Anne Carlill is organising the first West York Raspberry Jam on Monday, 13th February. The event, which runs from 5.15-7.15pm will take place at the Acomb Explore Library in York. Adults can bring up to two children. If you’d like to attend, please email Anne to reserve your place(s). If you’d like to follow them on Twitter, it’s @YorkRaspJam.
Raspberry Pi has announced today the launch of a joint venture with Computing at School: a magazine designed for educators seeking help in the digital making environment. It is called Hello World and is available free from the Raspberry Pi website. It will be published three times a year (to coincide with the start of UK school terms) and is also available to purchase and as a subscription.
Spencer Organ has been putting his making skills to use with this Harry Potter-inspired build. Taking his cue from both the Weasley Clock and the Marauders’ Map, he’s taken a Raspberry Pi, an Explorer HAT, an Arduino, some servos and some relays and put the electronics behind a recreation of the Map. The Pi reads, via wi-fi, the presence of devices with known MAC addresses and then activates the arms of the clock to point to the relevant person/position accordingly. It’s an ingenious build and you can read more about it on Spencer’s blog and see a demo video below:
Raspberry Pi have today announced their new Digital Making Curriculum. Reported by Director of Education Carrie Anne Philbin, the curriculum aims to help individuals from a wide variety of age groups to further their digital making skills. You can read the full announcement here, take a look at the Curriculum itself here and give feedback here.
It’s exciting stuff – the people at the Foundation have clearly thought a lot about the different disciplines involved with digital making. In the community, we all wish we were Creators, Builders, Developers and Makers of the highest calibre, but we must also recognise that in some areas we still have learning to do. This Curriculum certainly goes a long way to defining a path of progress in these different disciplines. It also provides the younger generation with a ‘hit list’ of skills to develop. Next, and quite urgently, I would like to see the Foundation get into the practicalities of their curriculum by linking to, and developing, resources that will help us get better at what we love to do: Making things! A theoretical curriculum is but the first stage: next, the progress has to be delivered.
Pimoroni have just announced, via their Bilge Tank videocast, the launch of the Speaker pHAT board. The Zero-form-factor board comes as a kit that requires soldering and has the following features:
That means that you can just plug this in and play audio, albeit mono, very simply. While it’s not good enough for a full hi-fi system such as the IQaudIO boards or JustBoom selection, it is very useful for if you want a bit of sound on your project. The board sells for £12 and is available from the Pimoroni website.
Pat Peters from Omaha, Nebraska has taken inspiration from the Wizarding World’s famous Weasley Clock and built his own Internet of Things clock, using a Raspberry Pi (a B+ in this case). Tracking the locations of both himself and his wife, the clock’s Pi subscribes to an MQTT broker service that their phones publish events to using the OwnTracks GPS app. Added into the mix is an Adafruit ServoHAT and some servos to move the hands. He has published how to do it on an Instructable, so you can have your very own clock!
Thanks to the Foundation’s Alex Bate for spotting this one.
