The PiTrol

Nevil Hunt from Innovations in Education has come up with a Raspberry Pi add-on called “The PiTrol” designed to encourage children to write their own computer games in Python.  The PiTrol is a Pi-shaped games controller that plugs into the GPIO connector of the Raspberry Pi allowing computer games to be controlled with a 5-way joystick and 5 push-buttons.

Nevil was looking for beta testers so I volunteered, my kit arrived this week.  

The PiTrol kit contents, oh so many parts.

The PiTrol fully assembled

Assembly of the kit took about 45 minutes though less experienced constructors may take longer, the assembly instructions are very thorough and easy to follow.   The kit uses all ‘through-hole’ parts so none of that tiny SMD stuff which can easily be lost if you sneeze.   I did use IC sockets for the integrated circuits as I'm not a fan of soldering IC's directly to the PCB.

  

I downloaded and ran the Python test program from Nevil’s PiTrol webpage, the program tests that the PiTrol is working correctly.  The test Python program is well commented which makes it easy to understand.

Once I had made sure everything worked correctly, I started on the seven steps to PiTrol wormy which takes the pre-written Python wormy game and shows you how to modify it step by step so that it works with the PiTrol rather than using your keyboard.  I have successfully completed step 1 so only 6 more steps to go until I have fully working PiTrol controlled wormy game.

In summary I think that Nevil has come up with another great Raspberry Pi add-on board, it covers all your project and learning needs.

 

If you would like your own, then head over to ThePiTrol website for more information.

A Christmas tree for your Raspberry Pi

I recently backed Andrew Gale’s short Kickstarter campaign for a small soldering kit shaped like a Christmas tree complete with several LEDs. It only uses 4 GPIO pins to control 7 LEDs and it does this by charlieplexing.   The Kickstarter campaign has successfully been funded so Andrew has started to send out the kits, mine landed on the doormat today.

Christmas tree parts

First impressions, the PCB looks well made and is nicely laid out. The instructions are very clear and easy to follow.   Also included with my kit was the bi-colour LED which can be used in place of the yellow LED at the top of the tree.

It took me no less than 10 minutes to solder the kit together due to the low component count, though some less experienced constructors may take longer.  Upon finishing the kit, I plugged it into my Raspberry Pi and tried some of the example Python code which worked well.

Completed Christmas tree

All in all I am very impressed with this kit.  It’s a great little project to learn to solder on and it makes a nice little Christmas decoration for your Raspberry Pi.

You can find out more about this kit on Andrew’s website

CamJam September 2014

On Saturday 6^th September I travelled up to Cambridge to attend my third Raspberry Jam which was held at the Institute of Astronomy.  While I was at the jam I spotted some Pi-celebs including Eben Upton, Liz Upton, Carrie Anne-Philbin and Ben Nuttall.

Peter Onion had his LED matrix display on show, it used 4  32 x 32 RGB LED panels connected together running off a Pi.  Peter had an implementation of Conway’s Game of Life and a sliding tile game which you had to re-arrange using a keypad,  both were written in C.  

On the next stand was SK Pang Electronics who also had a 64 x 64 LED display running, they were selling the displays and other stuff.  I brought a very handy adapter PCB which allows the 32 x 32 or 16 x 32 RGB LED panels to connect to the Raspberry Pi easily.

I spoke to the guys from Ragworm who make low cost PCBs, which sounds ideal if you want one off PCB's made.  PiBorg were on the next stand, they make some cool robotics add on boards for the Raspberry Pi. 

Gert van Loo had his new VGA breakout/adapter for the B+ Pi which plugged into the GPIO connector to provide a display output.

Alex Eames had his HDMIPi screen on display.
 

Brian Corteil had his Naughty or Nice machine on display, a interactive badge which used a small TFT and micro Arduino board and 32 x 32 LED Matrix driven by Raspberry Pi in real time showing a horse animation.

The Raspberry Pi Club from Stewarts Academy was present again showing the Tidy Pi.  

Richard Saville aka Average Man had several Pi projects on display including an analogue thumbstick with an ADC chip connected to a Pi which lit up specific LED’s depending on the thumbsticks direction, a temperature monitor display board which reads the Pi temperature every few seconds and updates the display.  There was a NeoSec 3.5” TFT touchscreen for the Raspberry Pi, PiCCTV which used a camera module, Nwazet camera case and Motionpie camera viewing software and finally an internet PiRadio.

