After several years, populated by coughs and wheezes and dreadful diseases, CamJam is back, and what a wonderful event it was! Myself and Tim Richardson have happily handed over the reigns to Brian Corteil, someone we’ve known for many years, going all the way back to CamJams and especially Pi Wars of old.

Brian, a Makespace Cambridge member, thought that the space would make an excellent venue for a Raspberry Jam and, after Saturday, I have to agree. Not only does it have several spaces within, but being in the centre of Cambridge gave a different “feel” to the Jam, which is certainly to be welcomed. After all, as Alan O’Donohoe and Ben Nuttall (the people who came up with the idea of Jams) were fond of saying: Every Jam can be different!

Arrival & layout

As helpers, Tim and I arrived around 9.15am, fresh off the Park and Ride bus. Immediately, we could see that the space had been reconfigured. In one room, there was due to be a selection of Talks. In the main space, there would be Show and Tell and off that area, the machine workshop had been converted into a classroom for four Workshops.

Talks

The following talks took place:

• “Is the Raspberry Pi Pico a computer?” by Jonathan Pallant
• “Experience AI” by Mark Calleja
• “The History of Pi in the Sky” by Dave Akerman
• “Pi Wars (NE-Five) & Hacky Racers Autonomous Racing” by Keegan Neave

I attended the Pi in the Sky talk with Dave Akerman. It was a fascinating look back at the history of his high altitude ballooning capers with the Raspberry Pi. It really was quite nostalgic as it took in multiple flights, including some way back at the start of the Pi’s life, right up to present planned flights. The technology each time changed, with multiple versions of custom circuit boards and multiple different types of Pi being used to go up into the stratosphere.

Workshops

The following workshops took place:

• “Teleporting animals with Micro:Bit” with CoderDojo @ Makespace
• “Flying Discs” with Bill & Tom Corteil
• “AI Face Filter” with Mark Calleja
• “An introduction to the Raspberry Pi Pico” with Mark Calleja

I was down to assist with the final workshop which used the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s online worksheets/resources to take the participants through connecting up the Pico all the way through to lighting up an RGB LED. As with all workshops, the participants worked at different speeds and needed differing amounts of assistance along the way. It was great fun to help the group.

There were also drop-in workshops for soldering and laser cutting available, which was fantastic as it means there was always something to do. There was also a messy play workshop, which was a lovely addition!

Show and Tell

Well! I was worried to start with that there wasn’t going to be enough space for a decent Show and Tell offering at Makespace. How wrong I was! They reconfigured the space so that there was more floor area for tables and it was packed with both exhibitors and attendees.

One great idea that organiser Brian had was encouraging all Show and Tellers to have printed sheets available to describe their projects – I really enjoyed reading all the details. Of course, those manning the exhibits were very engaging. I particularly enjoyed the guided tour of the LED matrix I got from young Natalie, clearly inspired by her father’s makes!

Also at the Jam was Steve Upton with Pi Bash – an old favourite, but one that consistently gets attention, particularly from kids. You use the hammer to hit a pad at the bottom of the exhibit and, like an old seaside attraction, the LEDs light up and if you’ve hit it hard enough, the bell at the top rings!

Brian Corteil had his own table of makes, as well, including an infinity mirror which received a lot of attention:

I love a good Cyberdeck, and Brian’s one is fantastic:

And of course, it would be remiss of me not to have a photo of Brian’s robots!

It was great to catch up with some old friends, of course. Neil was there with own collection of robots, from large (such as his very successful Pi Wars entry) and also the tiny:

Christopher Parrott from Pimoroni travelled down from Sheffield to join us. He showed off a lot of newer boards from the pirates, and premiered the Yukon, a multi-functional robotics and sensor board that, I was told, would be perfect for a Pi Wars robot!

From Extreme Kits, there were a number of Pico and Pi-powered devices on display. My favourite has to be the Cray-alike supercomputer powered by Picos!

I also loved this tiny-tiny computer!

And I couldn’t go without mentioning Keegan Neave and his magnificent (though currently armless!) NE-5, modelled after Short Circuit’s Johnny 5, but with Pi brains and many, many, many servos on-board.

I was also impressed by Jonathan Pallant’s creation, Neotron, which was far too complicated for me to explain here, but I hopefully will get more detail from him at some stage:

Young Sourish impressed with his word clock and other projects:

Overall

Taken as a whole, this Jam was a huge success. With about 120 people through the doors, it always felt busy, and the space worked really well. I’d like to congratulate Brian Corteil and Cambridge Makespace at creating a great, inclusive and wide-ranging event. I hope they manage to host another CamJam in the near future and that the community will, once again, come out to support it!