Tuesday the 7th April 2015 saw a packed CARS club night at Oaklands Museum in Chelmsford.
In a meeting of two halves, the evening started with a talk by Peter G0DZB on the Raspberry Pi. This tiny computer costs around £30 and is an exceptionally versatile bit of kit.
Peter outlined the basics of the Pi, what’s on the board, how it can be used, and some of the applications that it can be used for.
Peter is a regular at the Danbury Skills Night, and is known for his enthusiasm for the Raspberry Pi – In his talk, he covered the history of this small-but-powerful board and why getting cheap computers back into schools is so important for stimulating the new generation of programmers and engineers.
The Raspberry Pi also offers great potential for radio amateurs, including use with kit such as the Fun cube Dongle. The newer generation Pi boards pack the power for a range of cool amateur radio projects, making use of wi-fi, GPS, Bluebooth, SDRs and more. As well as being handy tools for programmers looking to try new things, they can also be used in place of desktop computers too – Peter demonstrated this by using a PI as a DVD player, and also displaying a loop of one of Essex Ham’s promotional videos.
After the teabreak, a Raspberry Pi featured as the star prize in the CARS raffle, being won by David M0HBV.
Next was the second talk of the night, by David Whale, on the subject of STEM Clubs, and how the Raspberry Pi has been introduced to schools.
The STEM scheme sees people from industry and technology fields going into schools to help with projects or clubs. Standing for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, the network of STEM Ambassadors continues to grow, helping schools to focus on technology and innovation. David is a very active STEM ambassador, and he gave some excellent examples of how to get started with schools STEM clubs – including a great RFID demo with a Pi playing different audio clips when a matching card was presented to the RFID reader.
You can find more information about STEM, and how to become an ambassador at www.stemnet.org.uk – Five Essex Ham members are STEM registered, and some of us are looking at ways to get amateur radio into schools via the STEM network.
For more on what David’s up to, follow him on Twitter: @whaleygeek or go to blog.whaleygeek.co.uk
Well done to Peter and David for two excellent talks – with just under 60 people attending, this was a very good turnout, showing that there is significant interest in innovating with the Raspberry Pi, and finding new ways to involve youngsters in technology, science and engineering.
