live Streaming the Lecture Theatre sessions.

If you want to watch the live stream, it’s best to register first (it’s free) at Eventbrite. You will then get the link emailed to you on the morning of the Jam. I’ll also blog the link and programme so you can just drop in if you don’t fancy registering.

I won’t reveal the programme until the day but by watching the live stream you’ll definitely see presentations from the likes of Matt, The Raspberry Pi Guy, Gordon Hollingworth of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Carrie Anne Philbin (Geek Gurl Diaries) and Philip Howard (@gadgetoid). You can also watch a closing session when we’ll be discussing future Cambridge Jams.

This Jam is a big thing for those involved – it’s the first Jam we’ve run that features a morning programming workshop for kids. Our tutor, Alex Eames (of RasPi.TV and HDMIPi fame!) will be leading the kids in an introduction to Scratch and using some exercises kindly provided to us by Code Club.

The kids will then move on to physical computing by using Cyntech‘s new GPIO board Pibrella. This board is so new that they are labelled as ‘demo units’! We’re very grateful to Simon Walters (@cymplecy) for writing the code that enables Scratch to work with this board – he’s been an absolute star!

If you want to follow the Jam on Twitter, we’ll be tweeting using the hashtag #camjam.

ScratchGPIO gets support for the Pibrella #RaspberryPi add-on board

Pibrella | cymplecy simplesi

Simon Walters (@cymplecy) has been beavering away at his ScratchGPIO software. This software brings GPIO support to Scratch so that you can use LEDs and, now, expansion boards from the popular visual programming environment.

The latest board to receive support is the upcoming Pibrella from Cyntech/Pimoroni. I’m currently writing some material for the Cambridge Raspberry Jam next week which uses the Pibrella to teach kids about connecting to the real world so this couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Pibrella features 3 LEDs, a buzzer, a switch (with a fun large cap on it), 4 protected inputs and 4 outputs with LEDs showing status. You can also power the Pi using the micro USB connector on the board rather than the normal one on the side of the Pi. You’ll be able to purchase this board soon but you can see it in action at the Cam Jam if you’re coming along!

Other boards that have recently received support are: PiRingo, MotorPiTX, PiRoCon and the PiGlow.

Head on over to Simon’s blog to read more and download ScratchGPIO

Use your browser to control Sid the #RaspberryPi – powered robot arm

Si digital presents Sid our office robot

Si digital have used a Pi, Node.js, Nginx and the camera module to create a controllable robot arm. You use controls on your web browser to control the arm and build up points. I was unable to get it working as of writing this (could be to do with my firewall) but it looks like a nicely put-together site. Not too sure about the change of logo on the diagram of the Pi though – pretty sure that’s naughty!

Have a go