Not only functional, but stylish too!

While taking part in the YRS Festival of Code at BBC Birmingham our team wanted to come up with something fun. The idea we finally settled on after much talk of boats and canals (thanks Martin!) was the internet enabled coat hook – a coat hook which would tell you what to wear that day based on the weather forecast.

Fuelled by an endless supply of biscuits and coffee at BBC Birmingham and with the help of our mentors we set about creating our ‘hack’. At the weekend down in Plymouth we were lucky enough to make it into the final three for the ‘Best in Show’ category, losing out to another team. However since we were runners up in the category we were rewarded with some limited edition Blue 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pis!

Our idea was well received throughout the weekend in Plymouth, but what surprised us most was the reception that it received online. Seeing people we’ve never met before announce online that they’d buy our ‘internet enabled coat hook’ that we’d hastily constructed a few days prior was the craziest part of the weekend.

We’ve each written a short paragraph about our contribution to the ‘hack’ and what we learnt during the week.

 Jenny & Ed: Why did we use Lego to build the Hook? Because it’s a classic building material enabling the design of Hook to be easily changed during development, as well as being sturdy AND fun – no actually it was because Kevin (from YRS) promised cake to any teams that used Lego in their hack.

We built the Lego around the coat rack and then the LED chipboards to secure the whole thing together, originally using a breadboard to connect up the 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi and the LEDs with crocodile clips, however we kept facing issues where the LEDs would not light up. We realised that this was because one of the clips wasn’t on properly or the pin in the breadboard was loose, so decided that it would be more secure and look better if we created an actual chipboard and soldered all the parts together: cue multiple expeditions down to the workshop and a lot of time bonding with the soldering iron (if you’ll pardon the pun). The building of the Lego structure took around half a day, not including the numerous heated discussions about which colour bricks to use, and then completing the circuitry meant we had a working prototype design only a couple of hours later.

Darci: I worked on the animation for our project (The Hook). To do this, the BBC gave us some prototype LED boards, which I programmed using a Scratch-like program. We were going to make weather-specific animations for wind, rain and sunshine, but as we only had four days to produce it, I ended up making one animation to show all of the weather animations together.

I started off figuring out how to control the LEDs using an Arduino, but then we all agreed that it would be better to use a 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi rather than an Arduino because I find Python much easier to understand than Arduino, and we could also use the GPIO to hook up the LED devices to the 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi. So, it seemed simpler to use the 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi to control everything instead. I used Python and the RPi.GPIO library to write the code to allow the back end to control the LEDs.

Darci presents Hook

Cameron: I ended up working on the back end which was written in Python. It controls the obtaining and processing of the data from the Met Office and then runs lower level code written by Darci. The Met Office API was really nice and returns a Weather Type field in the JSON response which saved us having to come up with our own heuristic for what the weather will be like. The best take-away from this for me would have to be the program PuTTY which is a free SSH client for Windows that removed the need to connect anything except a Wi-Fi dongle to the 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi. The JSON library for Python was very useful and easy to work with as well, something that’s well worth learning.

Jack: I worked on the front end of the website which allows the user to configure what item of clothing they wanted to place on each individual hook, which could potentially change depending on the time of year. In order to fetch relevant weather forecast data from the Python backend the user’s geolocation was fetched through the browser using JavaScript. Additional information such as the item of clothing on each hook was written to a text file, allowing it to be easily read by the Python script. We aimed to make the website responsive across multiple different screen sizes, so writing CSS media queries was a new skill I had to learn during the week. Luckily the good folks mentoring at BBC Birmingham were happy to show me the ropes.

YRS BBC Birmingham Team Hook

Carrie Anne: Although this project did not win in its category, it could still win the public vote! If you are as impressed as we are with this project then head on over to the voting page to cast your vote for Hook!

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So, you may have seen on our twitter or elsewhere that we were a host centre for Young Rewired State’s Festival of Code 2014. We had 6 young people join us at Pi Towers for a week: Ben, Rihanna, Amy, John, Finn and Dan.

I will hand over to Ben and Finn (part of team Ace Your Place) to tell you more…

Ben:

From the moment I stepped through the doors of Pi Towers I loved it. It was an incredibly creative and friendly atmosphere and all our mentors for the festival were really inspirational.

