At some point, many of you will have become exasperated with your AI personal assistant for not understanding you due to your accent – or worse, your fantastic regional dialect! A vending machine from Coca-Cola Sweden turns this issue inside out: the Dialekt-o-maten rewards users with a free soft drink for speaking in a Swedish regional dialect.

The world’s first vending machine where you pay with a dialect!

Thirsty fans along with journalists were invited to try Dialekt-o-maten at Stureplan in central Stockholm. Depending on how well they could pronounce the different phrases in assorted Swedish dialects – they were rewarded an ice cold Coke with that destination on the label.

The Dialekt-o-maten

The machine, which uses a Raspberry Pi, was set up in Stureplan Square in Stockholm. A person presses one of six buttons to choose the regional dialect they want to try out. They then hit ‘record’, and speak into the microphone. The recording is compared to a library of dialect samples, and, if it matches closely enough, voila! — the Dialekt-o-maten dispenses a soft drink for free.

Code for the Dialekt-o-maten

The team of developers used the dejavu Python library, as well as custom-written code which responded to new recordings. Carl-Anders Svedberg, one of the developers, said:

Testing the voices and fine-tuning the right level of difficulty for the users was quite tricky. And we really should have had more voice samples. Filtering out noise from the surroundings, like cars and music, was also a small hurdle.

While they wrote the initial software on macOS, the team transferred it to a Raspberry Pi so they could install the hardware inside the Dialekt-o-maten.

Regional dialects

Even though Sweden has only ten million inhabitants, there are more than 100 Swedish dialects. In some areas of Sweden, the local language even still resembles Old Norse. The Dialekt-o-maten recorded how well people spoke the six dialects it used. Apparently, the hardest one to imitate is spoken in Vadstena, and the easiest is spoken in Smögen.

Speech recognition with the Pi

Because of its audio input capabilities, the Raspberry Pi is very useful for building devices that use speech recognition software. One of our favourite projects in this vein is of course Allen Pan’s Real-Life Wizard Duel. We also think this pronunciation training machine by Japanese makers HomeMadeGarbage is really neat. Ideas from these projects and the Dialekt-o-maten could potentially be combined to make a fully fledged language-learning tool!

How about you? Have you used a Raspberry Pi to help you become multilingual? If so, do share your project with us in the comments or via social media.

David Pride, known to many of you as an active member of our maker community, has done it again! His FRED-209 build combines a Nerf gun, 3D printing, a Raspberry Pi Zero, and robotics to make one neat remotely controlled Nerf tank.

FRED-209 – 3D printed Raspberry Pi Nerf Tank

Uploaded by David Pride on 2017-09-17.

A Nerf gun for FRED-209

David says he worked on FRED-209 over the summer in order to have some fun with Nerf guns, which weren’t around when he was a kid. He purchased an Elite Stryfe model at a car boot sale, and took it apart to see what made it tick. Then he set about figuring out how to power it with motors and a servo.

To control the motors, David used a ZeroBorg add-on board for the Pi Zero, and he set up a PlayStation 3 controller to pilot his tank. These components were also part of a robot that David entered into the Pi Wars competition, so he had already written code for them.

3D printing for FRED-209

During prototyping for his Nerf tank, which David named after ED-209 from RoboCop, he used lots of eBay loot and several 3D-printed parts. He used the free OpenSCAD software package to design the parts he wanted to print. If you’re a novice at 3D printing, you might find the printing advice he shares in the write-up on his blog very useful.

On eBay, David found some cool-looking chunky wheels, but these turned out to be too heavy for the motors. In the end, he decided to use a Rover 5 chassis, which changed the look of FRED-209 from ‘monster truck’ to ‘tank’.

The final result looks awesome, and David’s video demonstrates that it shoots very accurately as well. A make like this might be a great defensive project for our new apocalypse-themed Pioneers challenge!

Taking FRED-209 further

David will be uploading code and STL files for FRED-209 soon, so keep an eye on his blog or Twitter for updates. He’s also bringing the Nerf tank to the Cotswold Raspberry Jam this weekend. If you’re attending the event, make sure you catch him and try FRED-209 out yourself.

Never one to rest on his laurels, David is already working on taking his build to the next level. He wants to include a web interface controller and a camera, and is working on implementing OpenCV to give the Nerf tank the ability to autonomously detect targets.

Pi Wars 2018

I have a feeling we might get to see an advanced version of David’s project at next year’s Pi Wars!

