Pi Wars Competition Thoughts

The next CamJam (May 10th tickets are now available see this post for links) starts the journey for hopefully many people in creating a Pi controlled robot, which hopefully will be entered in the culmination of the journey the Pi Wars Competition at the December CamJam.

I've already started planning my entry for the Pi Wars and I will be making use of the workshops at CamJams to brush up my skills like soldering (hey I'm software not hardware).

Apart from the education track at the May CamJam (and you should be going along to this really) this build a Pi controlled robot is a great idea for a class project or after school club.

There are a few approaches that you can take with this project and several learning opportunities along the way. For instance there are several robotic kits on the market that contain everything that is required (except the Pi), some are inexpensive, while others cost more. Or you could go along the custom build route, where you source the parts yourself from the chassis, motors, wheels, sensors, etc. You could of course also modify an existing robotic device like a Bigtrak toy (see MagPi back issues for project details of using one to make a scutter [Red Dwarf reference] ).

The above options assume that you are going to use the Pi to rely on sensors to interact and move around the environment. But you could also build a Pi controlled robot that uses a game controller wirelessly to control direction and speed.

The advantage of this sort of project is that it combines skills. So there is the obvious electronics, soldering, robotic practical skills. But there is planning, and also the software programming skills required.

I'm not a big Scratch fan but using ScratchGPIO it should be possible to control your Pi controlled robot using Scratch. This isn't the ideal solution as Scratch is an extra overhead that would slow things down, but it does make the whole project open to a younger audience. So the trade off may be worth it.

The next programming option for the Pi controlled robot is the one I expect most people to go with and that is Python. Python is well supported, and the majority of examples on the net for controlling and interacting with motors and sensors will be in Python on the Pi, and I think all the kits come with examples in Python (I bet some-one will now find a kit that does not have Python examples/libraries). Other options of course would be Java, C/C++ and Arm Assembler. Theses will be able to communicate over the GPIO port, but the examples out there to look at are a lot less. At the end of the day it comes down to what language you are comfortable in, and can support your students in using.

Don't forget this project spans the last half of the academic year and the first part of the following academic year. So for the really keen student this gives them something they can work on during the Summer holidays too. And for those students keen to do this I would have some Pi's spare that can be used as loan units.

I think the guys at CamJam have come up with a great idea that will be a lot of fun to take part in, and a great fun learning opportunity for students. Hope to see you in the Pi Wars arena in December.

P.S. My personal entry is going to be a custom job, possibly with the software written in Arm Assembler.

Games Britannia Schools Game Design Competition 2014

It seems to be news day today. As I said at the weekend in my Games Britannia Industry Talks post the theme for this years Schools Game Design Competition was announced, and I believe that made it the official launch as well.
As I pointed out in the previous post the theme for this years competition is the Gremlin Graphics video game character Jack the Nipper.

So the gist of this years competition is to design five object-based puzzles that link together to form a puzzle-based game.
A good source for Jack the Nipper related material is the World of Spectrum archive (direct link to the page here ). Which has tape images of the game that can be played in a Spectrum emulator, it has scans of reviews of the game, maps, adverts. Nearly everything you could want as background information.
There is a competition pack to download (although not uploaded at time of writing) that should include a competition booklet, application form, and further information about the game.
As I said in the brackets the pack wasn't available at time of writing, but I'm hoping that background info will include emulators and game images for students to play. I didn't see last years pack, but the first competition pack which was based around Monty Mole did have emulators and game images. I think it helps if the students are able to play the original so they can get a feel for the character, and the style of object-based puzzles from the 80's. If they haven't included the game images, go visit the World of Spectrum link from above.
Actually I'd be tempted to print off some of the reviews (The one from Crash for starters) and let the students see how reviewing has changed over the years. Take in a couple of modern magazines like Games TM, Edge or one of the Xbox and Playstation ones for comparison.
Anyway the key dates are 16th May 5pm closing deadline for entries. 10th June finalists attend a game jam to create a prototype of their design (don't worry there will be degree students on hand to help get the finalists vision onto the screen using GameMaker), with the winner decided on the day.
More details can be found here. Although you will have to navigate to the details through the Competitions menu at the top of the page.
This competition works out nicely for me and the game design unit I teach. So guess what the assignment will be for my students?
Anyway good luck to all those that are entering.

UPDATE 28/1/14: The competition pack went live last night, I have looked at it and there is no emulator with game image in it. So you will have to resort to my suggestion above. There will at some point be an game engine (made in GameMaker) available, which is going to be an exe according to the briefing document in the pack? Which I can't see the point of, I would of thought it would of been more use as a GameMaker project. Or and this may very well be the case I am missing something here about GameMaker.
Also Ric Lumb has done a demo (from way back in 2003) which you can get here to show the students.

Posted with Blogsy

Career Hack Slightly Longer Example

Thought I'd put up a slightly longer python example of using the LMIforAll api.

For those interested I wrote this example on the iPad using pythonista. Which is a python app allows you write and run python code on an iPad. The version of python it uses is 2.7, and has the requests module. However it doesn't have numpy,scipy and matplotlib, which is a shame as they would turn it from an interesting little app into something a lot more powerful and useful. Although it does have the python image library, Dropbox and Evernote support. Add the csv module (which would have to work with the Dropbox module to allow you to access csv files) to the wish list of modules I'd like to see pythonista support. Hopefully my wish list will get added in the future. It would be really cool to see the iPad become an amazing python platform too.

Anyway here's the code:

Posted with Blogsy

CareerHack AppChallenge 2014

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) are running a competition. They are billing it as a £20,000 App Challenge. Which technically it is, HOWEVER that is the sum amount of the prize money on offer. The actual first prize is £10,000, with a second prize of £5,000. Now that doesn't add up to £20,000 does it? Well it does if you add in the special prize of £5,000 for any student in the age range 16-24, and studying in Further Education within the UK. Pretty good hey?

So what are UKCES looking for to be in with a chance to win this money? They are looking for people to design apps that use the data from the Labour Market Information (LMI) for All website in "new and innovative ways".

The contest started on the 18th November 2013, and closes at 5pm GMT on the 21st February 2014.

Go read up on the rules etc (links below)

You can contact on Twitter: @appchallenge and @lmiforall
They mention these hashtags to use: #careerhack #lmiforall

Further Info Here:
Contest Web Page
UKCES Page
LMI for All Website

When I get back I will be encouraging my students to enter this competition. I think this is a great idea, and I hope some of them will take up the challenge. It would be nice to use our STEM Fair in March to show off some of the entries.

Now here is a first, considering the name of this blog, there hasn't been any coding so far.
So I knocked up a small Python program that accesses the LMIforAll api to get a list of Standard Occupational Codes (soc) for a keyword. A lot of the other api's need this soc code to work.



Not the best example, and not the best coded Python by a mile. But it does give a very simple example of accessing the LMIforAll api, which is sadly missing at the moment from their site.
I say sadly considering the fact they have a special prize for students, and with the popularity of Python in schools/colleges I think this is a little bit of an oversight. Yes they have an example of a web app (HTML/javascript if I remember correctly, I didn't investigate it too much), and there is an Objective C example I came across, but nothing in Python.

You can get further info on the requests library here. How to install the requests library here.

UPDATE1: Added use of Syntax Highlighter for displaying the Python code
UPDATE2: Note the Python code is 2.7