The Headless Pi continues…

So the saga of running my Raspberry Pi computers in my classroom, without monitors, carries on. In this post I will explain how I set up the 4tronix LED dongle to show the IP address of my Pi. The first thing to note is that there are 6 male pins on this board and that […]

Headless Pi shows & speaks IP address

Using FTP software to transfer files from Pi SD card to windows network This week I wanted my students to experiment with their Pi computers and capture screenshots for a word processed report on their tinkering. We are using the Pi & their SD cards with other classes, so I wanted a way for them to […]

Monitoring Twitter with the Raspberry Pi and activating a ‘real world’ component

For over a year, I have been trying to get a Twittering Toy to work with a PiFace. Just like this Twittering Chick project from this book by Andrew Robinson and Mike Cook. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to work. Of the 3 packages that needed to be installed, 1 of them seemed […]

Codebug Tinkering

So this week I got myself a CodeBug (website here). I’ve been really impressed by this little board. With the launch of the BBC Microbit so shrouded in mystery, I wanted to have a go at using a similar device before the Microbits make it into school’s like mine. I figure that if I can […]

Ipswich Raspberry Jam

As I’m from that part of the world originally, I thought I’d make a journey over to the inaugural raspberry jam taking place in Ipswich library. I had noticed that the programme still listed 2 slots as ‘TBA’ so I contacted the organisers offering to do a talk about using the Pi Camera for beginners. […]

Growing Artificial Geodes from Alum

I had the privilege of attending a course at the UK National Science Learning Centre on Wednesday and Thursday this week. The focus of my training was in using the Raspberry Pi in key stage three science lessons (11-14 year olds). In particular, we were looking at using a Pi Camera to film time-lapse and slow-motion video. […]

Slow Motion Icing Sugar Burning

I went to the Science Museum in London some time ago and saw a brilliant demo attempting to show that sugar has a lot of energy in it. Having tried to set fire to a pile of granulated sugar on a heat-proof mat, the demonstrator then tried the same with icing sugar, which of course has smaller grains. […]

My talk at CamJam 6th June

I only live about 45 minutes away from Cambridge, the home of the Raspberry Pi, and kept meaning to get over there to attend ‘CamJam,’ the Cambridge Raspberry Pi ‘Jam’ but never quite succeeding. Well earlier this month I finally did so. Having signed up to attend, I then saw that the organisers were looking for people to […]

Cress Egg-Head Time-lapse

I wanted to have a go at doing my first time-lapse project with a Raspberry Pi, so went to the Raspberry Pi website to try out their cress egg-head project. https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/cress-egg-heads Having boiled my egg, I asked my canteen chef to do the delicate task of slicing the egg open for me, I found a […]

Slow Motion Alcohol Burn

In our Chemistry labs at school, we have an infamous demo we love to do, called the ‘Whoosh Bottle.’ A small quantity of Ethanol is placed in a big water cooler bottle, swilled around the inside and then, with lab coats, safety specs on and safety screens in place, the top of the bottle is […]