The team running the Ipswich Raspberry Jam are requesting our help. This great event for Ipswich will be held in the Ipswich Library in the Enterprise + Innovation Hub
They have a few display tables free, so if you fall into the any of the following categories:
do you have anything to show and tell
do you have anything you want to announce
do you you have anything you want to talk about
do you want to come and help, i.e. just be about, answer questions, mingle and generally be helpful
Please get in touch, you don’t have to commit to the whole day, anything you can help out with would be greatly appreciated.
The event will be held on Saturday 8th August at the Ipswich library. We will be announcing more details soon but spaces are limited so get yours ASAP. Tickets can be purchased from http://www.ipswichraspberryjam.co.uk/
With applications now open for Pi Wars 2015 we thought it would be good if other competitors could make use of all the hard work that went into TractorBot last year.
So today we are announcing we are open sourcing TractorBot
It turns out it is actually quite a lot of work to Open Source a project, we do not want to delay the launch of this project, so we are therefore making the files available as soon as they are ready on a rolling release basis. Today the hardware source files are now officially available under the Cern Open Hardware v1.2 license. This essentially allows the source files to be used for any legal purpose as long as attribution is given to Ipswich Makersapce and the license is included in any redistribution.
We are working on the software source code, ensuring all dependencies are made clear and installation instructions are being written. We are also drawing up the schematics for the interface board. As soon as these are ready they will also be released.
To get the source files, visit our Git Hub repository.
We really hope Open Sourcing this project will be helpful. if you have any questions please raise them on our forums.
So whilst preparing for my recent tutorial on how to use the Ryanteck Debug Clip on the Mac, I recorded myself soldering it up.
It didn’t turn out too bad so I have decided to release it as a tutorial in its own right.
Take a look, it you would like some more hands on guidance, I will be running a soldering workshop at the Makerspace on 24th September. You can view the event information here
Ipswich Makerspace now have Forums, anyone can register and post so please make use of them. They are in beta at the moment so if you have any comments please let us know.
At the last CamJam event, one of the talks was titled Pi Wars 2015.
The announcement can be seen here:
So for those who do not know, the Ipswich Makerspace entered the 2014 event, and we actually did very well. We cam first in the under £75 category which we were all very please with. The few weeks leading up to the event were very busy getting Tractor Bot ready for the event, with some very late nights. The event on the day however was very enjoyable and we all had a great time.
Frank put together a video demonstrating some of the achievements of Tractor Bot last year and can be seen here:
This year we have a very good base to start from, so development should be much easier. The rules have not been announced yet, but the challenges have, they are listed below
Obstacle course (with different obstacles than 2014)
Skittles
Straight-line speed test
Robot vs Robot Duel
Three-Point-Turn
Line follower course
Proximity alert
Code quality
Aesthetics
Build quality
Best blogging team
In adddtion there will also be prizesfor the following:
Smallest robot
Most featured robot
Most innovative robot
So this is a call for help, we would very much like to enter Tractor Bot version 2 this year but myself and Phil do not want to take the lead. We need at least a couple of people with lots of energy and vision to follow this though, you will obviously get lot of support from the Makerspace. Reviewing how last year went, we probably need a lead code developer and a hear hardware developer. Once of the challenges is for the best blogging team so we could probably also do with a lead blogger.
If this sounds interesting to you, please put your hand up. It would be lovely to win for a second year but we need your help.
If you want to keep up to date with the latest Pi Wars news, sign up for alerts at the official Pi Wars page
Book Reviews: Tubes: A journey to the center of the internet, Great North Road, Dealing With Disrespect and Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking: PDF
On 13th June just gone OpenTech 2015 happened. It was an event sponsored by the Open Data Institute.
The event hosted talks of various kinds, all relating to Open Tech and open data particularly. Although I did not go, or even realise it was happening, looking at their web site it looks like they had a good selection of talks. Some of which have been made available in either audio or video form.
So if you want to learn about some great open data projects this is the place to go. Unfortunately the talk about The Great British Public Toilet Map is not online, but I’m sure there will be other things to take your interest.
The Ryanteck Debug Clip allows the Raspberry Pi serial console to be controlled over a standard USB cable from another computer. This is great where you have a headless Pi and are unable to get it on the network to SSH in. Ryanteck have provided instructions for using the Debug Clip with the Linux and Windows operating systems. But I use OSX on a Mac so I thought I’d give it a go to see if I could get it to work.
It turns out Ryan picked the Microchip MCP2221 IC as the brains of the board and this IC does not require any drivers on OSX 10.7 or greater. This is much better than the generic console cable I have been using to date where the driver needs to be re-installed after every OS update.
It was really easy to use, if you want to see how to use it yourself, take a look at this video I produced.
On 6th June the CamJam team held their latest Raspberry Pi event. Once again it was at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. I had the opportunity to attend this one and dragged the family along. Although I could not stay for the whole event I had a great time.
Some of the key highlights were:
Andy Proctor gave a very inspiration talk on why the Raspberry Pi is not just for kids. Andy has been involved in the Ipswich Makerspace for the past few months and has now taken up the challenge of hosting the Ipswich Raspberry Jam We shall be offering Andy all our support and you can see his talk CamJam talk here:
Jimbo Uberscuba, who also visits the Ipswich Makerspace regularly gave a great talk on programming with Java on the Pi, his talk can be seen below:
Other things of interest, a USB key which can be programmed easily on a laptop with wifi or LAN settings, so that it can be inserted into the Pi and upon booting the Pi’s wifi or LAN settings automatically update. Making it easy to connect a Pi to a network without needing a monitor, great for headless setups. It was called PiConfig and the website is here
PiWars 2015 was also announced, but I will post separately about this.
If you are interested in seeing any of the other talks from CamJam June 2015, they can be found here.