The 2018 Pi Wars have just been announced. They will take place on 21-22 April at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and you have until 3 October to apply to enter the competition. What are you waiting for? Get making! And as always, do share your robot builds with us via social media.

Lasers! Cookies! Raspberry Pi! We’re buzzing with excitement about sharing our latest YouTube video with you, which comes directly from the kitchen of maker Estefannie Explains It All!

Laser-guarded cookies feat. Estefannie Explains It All

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2017-09-18.

Estefannie Explains It All + Raspberry Pi

When Estefannie visited Pi Towers earlier this year, we introduced her to the Raspberry Pi Digital Curriculum and the free resources on our website. We’d already chatted to her via email about the idea of creating a collab video for the Raspberry Pi channel. Once she’d met members of the Raspberry Pi Foundation team and listened to them wax lyrical about the work we do here, she was even more keen to collaborate with us.

Estefannie on Twitter

Ahhhh!!! I still can’t believe I got to hang out and make stuff at the @Raspberry_Pi towers!! Thank you thank you!!

Estefannie returned to the US filled with inspiration for a video for our channel, and we’re so pleased with how awesome her final result is. The video is a super addition to our Raspberry Pi YouTube channel, it shows what our resources can help you achieve, and it’s great fun. You might also have noticed that the project fits in perfectly with this season’s Pioneers challenge. A win all around!

So yeah, we’re really chuffed about this video, and we hope you all like it too!

Estefannie’s Laser Cookies guide

For those of you wanting to try your hand at building your own Cookie Jar Laser Surveillance Security System, Estefannie has provided a complete guide to talk you through it. Here she goes:

First off, you’ll need:

• 10 lasers
• 10 photoresistors
• 10 capacitors
• 1 Raspberry Pi Zero W
• 1 buzzer
• 1 Raspberry Pi Camera Module
• 12 ft PVC pipes + 4 corners
• 1 acrylic panel
• 1 battery pack
• 8 zip ties
• tons of cookies

I used the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Laser trip wire and the Tweeting Babbage resources to get one laser working and to set up the camera and Twitter API. This took me less than an hour, and it was easy, breezy, beautiful, Raspberry Pi.

I soldered ten lasers in parallel and connected ten photoresistors to their own GPIO pins. I didn’t wire them up in series because of sensitivity reasons and to make debugging easier.

Building the frame took a few tries: I actually started with a wood frame, then tried a clear case, and finally realized the best and cleaner solution would be pipes. All the wires go inside the pipes and come out in a small window on the top to wire up to the Zero W.

Using pipes also made the build cheaper, since they were about $3 for 12 ft. Wiring inside the pipes was tricky, and to finish the circuit, I soldered some of the wires after they were already in the pipes.

I tried glueing the lasers to the frame, but the lasers melted the glue and became decalibrated. Next I tried tape, and then I found picture mounting putty. The putty worked perfectly — it was easy to mold a putty base for the lasers and to calibrate and re-calibrate them if needed. Moreover, the lasers stayed in place no matter how hot they got.

Although the lasers were not very strong, I still strained my eyes after long hours of calibrating — hence the sunglasses! Working indoors with lasers, sunglasses, and code was weird. But now I can say I’ve done that…in my kitchen.

Using all the knowledge I have shared, this project should take a couple of hours. The code you need lives on my GitHub!

Estefannie on YouTube

Estefannie made this video for us as a gift, and we’re so grateful for the time and effort she put into it! If you enjoyed it and would like to also show your gratitude, subscribe to her channel on YouTube and follow her on Instagram and Twitter. And if you make something similar, or build anything with our free resources, make sure to share it with us in the comments below or via our social media channels.

In 2015, The Raspberry Pi Foundation built two space-hardened Raspberry Pi units, or Astro Pis, to run student code on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Astro Pi upgrades

Each school year we run an Astro Pi challenge to find the next generation of space scientists to program them. After the students have their code run in space, any output files are downloaded to ground and returned to them for analysis.

That download process was originally accomplished by an astronaut shutting down the Astro Pi, moving its micro SD card to a crew laptop and copying over the files manually. This used about 20 minutes of precious crew time.

space pi – Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat

Watch space pi GIF by sooperdave on Gfycat. Discover more GIFS online on Gfycat

Last year, we passed the qualification to allow the Astro Pi computers to be connected to the Local Area Network (LAN) on board the ISS. This allows us to remotely access them from the ground, upload student code and download the results without having to involve the crew.

