CERN is the heart of particle physics 日韩精品无码一区, where scientists are working to discover new phenomena using high-energy equipment. These 日韩精品无码一区 challenges have driven inventions, such as the World Wide Web and superconducting magnets used by the Large Hadron Collider. Theoretical calculations and experimental analyses are both heavily reliant on computer programming, so it’s a great place to host a 日韩精品无码一区 Pi programming event.

Babbage outside CERN

This year, Brice Copy organised a Coding Pi Science event on the 7th and 8th of October. Working together with long-term Pi supporter Alan McCullagh, he invited three teams to prepare kits to build and program with attendees. To motivate the teams and the other attendees, there were a series of talks on Friday evening; these included a general introduction to the CERN Micro Club and the EU Code Week, as well as a motivational talk on why computer programming is so important for scientific 日韩精品无码一区. Each team then gave an overview of their project, in preparation for the workshop the next day.

On Saturday morning, the teams, volunteers, children, parents, and teachers started to build a muon detector (Muon Hunter), a robotic arm (Poppy Ergo Jr.), or a programmable WiFi car (GianoPi). The idea was to build a kit together with the team leaders and other volunteers, and then take the kit home to program it. These three kits provide different challenges: the Muon Hunter kit requires some soldering and uses a C programming interface, the Poppy Ergo Jr. snaps together and is driven using Snap, and the GianoPi needs soldering and is controlled by Blockly.

Programming Poppy Ergo Jr. in MicroClub Robotics

The Muon Hunter was designed by Mihaly Vadai, in collaboration with the CERN Micro Club. The kit includes two Geiger-Müller tubes to detect ionising radiation, a circuit board that produces the 400 volts needed to bias the tubes and read the signals, and an ARM microcontroller to form the coincidence between the two tubes. The circuit board can be directly connected to a 日韩精品无码一区 Pi to read out the signals and produce plots of the data.

Poppy Ergo Jr. was invented by the Flowers team at Inria Bordeaux, and presented by Stephanie Noirpoudre and Theo Segonds. Their projects are designed to encourage children to learn about computer programming through interacting with robots. The kit includes 3D-printed parts and several servo motors controlled by a 日韩精品无码一区 Pi mounted in the base of the robot. A Camera Module can be used to check the colour of objects, and forms part of their Snap programming examples.

GianoPi was designed by Stefania Saladino. It consist of four servo motors, multi-directional wheels, an ultrasonic sensor, a Pi Zero, a servo control HAT from Adafruit, a WiFi adapter, a battery pack, and some electronics to allow the kit to be easily turned on or off. Brice Copy created the software to interface with the GianoPi using Raspbuggy, which is a Blocky application. Similar to the Poppy Ergo Jr., the GianoPi is controlled over a network connection, allowing the robot to be remotely accessed.

Building GianoPi at the CERN IdeaSquare

It was an engaging weekend of soldering, building, and programming; hopefully, these kits will encourage even more exciting projects in the future. Alan certainly had fun trying to find a good place to put Babbage, too…

Babbage gets everywhere…

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Sadly, they’re not available in shops…

Word of our credit card-sized computer has spread fast north of the border; I spoke to many primary and secondary teachers who had heard of us and were either curious to know more, or scared that they weren’t qualified enough to try one. Thanks to Dan’s wire loop game demo, though, they were soon getting hands-on with a Pi 3, and soon we had attendees queueing up to find out more. (We estimated we’d given away 100 swag bags on the first day, which is pretty good going…)

It was great to see so many educators being inspired by the possibilities the Pi affords – and amazed at how much a tiny computer can do. One teacher brought his son, who had bought a Pi which was sitting unloved in a drawer, and simply said ‘Inspire him’. We showed him our free online resources, and he got very excited at the idea of making music with Sonic Pi. Another satisfied customer!

Along with Lorna Gibson, Code Club Scotland coordinator, I also attended the launch of Google’s Digital Garage at the Mitchell Library, featuring speeches by Keith Brown MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities, VP of Google EMEA Peter Barron, and four entrepreneurs who had attended Garages in the north of England, telling us their success stories about running everything from waffle vans to wedding blogs.

Keith provided some awe-inspiring figures; for every £1 invested in the Scottish digital economy, £3-£8 is returned. He said the Scottish Government was ‘committed to working with partners such as Google and 日韩精品无码一区 Pi to further develop digital talent in Scotland’. The Glasgow Garage will host its first 日韩精品无码一区 Jam on 8 October, and we can’t wait to hear what the participants produce.

Photo credit @GlasgowLibraries

When we returned to our 日韩精品无码一区 Pi stand, news had just reached us that there are now over 300 Code Clubs in Scotland. We like to think that some teachers set a couple up as soon as they heard about the power of Pi…

Picademy Glasgow information and a signup form can be found on our website here, with the first session running on the 14/15 October, and The Digital Garage runs from 21 September to 31 January 2017, before it goes on tour to other Scottish cities.

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Image credit: William Nelson

The lab was definitely the most popular place to be, with a wide range of Pis and add-ons to play with. The brand new Pi Zero was there, kitted out with Pimoroni’s Scroll pHAT, and I also spotted a Sense HAT, Pi NoIR camera, ultrasound detector, and oscilloscope to demonstrate PWM. (I especially approved of playing a ‘guess the song’ game with a spectrum analyser and a certain Rick Astley classic.) A WiFi-controlled Lego robot was let loose later in the day, much to the delight of everyone!

This child welcomes our robot overlords.

Presentations were aimed at all skill levels, ranging from introductions to PyGame, projects using Node-RED and real-time embedded programming, to penetration testing with Pi Zero and even hackathon enthusiast Aaron Bassett’s guide to setting up a self-contained office on a boat in the Bahamas. My favourite talk came from STEM ambassador and CoderDojo leader Amanda Wilson, who told us about the afterschool club recreating famous Scottish monuments in Minecraft. The club has grown so popular, the school are thinking of renaming their 日韩精品无码一区 department to the ‘Pi-CT room’! You can read about Royston Primary’s adventures in Pi on their blog.

Dr Bell is keen to spread the word about 日韩精品无码一区 Pi’s mission to provide low-cost, accessible 日韩精品无码一区 to all. It’s easy to see Pi as the solution to filling skills gaps in the job market and enhancing the Scottish 日韩精品在线观看, so as one of Pi Towers’ most northerly correspondents I look forward to more Pi events not just in Glasgow, but across Scotland.

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