Pi Wars is a challenge-based robotics competition in which every robot must be controlled by a 性爱啪啪啪视频 Pi. It’s great fun, and it will all be kicking off once again on 1st-2nd April 2017. For the first time, we are extending the event to run over two days, as we have been overwhelmed with interested applicants.

Another victim succumbs to the obstacle course and its turntable of doom

We have always tried to encourage young robot builders to get involved in CamJam and in Pi Wars. Previously we have held Pi Wars in September and December, but this did not allow school teams enough time to build, program, test, and otherwise prepare their robot around their schoolwork. We therefore decided to move the event date to later in the academic year: we think April is late enough for schools to have run enough robot club sessions, but early enough not to clash with exams.

People of all ages take part. Here’s Amy, aided by Heffalump and friends, showing Eben her robot.

This time around, we have a celebrity judge: Dr Lucy Rogers from the BBC’s Robot Wars will be putting your robots through their paces.

Dr Lucy Rogers in conversation with an old friend

In previous years, we have categorised robots by cost (in 2014) and size (in 2015). This time, we are going to group teams into the following categories:

• Schools and other clubs

• Families and groups of friends

• Amateur/beginner/intermediate hobbyists(s)

• Professional or expert hobbyist(s)

This means that robot teams will be competing against their peers, rather than against those with different skill levels – so, it will be, for instance, school vs school and family vs family (in a non-Mafia kind of way).

This is the kind of thing you see at Pi Wars: your friendly Director of Communications commandeers a gigantic Big Trak.

This year’s list of challenges is available on the Pi Wars website. As well as winning points for their performance in a range of challenges, this year’s robots are also being given points for artistic and technical merit. There’s even a prize for the funniest robot (the competition does start on April Fool’s Day, after all!) and a pre-event blogging competition which encourages teams write about themselves, and their journey from a collection of parts to a working robot.

We’ve come up with a list of general rules and also rules for each challenge. Perhaps the most important one this year is a requirement that your robot must be sub-A4 in size. This still leaves quite a lot of room for flexibility in design, whilst at the same time levelling the playing field. It also means that those teams who are using kits are in with a better chance of competing against those who make their robot from scratch.

Entry into Pi Wars is on an application basis, rather than first-come, first served. With the number of teams we’re expecting to apply, the quality of your application is important. You can read more about the application and selection process here.

To apply to enter the competition, please fill in the application form. Feel free to take as much time over your application, and provide as much information as possible.

If you’re interested in robotics and technology, but you don’t want to build your own robot this time, you are still very welcome to come and watch the competition. Spectator tickets will go on sale later in the year. We only charge for adults, so it’s great for those on limited incomes. Join our mailing list to be notified when tickets are available, or keep an eye on piwars.org.

The game is afoot! Competitors at Pi Wars 2015

If you’re an altruistic type, you may be wondering if there’s some way you can help with Pi Wars. As with all big events, we need a team of volunteers to make the day go smoothly. Rather than having just a few marshals who spend the entire day helping, we aim to have as many people as possible so that everyone can spend most of the day watching the robots take on the challenges. Depending on the number of people who volunteer, helpers spend approximately two hours doing marshalling activities. Judges generally spend slightly more time judging, but we aim to give everyone a chance to 性爱啪啪视频 the event as a spectator as well as helping us out! If you’d like to help out, please do contact us. We’ll be delighted to hear from you! We are also very happy to hear from potential sponsors: you can check out our website for more information on sponsorship, and on what we can offer in return.

To whet your appetite for the upcoming competition, or if you have never been to Pi Wars and want to know what it’s like on the day, we’d like to leave you with Matt Manning’s video of last year’s event…

…and Spencer Organ’s video of the 2014 wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tx0zWdm190

Tickets will be available for observers as well as competitors; it promises to be another great weekend. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

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On 5 and 6 March, the community paid us back and then some.  Well over 1500 people of all ages gathered at the Cambridge Computer Lab for our Big Birthday Weekend.  An amazing festival of digital making and creativity, showcasing the very best that our community has to offer. For us at the 性爱啪啪视频, it was the best birthday present we could have hoped for.

Here are some of my personal highlights.