This year, we have been preparing a new payload to upgrade the operational capabilities of the Astro Pi units.

The payload consists of the following items:

• 2 × USB WiFi dongles
• 5 × optical filters
• 4 × 32GB micro SD cards

Before anyone asks – no, we’re not going outside into the vacuum of space!

USB WiFi dongle

Currently both Astro Pi units are located in the European Columbus module. They’re even visible on Google Street View (pan down and right)! You can see that we’ve created a bit of a bird’s nest of wires behind them.

The decision to add WiFi capability is partly to clean up the cabling situation, but mainly so that the Astro Pi units can be deployed in ISS locations other than the Columbus module, where we won’t have access to an Ethernet switch.

The Raspberry Pi used in the Astro Pi flight units is the B+ (released in 2014), which does not have any built in wireless connectivity, so we need to use a USB dongle. This particular D-Link dongle was recommended by the European Space Agency (ESA) because a number of other payloads are already using it.

Plans have been made for one of the Astro Pi units to be deployed on an Earth-facing window, to allow Earth-observation student experiments. This is where WiFi connectivity will be required to maintain LAN access for ground control.

Optical filters

With Earth-observation experiments in mind, we are also sending some flexible film optical filters. These are made from the same material as the blue square which is shipped with the Pi NoIR camera module, as noted in this post from when the product was launched. You can find the data sheet here.

To permit the filter to be easily attached to the Astro Pi unit, the film is laser-cut to friction-fit onto the 12 inner heatsink pins on the base, so that the camera aperture is covered.

The laser-cutting work was done right here in Cambridge at Makespace by our own Alex Bate, and local artist Diana Probst.

32GB micro SD cards

A consequence of running Earth observation experiments is a dramatic increase in the amount of disk space needed. To avoid a high frequency of commanding windows to download imagery to ground, we’re also flying some larger 32GB micro SD cards to replace the current 8GB cards.

This particular type of micro SD card is X-ray proof, waterproof, and resistant to magnetism and heat. Operationally speaking there is no difference, other than the additional available disk space.

The micro SD cards will be flown with a security-hardened version of Raspbian pre-installed.

Crew activities

We have several crew activities planned for when this payload arrives on the ISS. These include the installation of the upgrade items on both Astro Pi units; moving one of the units from Columbus to an earth-facing window (possibly in Node 2); and then moving it back a few weeks later.

Currently it is expected that these activities will be carried out by German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst who launches to the ISS in November (and will also be the ISS commander for Expedition 57).

Payload launch

We are targeting a January 2018 launch date for the payload. The exact launch vehicle is yet to be determined, but it could be SpaceX CRS 14. We will update you closer to the time.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this payload, how an item works, or why that specific model was chosen, please post them in the comments below, and we’ll try to answer them.

Pioneers, we just received this message through our network — have you seen it?

Can you see me? Only YOU can save us!

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2017-09-14.

Only you can save us

We have no choice – we must help her! If things are as bad as she says they are, our only hope of survival is to work together.

We know you have the skills and imagination required to make something. We’ve seen that in previous Pioneers challenges. That’s why we’re coming directly to you with this: we know you won’t let her down.

What you need to do

We’ve watched back through the recording and pulled out as much information as we can:

• To save us, you have ten weeks to create something using tech. This means you need to be done on 1 December, or it will be too late!
• The build you will create needs to help her in the treacherous situation she’s in. What you decide to make is completely up to you.
• Her call is for those of you aged between 11 and 16 who are based in the UK or Republic of Ireland. You need to work in groups of up to five, and you need to find someone aged 18 or over to act as a mentor and support your project.
• Any tech will do. We work for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but this doesn’t mean you need to use a Raspberry Pi. Use anything at all — from microcontrollers to repurposed devices such as laptops and cameras.

To keep in contact with you, it looks like she’s created a form for you to fill in and share your team name and details with her. In return she will trade some items with you — things that will help inspire you in your mission. We’ve managed to find the link to the form: you can fill it in here.

In order to help her (and any others who might still be out there!) to recreate your project, you need to make sure you record your working process. Take photos and footage to document how you build your make, and put together a video to send to her when you’re done making.

If you manage to access social media, you could also share your progress as you go along! Make sure to use #MakeYourIdeas, so that other survivors can see your work.

