Python,Pibrella and the Raspberry Pi CAS Talk 12th Feb 2014

This evening I did a talk entitled "Python, Pibrella and the Raspberry Pi" at my local CAS group (West Norfolk and Fens).
The talk started off with a quick overview of the GPIO, how to tell which revision Pi you are using. The anatomy of a Python program that uses the GPIO. It was then onto a quick tour of the Pibrella and what it offered the teacher in the classroom. The talk closed with some quick announcements about some up coming events I thought were of interest and a promotion for this blog!
It was then on to the hands on part of the session and people playing with the Pibrella on the Raspberry Pi.
Before the talk I had prepared some activity sheets each concentrating on one of the features of the Pibrella. The sheets are very basic in information they contain, and give a commented Python program for the person doing the activity to type in. After that activity has been completed people are then directed to complete one of the other activity sheets or to try a challenge.
These activity sheets especially the challenges do require some previous experience of programming in Python. And are deliberate in being a lot more challenging.

I also had a mini display of some other boards for the Pi there as well, such as the Piglow, PiLite, LEDBorg with the XLOBorg on a TriBorg!, and a PiFace Controll and Display.

I do get a bit insecure after giving these sort of talks. I keep wondering if people found them useful, did I meet expectations? was it pitched too high? or was it not detailed enough?
I love doing these sort of sessions, I love sharing ideas etc. And doing these CAS sessions fits in with my kind of hippy ideals. I like to help, I don't want anything in return, I'm not doing it for self promotion. I just want to contribute to the good of mankind! And I am hoping that was achieved this evening.

With that in mind here are the ...

Resources from talk

Please feel free to download and re-use and edit to your hearts content to meet your own needs.

The slides (powerpoint format) for the talk can be found here (this is a shared link to a file on Google Drive).
The LED activity sheet can be found here.
The Buzzer activity sheet can be found here.
The Switch activity sheet can be found here.
And sheet of some ideas for student projects can be found here.
And it's the same again for the four documents above, the are word documents (docx) and a shared link to the file on Google Drive.

Some thank you's

A big thanks to Michael Horne who runs the excellent Raspberry PiPod blog and CamJam (along with Geeky_Tim) for the loan of the Pibrella's for the session tonight. A big thanks also to Pimoroni and Cyntech for agreeing to the load also, and for getting back to me speedily with some last minute questions I had.

The next blog post will be the code for the challenge on the Buzzer activity sheet, which is to play a tune using the buzzer on the Pibrella.