Events, Opinion, Raspberry Jams

I’m going to the Southend Raspberry Jam on Saturday!

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The Southend Raspberry Jam has swiftly become one of the best Raspberry Jams in the country. Its relaxed atmosphere and a high quantity of knowledgeable people concentrated in one place makes it one of the ‘places to be’ in the Pi world. On Saturday, from 10-5pm, I shall be attending for the third time and I’m really looking forward to it. This is their sixth Jam and they’re getting really good at it!

It’s always nice to go to a Jam and not be organising it, for one thing, although this time I might be helping out on some of the workshops, which will be interesting as I’ve not done it for a looooong time.

They’ve got an interesting mix of talks including:

  • A 15-year old’s perspective on how the Pi has changed his life (Zach Igielman of PiPiano fame!)
  • LifeBox – an ecosystem of LEDs – not Conway’s Game of Life.
  • Chatbots and WikiData.
  • Advanced Python Programming
  • Object Orientated Programming with Python

and several workshops including:

  • Mozilla Digital Badges
  • ScratchGPIO hackathon
  • Android App Inventor
  • Python Minecraft AstroPi
  • Microbit/Codebug

As you can see, Southend’s strength is in its ability to mix Pi-centric talks and workshops with non-Pi stuff, giving a nice rounded experience to the event.

So, if you’re in the area (or if you fancy a trip to Southend!) head on over to Eventbrite and pick up your (free) tickets!

Crowdfunding, GPIO boards

PaPiRus – an e-paper HAT for the Raspberry Pi from @PiSupply

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Last month, I covered Neil Matthews’ e-paper HAT for the Raspberry Pi. If you missed out on that Kickstarter, there’s another one that has been running for a little while and now has just 10 days left. This HAT has been developed by Aaron Shaw and his team over at Pi Supply and is called the PaPiRus (which is just a cool name). The HAT can power three different-sized screens: 1.44″, 2.0″ & 2.7″. The HAT comes with 4 onboard buttons (which come free with the board, thanks to a stretch goal) to give you various control options and a real-time clock chip.

The small screen is currently £25, the medium screen is currently £28 and the large is £35.

You can back the Kickstarter here and view their promo video below. Aaron has shown in the past that his team is very good at delivering on-time (or close to it) so it’s a good bet that this one will come to fruition. All the development has already been completed, so it’s just a case of ordering the board and screens in quantity.

Magazines

Linux Voice issue 6 now available for download – features Raspberry Pi projects

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Linux Voice, in keeping with its promise to release its content for free after 9 months, has just published the PDFs for Issue 6 online. For Raspberry Pi owners, there are examples of several projects including:

  • International Space Station detector.
  • Voice operated Pi using Jasper.
  • Running OwnCloud.
  • Using Scratch with GPIO.
  • Building a motion-activated security camera.
  • Hacking with Kali Linux.
  • Using Minecraft on the Pi.
  • Using XBMC.

You can view the whole issue here or download just the Pi section here.