ComputersElectronicsLinuxProgrammingRaspberryPi

Raspberry Pi 6th Birthday – Birmingham Raspberry Jam 2018

Today is the weekend of the Raspberry Pi 6th Birthday. In the past the birthday has been celebrated with a large Raspberry Jam in Cambridge (organized by Mike Horne and Tim Richardson). I have been to the earlier birthday celebrations, supporting workshops run by others, giving presentations and running workshops.

For 2018 the birthday celebrations have been expanded to enable more people to take part with over 100 Raspberry Jams around the world. The nearest to me is the West Midlands Raspberry Jam at Birmingham which is organized by Tim Wilson and Spencer Organ. I volunteered to give a short talk and run two workshops at the event.

Unfortunately due to a large amount of snow and safety concerns the event has had to be postponed. The event will hopefully be rescheduled in a few weeks time.

In the meantime I thought I would still make my presentation and worksheets available as planned during the weekend. I still plan to give run these when the Birmingham Raspberry Jam can be rescheduled, but they may be useful in the meantime.

Creating Games on the Raspberry Pi – Space Asteroids

The talk and workshops are all on creating a game for the Raspberry Pi, from creating your own sprites to coding in Scratch or Python Pygame Zero and adding a controller using simple electronics.

The game is a cross between Space Invaders and Asteroids. All the sprites are created from scratch and programmed to interact with electronic button switches and an LED.

Talk on creating sprites using Blender

This is a short talk about what Blender is and how it can be used as a tool when looking to create computer games.

Raspberry Pi Birthday 2018 - Blender talk
Raspberry Pi Birthday 2018 – Presentation notes for talk on using Blender to create Sprites for computer games.

Workshop – Create Space Asteroids, physical computing computer game for Raspberry Pi – Scratch Version

This worksheet is created for a version of the Space Asteroids game that is created in Scratch 2 on the Raspberry Pi.

It’s designed for those young and old who have preferably done a bit of Scratch programming before, but want to take first steps in physical computing or designing an interactive game. It’s also suitable for complete beginners to Scratch, who may need some help to get started with using Scratch.


Space Asteroids physical computing game for the Raspberry Pi - Scratch version  2
Worksheet – Space Asteroids physical computing game for the Raspberry Pi – Scratch version 2

Workshop – Create Space Asteroids, physical computing computer game for Raspberry Pi – Python Pygame Zero version

This worksheet is created for a version of the Space Asteroids game that is created in Pygame Zero (Python 3) on the Raspberry Pi.

This is designed for older students and adults that have already done some programming in Python, but want to learn about designing games in pygame zero or how to connect to simple electronics using gpio zero.


Space Asteroids physical computing game for the Raspberry Pi - Pygame Zero and GPIO Zero (Python 3)
Worksheet – Space Asteroids physical computing game for the Raspberry Pi – Pygame Zero and GPIO Zero (Python 3)