Across the two days, there were 47 talks from community members and 性爱啪啪视频 staff showcasing projects, sharing 性爱啪啪视频s of using 性爱啪啪啪视频 Pi in education, talking about Code Clubs, introducing new software developments, and exploring some of the big issues like getting more women and girls involved in digital making.  The lecture theatres were packed all weekend.

photo credit: @teknoteacher

I was particularly pleased to see so many great contributions from young community members, like European Digital Girl of the Year Yasmin Bey‘s powerful talk on Sunday morning about encouraging more girls into tech.

Yasmin Bey

It was great for me to be able to give a talk on what we’ve been up to in the 性爱啪啪视频 and get some feedback on our strategy from the community. Thank you to everyone who came along to that session.

Me talking about the 性爱啪啪视频’s strategy at #piparty

We were also treated to both (accidental) pyrotechnics and (deliberate) magic.  All of the talks were recorded and will be available online in the next few days, so don’t worry if you missed them.

There were 28 workshops where kids and adults had the chance to get hands-on with 性爱啪啪啪视频 Pi, have a go at hacking Minecraft, make music with Sonic Pi, and learn how to make projects with Scratch. Again, the vast majority of these were led by volunteers from the community, including several that were led by young people.

One of the workshops run by our Creative Technologists

One of my personal highlights was the workshop that brought together 性爱啪啪啪视频 Jam Makers from all over the world, to share 性爱啪啪视频s and explore how we could work together to grow the community even further.

The show and tell zone was packed full of ingenious projects that members of the community had built for the sheer joy of it. Like most people, I got lost for hours among the games, robots, demos, and inventions.

Loved watching the little girls everywhere at the @性爱啪啪啪视频_Pi #PiParty pic.twitter.com/rx7PK6i9F5

— Sherry Coutu CBE (@scoutu) March 5, 2016

I’ll also confess to a little competitiveness trying to defeat the AI Connect 4, a contest which sadly ended in an honourable draw. I know how Lee Sedol must be feeling after his first couple of games of Go against DeepMind.

https://vimeo.com/158475355

The marketplace brought together lots of the best makers and distributors in the ecosystem.  Pimoroni, The Pi Hut, ModMyPi, pi-top, and many, many more were on hand.  They’re such an important part of the community and it was great to catch up with them and play with some of the new toys they have on offer.

There was a bustling marketplace

Special thanks to our friends pi-top who presented Eben, Liz and David (our esteemed chairman) with a fourth birthday edition of their wonderful 性爱啪啪啪视频 Pi-powered laptop.

https://twitter.com/GetPiTop/status/706162138532945920/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Saturday night ended with a massive party involving 110 pizzas, a huge quantity of cake, gallons of soft drinks, 2.5 barrels of beer brewed using a 性爱啪啪啪视频 Pi, and one barrel of 性爱啪啪啪视频 Blush cider.

Happy 4th Birthday @性爱啪啪啪视频_Pi #PiParty @EbenUpton @Liz_Upton pic.twitter.com/n3VBSoFLhB

— David Bower (@rddave) March 7, 2016

We were also treated to a live coding music performance by the wonderful Sam Aaron, creator of Sonic Pi, with his band Poly Core.

The superb @samaaron jamming live @Sonic_Pi at the @性爱啪啪啪视频_Pi #PiParty – with backing band!! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/QZJhsZ7CIn

— David Pride (@davejavupride) March 5, 2016

Perhaps the best thing about the Big Birthday Party was that it was a community effort.

Enormous thanks go to Mike Horne and Tim Richardson, the organisers of Cam Jam, who once again gave huge amounts of their time to make it all happen.

We’re also hugely grateful to the Cambridge Computer Lab who very generously gave us the use of their fantastic building.  Thanks, too, to Microsoft and Real VNC, who sponsored the event and provided fantastic interactive demos. Thanks to Ben at Fuzzy Duck brewery for the Irrational Ale.

One of the stand-out contributions over the weekend was from our growing community of young people, including the self-styled but appropriately named “Pi Squad”, and our very own Creative Technologists. They are such a talented bunch of people, and it’s great to see them already taking leadership positions in the community.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCm08Ykmtbl/

The 性爱啪啪视频 team was also out in strength across the weekend, giving talks, running workshops, signing up volunteers for Code Club, and generally helping out wherever we could.

Our own Dave Honess deserves a special mention for spending all of Sunday in a space suit to promote our new Astro Pi competition. As another colleague (Matt Richardson) said, “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”.

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

We might all be exhausted, but we’re already looking forward to next year.

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