We’ve assembled some more information on the Pioneers website to create a port of call for you. Check it out, and let us know if you have any questions. We will do whatever we can to help you protect the world.

Good luck, everybody! It’s up to you now.

Only you can save us.

The Raspberry Pi is not a chunky computer. Nonetheless, tech treasure merchants Pimoroni observed that at almost 20mm tall, it’s still a little on the large side for some applications. So, in their latest live-streamed YouTube Bilge Tank episode, they stripped a Pi 3 down to the barest of bones.

But why?

The Raspberry Pi is easy to connect to peripherals. Grab a standard USB mouse, keyboard, and HDMI display, plug them in, and you’re good to go.

But it’s possible to connect all these things without the bulky ports, if you’re happy to learn how, and you’re in possession of patience and a soldering iron. You might want to do this if, after prototyping your project using the Pi’s standard ports, you want to embed it as a permanent part of a slimmed-down final build. Safely removing the USB ports, the Ethernet port and GPIO pins lets you fit your Pi into really narrow spaces.

As Jon explains:

A lot of the time people want to integrate a Raspberry Pi into a project where there’s a restricted amount of space. but they still want the power of the Raspberry Pi 3’s processor

While the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W are cheaper and have a smaller footprint, you might want to take advantage of the greater power the Pi 3 offers.

How to slim down a Raspberry Pi 3

Removing components is a matter of snipping in the right places and desoldering with a hot air gun and a solder sucker, together with the judicious application of brute force. I should emphasise, as the Pimoroni team do, that this is something you should only do with care, after making sure you know what you’re doing.

The project was set to take half an hour, though Jon and Sandy ended up taking slightly more time than planned. You can watch the entire process below.

Bilge Tank 107 – The World’s Slimmest Raspberry Pi 3

This week, we attempt to completely strip down a Raspberry Pi 3, removing the USB, Ethernet, HDMI, audio jack, CSI/DSI connectors, and GPIO header in an audacious attempt to create the world’s slimmest Raspberry Pi 3 (not officially ratified by the Guinness Book of World Records).

If Pimoroni’s video has given you ideas, you’ll also want to check out N-O-D-E‘s recent Raspberry Pi 3 Slim build. N-O-D-E takes a similar approach, and adds new micro USB connectors to one end of the board for convenience. If you decide to give something like this a go, please let us know how it went: tell us in the comments, or on Raspberry Pi’s social channels.

With ten days to go until the end of their crowdfunding campaign, the team behind the Turtle Rover are waiting eagerly for their project to become a reality for earthbound explorers across the globe.

Turtle Rover

Turtle is the product of the Mars Rover prototype engineers at Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. Their waterproof land rover can be controlled via your tablet or smartphone, and allows you to explore hidden worlds too small or dangerous for humans. The team says this about their project:

NASA and ESA plan to send another rover to Mars in 2020. SpaceX wants to send one million people to Mars in the next 100 years. However, before anyone sends a rover to another planet, we designed Turtle — a robot to remind you about how beautiful the Earth is.

With a Raspberry Pi at its core, Turtle is an open-source, modular device to which you can attach new, interesting features such as extra cameras, lights, and a DSLR adapter. Depending on the level at which you back the Kickstarter, you might also receive a robotic arm as a reward for your support.

The Turtle can capture photos and video, and even live-stream video to your device. Moreover, its emergency stop button offers peace of mind whenever your explorations takes your Turtle to cliff edges or other unsafe locations.

Constructed of aerospace-grade aluminium, plastics, and stainless steel, its robust form, watertight and dust-proof body, and 4-hour battery life make the Turtle a great tool for education and development, as well as a wonderful addition to recreational activities such as Airsoft.

Back the Turtle

If you want to join in the Turtle Rover revolution, you have ten days left to back the team on Kickstarter. Pledge €1497 for an unassembled kit (you’ll need your own Raspberry Pi, battery, and servos), or €1549 for a complete rover. The team plan to send your Turtle to you by June 2018 — so get ready to explore!

For more information on the build, including all crowdfunding rewards, check out their Kickstarter page. And if you’d like to follow their journey, be sure to follow them on Twitter.

Your Projects

Are you running a Raspberry Pi-based crowdfunding campaign? Or maybe you’ve got your idea, and you’re soon going to unleash it on the world? Whatever your plans, we’d love to see what you’re up to, so make sure to let us know via our social media channels or an email to comms@raspberrypi.org.

