Anyone who has been following the list recently will be aware of Tom, from Holsworthy who has been setting up a Coderdojo in Holsworthy.
Today, it was announced, this is now all set up. Please go here for more information. I have added the details to the other events page.
We wish Tom best of luck with this venture and hope that it grows and does well, which I am sure it will.
Paul
This was posted to Diaspora. I am posting or embedding the link to the youtube video here. Review of Elementary OS Loki.
Running time about 15 mins.
Website : https://elementary.io/
You can subscribe to the channel and receive more Linux related videos as they are released.
The next Torbay tech jam is on the 14th November at Paignton Library 1 – 3 pm
More details are on the website
Open to all ages / abilities.
I am hoping to be able to present a mini workshop on Interfacing the Raspberry Pi to an LED, it is a start and hopefully the work shops can build up to more complex projects over time. Also I want to do the same thing with Arduino.
The next Exeter Raspberry Pi Jam is on 7th November 10 – 12 at Exeter Library, Rougemont room, first floor.
Check out the website for more information
Exeter Library are holding another Build a robot workshop over 1/2 term.
Today saw another really good Pi jam in Exeter.
Demonstrations included a Pi based home automation system, which also included a webcam which takes a photo of whoever presses the doorbell and e-mails you a picture.
Led Traffic lights ( I think this is PIC based) – Tom Brough
Toms latest robot (crazy Ivan) this moves around, and can turn randomly and move forward again.
Sadly marco mark 2 had a problem, so was here but just not working as planned.
Pi Ready for eager coders to use.
Lots of people with new Pi’s in need of set up. so I did quite a bit of support here, also minecraft-pi was popular and people seemed to like my modification which drops tnt blocks over grass.
Robots will make another appearance at next weeks Torbay Pi Jam 14th March, Paignton Library from 13:00
It seems Lenovo the PC / Laptop makers have been installing spyware on their PC’s without the users knowledge or consent
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31533028
I think this is a good reason to either re-install your OS when you get a new computer. Normally you get install / restore media or the option to make this, however in this case if the spyware is pre-installed it could be on these restore cds. so you will be no better off, you can possibly get a removal tool, but these removal tools usually end up putting other malware on to your computer, removing it is a PITA.
A BETTER OPTION
Install a free and open source OS such as Mint, Ubuntu or a pure free software and take back control of your computer.
Join a GNU / Linux user group so you can learn more.
This is also a good reason why you need to know more about what your computer is doing..
This months Pi jam was a real gem, lots of things being demoed and some excellent progress being made with various projects.
Tom, brought along his Marco 2 robot, which if you are following this blog or are a regular attendee of jams. This has now been updated to allow control via a web interface.
More information on this is on the Feb 2015 Exeter Jam write up blog post. So I will let people go there for more info.
Tom also brought along Freddie and after some basic set up this worked fine, following a green ball with his eyes.
Video taken back in July
Doodle bot also made an appearence this is really good as it works without any user interaction and can draw (or try) to draw what it has been programmed to.
We also helped a lady get up and running with her new pi,
Here is the pi being installed from the NOOBS install tool
And a picture of the pi running the Raspbian OS after install.
I also demonstrated my Minecraft Pi coding with python. I will post a video to youtube and put this on my website blog.
We also helped out a user who had an older install of GNU / Linux on his PC (Debian) and wanted a newer GNU / Linux installed so flash player would function properly.
We were unble to help fully however he will be back at the next jam iwth his PC backed up so we can install Linuxmint 17.1
One of our younger members also worked on getting a cluster of computers up and running and thanks to a router / switch donated by Rick at Wifispark he got 2 laptops and my Pi up and running and proved that by sharing the load calculations can be performed quicker. There is a dedicated page for this on the website. Where results will be posted shortly.
We also had a Dan from the TDA drop in to see what was going on with the view on how they can help further and perhaps involve some of the local hi tech companies.
So a BIG thank you for everyone involved today and everyone who came along to support the event. Hopefully next month will be more of the same and perhaps even bigger and better.
We also had Sarah from Inspiring Dreams, Achieving Change, who offered to help promote what we are doing.
The word on the Pi jams IS spreading. which is a good thing.
See everyone on the 14th March 2015 at Paignton Library. 13:00 to 15:00
Here is a poster for the January Pi jam. If anyone is able to print off or display on their website I would be very grateful as this really helps to promote.
Another pi jam today and it went very well highlights as follows
We helped on visitor get up and running and ended up re-creating an sd card with raspbian (1)on in order to get the Pi up and running. In the end Tom got everything up and running, with some help from myself as I seem to have an array of adapters and other bits and pieces which always seem to come in handy. Including various images on my netbook.
Our younger visitors were busy with various projects Arduino (6) hacking and getting Arch (2) Linux up and running in a virtual machine, (Virtual box) (3))
I have loaned out my pi-liter (4) to one of the younger visitors so he can demonstrate at school
1.) http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
2.) https://www.archlinux.org/
3.) https://www.virtualbox.org/
5.) http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/pi-liter-8-led-strip-for-the-raspberry-pi/
Support repositories for the pi liter
https://github.com/zleap/RaspberryPI
and
https://github.com/zleap/compgroup
Which has some ladder board source code, but should demonstrate the use of the GPIO.
You can also download the pi liter data sheet from the website http://shop.ciseco.co.uk/pi-liter-8-led-strip-for-the-raspberry-pi/
However you DO need to install python-pip with
sudo apt-get install python-pip
For some reason the data sheet instructions missed out this step.
The next Pi jam is on 10th January so if you get a Pi for Xmas come along and we can help you get started or show you what you can do with it. We don’t BYTE 🙂 and are happy to help.