Competitions, Education, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Research, Science

AstroPi primary school winners announced

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Exciting news from the UK Space Agency and Raspberry Pi. The primary school winners of the Astro Pi competition have been announced. They are:

  • Cumnor House Girl’s School in Croydon, near London (idea by Hannah Belshaw) – Minecraft will be used to visualise data sent back from the ISS.
  • Cranmere Primary School Code Club in Esher, Kent – the presence of nearby astronauts will be detected by sensors and then a photograph taken using the Pi Camera Module.

Other primary schools that were highly commended will receive class sets of the Astro Pi to continue experimenting.

Also announced were the secondary schools that will receive sets of Astro Pi boards with which to continue developing their entries into the second half of the competition. Details of these schools are available on the UK Space Agency site.

Here’s a video of astronaut Tim Peake announcing the winners. Tim will be the one who will carry the Raspberry Pis into orbit where they will be placed on board the International Space Station.

Education, Events, Picademy, Raspberry Pi Foundation

Raspberry Pi Picademy goes South West

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In the past few months, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has put a lot effort into making their free CPD course for teachers, known as Picademy, portable so that they can take it on the road. Their next two-day event will be in Devon on the 4th and 5th of June at Exeter Library. So, if you’re a teacher and you would like to find out how the Raspberry Pi can be used in classrooms, apply now! More information about Picademy can be found here.

Interview, Raspberry Pi Foundation

Interview with Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton over at Linux Voice

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Here’s a very interesting interview with Eben in which he discusses the development of the Raspberry Pi 2. It’s from Issue 14 of Linux Voice, which is relatively recent, so it’s definitely worth reading. There’s plenty of other stuff in there, like the split between industrial/hobbyist/commercial and also some detail on Compute Module sales. Read it here.

Geeky Techiness, Making, Retro, Software

Custom-built word processing box powered by Raspberry Pi

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AmbitionBox

Portland-based Giando Sigurani has created a portable word processing system from a Raspberry Pi 2 and a few other bits including a full-size keyboard and track pad, SD card reader and exposed USB port. The whole thing has been built into a varnished cigar box (complete with blood stain from when he was carving). It boots straight into LibreOffice and all other software has been removed to lessen the temptation of distrations. He has come up with two possible names: The Ambition Box and the Write-O-Tron. He has a tiny screen (looks like a 3″) attached but has configured everything so that text is clearly readible. He is currently using it to write his second novel! You can see it in action below:

Programming, Software, Tutorials

Install Lazarus Pascal on a Raspberry Pi

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Lazarus Pascal is a free Delphi look-a-like and compatible Pascal development environment based on FPC (Free Pascal Compiler). Hans Luijten from Tweaking4All.com has written a comprehensive tutorial on installing Lazarus on the Pi 2. He also includes instructions for installing it on other Raspberry Pi models, albeit an older version from the main repository. Read more here.