 

Joe Herman’s Pi Film Capture project combines old projectors and a stepper motor with a Raspberry Pi and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module, to transform his grandfather’s 8- and 16-mm home movies into glorious digital films.

We chatted to him about his Pi Film Capture build at Maker Faire New York 2016:

Film to Digital Conversion at Maker Faire New York 2016

Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2017-08-25.

What inspired Pi Film Capture?

Joe’s grandfather, Leo Willmott, loved recording home movies of his family of eight children and their grandchildren. He passed away when Joe was five, but in 2013 Joe found a way to connect with his legacy: while moving house, a family member uncovered a box of more than a hundred of Leo’s film reels. These covered decades of family history, and some dated back as far as 1939.

This provided an unexpected opportunity for Leo’s family to restore some of their shared history. Joe immediately made plans to digitise the material, knowing that the members of his extensive family tree would provide an eager audience.

Building Pi Film Capture

After a failed attempt with a DSLR camera, Joe realised he couldn’t simply re-film the movies — instead, he would have to capture each frame individually. He combined a Raspberry Pi with an old Super 8 projector, and set about rigging up something to do just that.

He went through numerous stages of prototyping, and his final hardware setup works very well. A NEMA 17 stepper motor  moves the film reel forward in the projector. A magnetic reed switch triggers the Camera Module each time the reel moves on to the next frame. Joe hacked the Camera Module so that it has a different focal distance, and he also added a magnifying lens. Moreover, he realised it would be useful to have a diffuser to ‘smooth’ some of the faults in the aged film reel material. To do this, he mounted “a bit of translucent white plastic from an old ceiling fixture” parallel with the film.

Software solutions

In addition to capturing every single frame (sometimes with multiple exposure settings), Joe found that he needed intensive post-processing to restore some of the films. He settled on sending the images from the Pi to a more powerful Linux machine. To enable processing of the raw data, he had to write Python scripts implementing several open-source software packages. For example, to deal with the varying quality of the film reels more easily, Joe implemented a GUI (written with the help of PyQt), which he uses to change the capture parameters. This was a demanding job, as he was relatively new to using these tools.

If a frame is particularly damaged, Joe can capture multiple instances of the image at different settings. These are then merged to achieve a good-quality image using OpenCV functionality. Joe uses FFmpeg to stitch the captured images back together into a film. Some of his grandfather’s reels were badly degraded, but luckily Joe found scripts written by other people to perform advanced digital restoration of film with AviSynth. He provides code he has written for the project on his GitHub account.

For an account of the project in his own words, check out Joe’s guest post on the IEEE Spectrum website. He also described some of the issues he encountered, and how he resolved them, in The MagPi.

What does Pi Film Capture deliver?

Joe provides videos related to Pi Film Capture on two sites: on his YouTube channel, you’ll find videos in which he has documented the build process of his digitising project. Final results of the project live on Joe’s Vimeo channel, where so far he has uploaded 55 digitised home videos.

m093a: Tom Herman Wedding, Detroit 8/10/63

Shot on 8mm by Leo Willmott, captured and restored by Joe Herman (Not a Wozniak film, but placed in that folder b/c it may be of interest to Hermans)

We’re beyond pleased that our tech is part of this amazing project, helping to reconnect the entire Herman/Willmott clan with their past. And it was great to be able to catch up with Joe, and talk about his build at Maker Faire last year!

Maker Faire New York 2017

We’ll be at Maker Faire New York again on the 23-24 September, and we can’t wait to see the amazing makes the Raspberry Pi community will be presenting there!

Are you going to be at MFNY to show off your awesome Pi-powered project? Tweet us, so we can meet up, check it out and share your achievements!

With the incredible success of this year’s Moonhack under their belt, here’s Code Club Australia‘s Kelly Tagalan with a lowdown on the event, and why challenges such as these are so important.

On 15 August 2017, Code Clubs around the globe set a world record for the most kids coding in a day! From Madrid to Manila and from Sydney to Seoul, kids in Code Clubs, homes, and community centres around the world used code in order to ‘hack the moon’.

Moonhack 2017 Recap: WORLDWIDE CODING

We set a world record of the most kids coding at the same time not only across Australia….but across the WORLD! Watch our recap of our day hackathon of kids coding across the globe.

The Moonhack movement

The first Moonhack took place in Sydney in 2016, where we set a record of 10207 kids coding in a day.