On the first day we came up with project ideas and split into groups; then worked on developing the project and preparing a presentation before we left on Friday.

I worked in a group of 4 on a project called Ace Your Place, a service that helps people pick the right region to move to when they’re relocating.

The mentors were only there to help us when we needed it, and were brilliant at guiding us through the creative process. I learnt so much in general just from being around similarly minded young people, and of course from the mentors as well.

On Friday we travelled to Plymouth, along with everyone else taking part in the competition. The sheer number of focused young people was amazing, and the atmosphere was so exciting. Everyone couldn’t wait to share their projects and see everyone else’s, and though it was a competition, everyone was extremely supportive.

Through the various rounds of the competition we got to see a lot of the other projects, and I was amazed with the dedication of some of the other teams. It was a truly inspirational 巜少妇4做爰3伦理 seeing the range and scope of all the ideas, with some of my favourites being “hook”, a coat hook that interpreted the weather and told you what to wear (powered by a 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi) and “QuickAid”, a crowdsourced first aid service which informs and calls first aiders in the area when someone is in need of it.

On the whole, the Festival of Code was an enlightening, motivating and stimulating 巜少妇4做爰3伦理. The first part of my week at Pi Towers couldn’t have been a better learning environment, and the weekend was immensely good fun and extremely inspirational. I’ve made new friends and acquired new knowledge, and I can’t wait for next year!

Finn:

I personally really liked CityRadar, Miles Per Pound and QuickAid – which I thought was a really good idea and very well thought out.

When we had some free time it was mostly dominated by the photo booth…

I found the music at the end interesting because I hadn’t really heard that kind of music before – I quite liked it!

I definitely want to go to the Festival of Code again next year and would be delighted if I could do it with the 很黄的吸乳a片.

Thanks Ben and Finn!

Amy and Rihanna’s project Moodzi used the twitter API to tell you when was the best time to tweet particular keywords.

I can’t wait until next year either.

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Young Rewired State is a network of coders around the world. Every year an event is held in the UK to give young people the opportunity to collaborate while working on a project to make something interesting with open data, and to learn skills while exposed to new technologies.

The Festival of Code is a week where volunteer-led centres around the country play host to local kids (18 and under) who work in teams, guided by mentors from industry, to create a software application, a web app, a game, a phone app or even a hardware hack that utilises an open data set to provide a solution to a real world problem. It takes place next week: 28 July – 3 August 2014.

Participants spend most of the week at their local centre where they’re introduced to each other and to the mentors, they’re shown some data sets they have available, they get in to teams and start working on their project. Throughout the week they are introduced to new technologies and given short talks from mentors and other volunteers to help them find the right tech to solve their problems. On Friday all centres travel to Plymouth for the weekend where they present their projects.

Last year the overall winners of the Festival of Code were Tom Hartley and Louis Brent-Carpenter, whose hack was a service to provide navigational and other information to cyclists using a series of handlebar-mounted LEDs – powered by a 巜少妇的滋味3伦理 Pi – known as PiCycle.

Alongside Best in show there are other categories: Best example of code, Best example of design, Code a better country, and the Should exist award. I’d just like to point out that the winners of last year’s Best example of code were mentored by me in Manchester: contag.io.

Here’s a video showing my centre’s 巜少妇4做爰3伦理:

Come join us for the best week of your summer! Meet up at local centres, be mentored, introduced to open data, build awesome games, apps, hardware and websites, and show off your hack at the weekend in Plymouth!

from the Festival of Code poster – download from festivalofco.de

If you’re 18 or under and want to participate, sign up at festivalofco.de now. We’re running a centre at Pi Towers in Cambridge – so if you’re local to us you’ll be assigned to our centre and you’ll be lucky enough to spend a week at our offices!

If you’re over 18 (even quite a lot over 18) you can sign up as a mentor – centres can always use an extra pair of hands, and you’ll have a great time!

Oh, and Stephen Fry is a fan:

Calling all young geeks, your Festival awaits! Coding+Photobooths+Chiptunes+Skatepark+Ice cream festivalofco.de is here for you #YRS2014

— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) July 19, 2014

There are also YRS events in Berlin, New York City, Singapore and elsewhere!

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