RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near Field Communication) provide the ability for devices to talk to each other by touching them together. This could be between two smart devices or between a smart device to a simple tag embedded into a card or sticker. In my case my requirements were quite basic as I […]

Click the image above for the slides for the Disco Light talk at the Pi Birthday 2016. Worksheet for Raspberry Pi NeoPixel practical session Below is a worksheet giving hands-on with connecting up NeoPixels to a Raspberry Pi using a breadboard. This uses breadboard NeoPixels. These do need a little soldering initially, but once soldered […]

The BBC micro:bit includes an accelerometer which allows you to track the movement of the micro:bit. This means that it can be used to as a controller similar to how the Wii remote control tracks it’s movement through the air. For this project I used the micro:bit as a wired device to control my existing […]

One of the things I’ve been doing with the micro:bit is to have it relay messages to a connected host computer. This is fairly easy within python on a Linux computer (such as the Raspberry Pi) thanks to the pyserial module which supports sending and receiving serial communication over a serial USB device. It’s even […]

The BBC Micro:Bit will be going out to school children in the UK during 2016. In the meantime I have been given a sneak peek as part of the microbit world tour. The aim is to put the micro:bit into the hands of some Python programmers that can find out what is possible and create […]

The Raspberry Pi foundation has made a new Raspberry Pi computer called the PiZero. It’s a smaller version of the version 1 Raspberry Pi that’s been stripped back to the bare essentials with price that’s an amazing $5 (currently £4 in the UK including VAT). Not only that but they are so inexpensive they’ve been […]

I recently spent a day at the Malvern Festival of Innovation – introducing pupils to physical computing and computer programming. The event was in co-operation with STEMNet (who arrange the background checks and provide support) and The Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) (who provided all the materials and equipment on the day). The event […]

We visited the education day on PyconUK again this year (read about last years PyconUK Kids education day). It’s a great day for children to get excited about programming and this year electronics as well. Another new feature of this years education track is that the Raspberry Pi education Skycademy team launched high altitude balloons […]

The Scouts have introduced some new staged activity badges which provide different levels of achievement. One of the new ones they’ve added is the Digital Maker which is all about using making games, programs and robots. The highest stage goes as far as making their own robot using off-the-shelf components, but I was working with […]

Frustrated by the lack of Linux support for an education Robot Arm I bought – I’ve written my own. Other community members had already worked out the code to allow you to program the robot arm yourself in Python, but I wanted something that young children could easily see and interact with. I have therefore […]