Today we started with a little brainstorm about what we want to do this term. We took a little vote about what to tackle today and most people wanted to have a go at building a game.. so that’s what … Continue reading
Creators: Flappy Block Week 1
Bodgers – Pioneers Challenge Results
Hello again Everyone.
I didn’t realize when I posted yesterday that the results of the Pioneers Challenge were out today.
Here is the Raspberry Pi Blog post announcing the winners.
Congratulations to Barry, Kevin and Zack the Zombie Trolls whose project Zombie In The Middle won the We Appreciate What You’re Trying To Do prize. the following is a quote from the website.
“Playing piggy in the middle with zombies sure is a unique way of saving humankind from total extinction! We loved this project idea, and although the Zombie Trolls had a little trouble with their motors, we’re sure with a little more tinkering this zombie-fooling contraption could save us all.”
Well done to the three boys and well done to all the Bodgers because all the Pioneers teams helped each other out, most importantly at the beginning when we were trying to come up with ideas for our entries.
See you all in January.
Declan, Dave and Alaidh
Bodgers – Videos From The Pioneers Challenge and Robot Wars Bodgers Style
Last Saturday we finished up for the break with our Christmas party. We played video of the projects we entered in the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Pioneers Challenge “Only You Can Save Us”. The challenge involved teams working on projects that would help people if there was a zombie apocalypse.
We then gave everyone an opportunity to have a go at a robot wars style game with our Raspberry Pi robots.
Happy Christmas Everyone, we’re really looking forward to next year and building more cool stuff.
Declan, Dave and Alaidh.
Creators Snowy Christmas Challenge
This week you guys amazed us! Kieran and I were blown away by the talent of the ninjas in Creators this week. We set you a task at the start of the session to create a snowy Christmas scene which … Continue reading
Explorers Week 9 – Paint Program
Hi everybody,
Hope you all enjoyed finishing up our drawing program. We made good use of costumes this week to make it look like we were dipping our paint brush in each of the different colours.
We also used a variable similarly to how we used in the Piano Game we made. We made it into a slider and then code select the Pen Size we wanted.
Here are the notes in PDF. CDA-S6-Week_08-Paint
See you next week for something a little Christmas themed!
Martha
Creators: Crawlers with a talent for Art
What did we do? This week in the Creators, our code was full of bugs, but that was okay :)! We created another project with classes and lists, this time creating an insect-like creature with a very simple mind – … Continue reading
Hackers – a Joule Thief and Controlling Motors
In the Hackers group, people worked on two different projects, making a Joule Thief and controlling motors.
Joule Thief
A Joule Thief is a small circuit that can boost the voltage from a small power source. Typically, it is used to power a 3-volt LED from a 1.5 volt battery. Because of how it works, it can continue to light the LED even when the battery would usually be considered to be “out of power”, when its voltage drops below 1v.
Here is a Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief
people in the group found various tutorials online, such as this one from Make Magazine: https://makezine.com/projects/joule-thief-battery-charger/
Motor Control with an Arduino
Continuing our work on Project SABRE, we were figuring out how to control motors.
A simple way to control the speed of a motor is to regulate its input voltage. In Arduino code, you set the output voltage of pins. However, you CANNOT just hook them up to the motor, as it will draw too much current and damage the Arduino.
The solution is to use a transistor: power from a 9V battery or the 5V USB power supply from an Arduino powers the motor with current flowing through the transistor, and we regulate the current flow by applying an appropriate voltage to the middle leg of the transistor.
Two more components are needed: a resistor for the middle leg of the transistor, and a diode to get rid of any voltage spikes that come from the motor acting as a generator if it us spun by hand, or when it is spinning down after current to it is cut.
More details here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-arduino-lesson-13-dc-motors/arduino-code
We also looked into stepper motors, and controlling speed by reading a value from a potentiometer, instead of just typing in a speed: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/StepperSpeedControl
Brilliant Visit by Medtronic to CoderDojo Athenry!
We were delighted to have Medtronic visit us on 18 Nov 2017 at CoderDojo Athenry. It really was a fantastic event, and very professionally organised by Cushla, Mary and the rest of the team from Medtronic, who gave out different-coloured wrist-bands to divide our large ninjas into groups who could view the demos together.
The team set up a great range of demos:
- A special “memory” metal they use to make stents for heart valves
- A Smart TV/Surface Pro to allow you to see how stents work
- VR Headsets to explore blood vessels in augmented reality
- Some experiments that you can try out at home, including how to make a stethoscope and how to make a valve like a heart valve.
In addition, senior software engineer Lorraine and software interns Patrick and David spoke about their experiences of being software engineers in the med-tech industry.
We are very grateful to Medtronic, and in particular our mentor Declan Fox, for organising such a great experience for our ninjas!
Bodgers – Making A Model Of A Heart From A Plastic Bottle.
Hi Everyone,
I don’t have any new notes from the Bodgers group as everyone is still preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. We will be filming the projects for our entries to the Pioneers competition next week so we will have a longer session than usual, we will finish at 3:30pm.
Here is a link to the experiment I was demonstrating for the Medtronic visit. In this video they use sandwich bags to make the valves but you can also use the straight part of a balloon or fingers from disposable gloves.
Here are instructions on how to make the stethoscope Malachy demoed.
See you all next week,
Declan,
Explorers Week 8 – Making a Start on a Paint Program
Hi everybody,
No notes this week, I will wait until we complete the game this Saturday.
Hope you all enjoyed the visit from Medtronic, we really appreciate the volunteers coming out to see us and showing us all the really interesting and exciting things they do….and the lollipops were lovely too.
See you all next week and we will complete our Painting program
Martha
CoderDojo Athenry 