Dawn Robotics had several robotic bits for sale.

I spoke to Steve Bloye from The Little British Robotics Company who had some robotics stuff on display.

I brought a Pibow Coupé  case from The PiHut for my Raspberry Pi B + and couple of  Pi-Stop mini traffic lights from 4tronix.

Matt Timmons-Brown made this while he was on work experience at Raspberry Pi HQ

Talks

I attended a couple of the talks, Jim Darby showed us how to use Mathematic and how it can help with solving / checking Maths problems.  

Next up was Gareth Davies from 4tronix talked about his Pi2Go project for the Raspberry Pi which was interesting and finally Jim Darby spoke about the dangers of buying items from China on eBay.

CamJam July 2014

On Saturday 5^th July I travelled up to Cambridge to attend my second Raspberry Jam which was held at the Institute of Astronomy.  

I was helping out with the Basic Electronics & Python workshop so when I arrived I was given a “Jam Maker” badge.  I had some time to kill, so I looked around at the Show and Tell stuff which people were starting to setup up and the Marketplace.

“Jam Maker” (not somebody who makes jam, it’s our name for people who set-up and marshal at the CamJam event)

Adam was showing his portable Pi with a full sized keyboard.

Brian Corteil had his Naughty or Nice Machine, an Easter Bunny which poo’d chocolate eggs which had been pimped up with some extra lights and an internet connected giraffe mood lamp.

Alex Bienek from Cambridge Robotics Ltd had his robotics project code named Project Claude on display which uses a Raspberry Pi,  a custom made add-on board powered by an Xilinx FPGA and a couple of webcam’s.  

Paul Brown had his kickstarter funded MyPiFi LED board on display which is a low cost add-on board for the Raspberry Pi.  It had has 3 LED’s and push switch on very small PCB.

The Raspberry Pi Club from Stewards Academy had a couple of Pi related projects on display including PiSketch which is like Etch A Sketch  but allows you to draw on a screen, controlled by 2 variable resistors.  They also had a Robot arm controlled via glove and sensor on your arm so when you moved your arm the robot moves pretty cool. The Tidy Pi was on display, this very neat custom solution for holding your Raspberry Pi and associated cables. I spoke to David Whale about his simple Arduino based add-on control board for standard PC’s amongst other things.

  

Nevil Hunt from innovations in education had the Seven Segments of Pi, PiTrol and PiDapter on display. The PiTrol is a bit like a games controller with several push buttons, 2 LEDs and a mini joystick. The PiDapter allows you to connect two PiTrol’s to a single Raspberry Pi.

Alex Eames from RasPi.tv had his HDMIPi Screen on display. He was also selling some of his RasPiO breakout boards, Port Labels and Duino board.

Carl Monk had a couple of Raspberry Pi projects on display which included Snake and Steady Hands.  The Snake game was controlled by a joystick, had a 8 x 8 matrix for the main display and  used 2  x  seven segment displays for recording the scores.   The Steady Hands game used a Pibrella which connected to the wire loop and a RGB LCD for showing the scores.

   

Priopia had a selection of I/O boards available for the Raspberry Pi

Workshops

The first workshop I helped with was the Basic Electronics with Python, this was led by Alex Eames. We showed people how to control LED’s, Buzzers and read switch inputs with Python but as the LED worksheets took up most of the time we didn’t do much with the switches or buzzers.

After this I had a short break until the next workshop so I listened to some the talks in the lecture theatre.

After my break I helped out with the Seven Segments of Pi workshop, this was led by Nevil Hunt. We showed people how to write some Python code to make a very simple electronic dice using the Seven Segments of Pi.

Finally I helped out with the Python PiCamera with GPIO this was led by Ben Nuttall. We showed people how to control the PiCamera with a simple push button circuit and some basic Python code.

Talks

The first talk was given by Alex Bienek who talked about the development of his Raspberry Pi powered robotics project which was interesting.

Next up Michael Horne talked about PiWars which is coming up in December, this will be challenge based robotics competition. Michael also showed off the Camjam Edukit which is a small electronics kit containing a breadboard, a couple of LED’s, switch and a buzzer.

After this Ben Nuttall talked about how you can contribute to the Raspberry Pi learning GitHub resource. The Raspberry Pi Foundation use GitHub for their resources.

Nevil Hunt was up next, he showed us a finished PiTrol game controller and talked about the various functions the controller has.