Monthly Archives: May 2018

Hackers – Great Progress on Project SABRE!

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Our Hackers Group at CoderDojo Athenry made great progress last week on Project SABRE (Small Autonomous Battling Robotic Entities), in which two teams (Team DJARS and Team MEASAM) are building battlebots to compete with each other.

Here is a first test of the driving and steering of one of the bots, operated via a 2.4 GHz remote control with DSM2 protocol and an LemonRX receiver interfaced with an Arduino:

(The two teams worked together on the driving/steering code, which they will share.)

Team MEASAM’s bot has a flipper weapon, and they managed to get the actuator operating via the remote control last weekend also:

Meanwhile, Team DJARS have been working on their vertical spinner/grinder, which they are now controlling via a relay switch using the remote control also:

This project is proving to be a great and engaging learning experience!

Bodgers – Coolest Projects UK

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As you may remember from before Christmas Kevin, Zack and Barry won a prize in the Raspberry Pi Pioneers competition, part of that prize was an invitation to Coolest Projects UK which was held in London last Saturday.IMG_20180428_130215

The first thing that struck us when we got there was how small the event was, there was about forty projects there, compared to Coolest Projects in the RDS. However this is the first time that Coolest Projects has been run in the UK so it’s a very good start. We also noticed that at least half the projects were hardware based which reflects the fact that there are more Raspberry Jams etc. than CoderDojos in the UK.

The day started with us setting up our “Piggy In The Middle” project, followed by a very nice speech by Philip Colligan. The lads then demoed their project to the public while they were waiting for the Judges. After the judging was finished there were science shows by Greg Foot and Neil Monteiro as well as stands to keep the kids entertained, Zack and Kevin really enjoyed the huge version of Connect 4 that was there. In what has now become Coolest Projects tradition for Kevin and Zack they had their picture taken again with Philip Colligan CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

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Then it was time for the results, the Mobile category award went to Meriem Ait Ziane for her app of healthy eating recipes and advice as well as support for diabetic people and a personalized diet plan according to your health conditions.

The Games category was won by Hamdan Syed and Amiyan Ezdi. The game they coded is called Calorie Challenge, which challenges you to remember the amount of calories in each meal/snack.

The Website award went to George Hart for his project called “Educelevate”. He designed the website to educate children of all ages on various topics.

The Scratch category was won by to Gabriella Jenkins and Liya John for their game “Toad Ahoy”.

The Hardware category went to Avye Couloute for her project: Voice O’tronik Bot. We were all very impressed by both Avye and her project and were delighted to see her win.

We enjoyed our visit to Coolest Projects UK and we can’t wait for Coolest Projects in the RDS.

Back in Athenry Dave helped the rest of the Bodgers with their projects.