The response to Moonhack, not just in Australia but around the world, blew us away, and this year we decided to make the challenge as global as possible.

“I want to create anything that can benefit the life of one person, hundreds of people, or maybe even thousands.” – Moonhack Code Club kid, Australia.

The Code Club New Zealand team helped to create and execute projects with help from Code Club in the UK, and Code Club Canada, France, South Korea, Bangladesh, and Croatia created translated materials to allow even more kids to take part.

Moonhack 2017

The children had 24 hours to try coding a specially made Moonhack project using Python, Scratch or Scratch Jr. Creative Moonhackers even made their own custom projects, and we saw amazing submissions on a range of themes, from moon football to heroic dogs saving our natural satellite from alien invaders!

In the end, 28575 kids from 56 countries and from 600 Code Clubs took part in Moonhack to set a new record. Record Setter founder and Senior Adjudicator, Corey Henderson, travelled to Sydney to Moonhack Mission Control to verify the record, and we were thrilled to hear that we came close to tripling the number of kids who took part last year!

The top five Moonhack contributing countries were Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, and Croatia, but we saw contributions from so many more amazing places, including Syria and Guatemala. The event was a truly international Code Club collaboration!

The founder of Code Club Bangladesh, Shajan Miah, summed up the spirit of Moonhack well: “Moonhack was a great opportunity for children in Bangladesh to take part in a global event. It connected the children with like-minded people across the world, and this motivated them to want to continue learning coding and programming. They really enjoyed the challenge!”

Of course, the most important thing about Moonhack was that the kids had fun taking part and experienced what it feels like to create with code. One astute nine-year-old told us, “What I love about coding is that you can create your own games. Coding is becoming more important in the work environment and I want to understand it and write it.”

This is why we Moonhack: to get kids excited about coding, and to bring them into the global Code Club community. We hope that every Moonhacker who isn’t yet part of a Code Club will decide to join one soon, and that their experience will help guide them towards a future involving digital making. Here’s to Moonhack 2018!

Join Code Club

With new school terms starting and new clubs forming, there’s never been a better time to volunteer for a Code Club! With the official extension of the Code Club age range from 9-11 to 9-13, there are even more opportunities to get involved.

If you’re ready to volunteer and are looking for a club to join, head to the Code Club International website to find your local network. There you’ll also find information on starting a new club from scratch, anywhere in the world, and you can read all about making your venue, such as a library, youth club, or office, available as a space for a Code Club.

In July, winners of the first two Pioneers challenges came together at Google HQ at Kings Cross in London for the Pioneers Summer Camp. This event was a special day to celebrate their awesomeness, and to give them access to some really cool stuff.

Pioneers: Google Summer Camp 2017

In July this year, winners of the first two Pioneers challenges came to Google HQ in London’s Kings Cross to meet, make and have an awesome time.

The lucky Pioneers

The summer camp was organised specifically for the winners of the two Pioneers challenges Make us laugh and Make it outdoors. Invitations went out to every team that won an award, including the Theme winners, winners in categories such as Best Explanation or Inspiring Journey, and those teams that received a Judges’ Recognition. We also allowed their mentors to attend, because they earned it too.

Code Club Scotland on Twitter

Excited about @Raspberry_Pi Pioneers day at @Google today with @jm_paterson and The Frontier Team #makeyourideas https://t.co/wZqfqqgZuL

With teams of excited Pioneers arriving from all over the UK, the day was bound to be a great success and a fun experience for all.

The Pioneers Summer Camp

The event took place at the rather impressive Google HQ in King’s Cross, London. Given that YouTube Space London is attached to this building, everyone, including the mentors and the Raspberry Pi team, was immediately eager to explore.

In rooms designed around David-Bowie-associated themes, e.g. Major Tom and Aladdin Sane, our intrepid Pioneers spent the morning building robots and using the Google AIY Projects kit to control their builds. Every attendee got to keep their robot and AIY kits, to be able to continue their tech experiments at home. They also each received their own Raspberry Pi, as well as some Google goodies and a one-of-a-kind Raspberry Pi hoody…much to the jealousy of many of our Twitter followers.

Meanwhile, mentors were invited to play with their own AIY kits, and the team from pi-top took accompanying parents aside to introduce them to the world of Scratch. This in itself was wonderful to witness: nervous parents started the day anxiously prodding at their pi-top screens, and they ended it with a new understanding of why code and digital making makes their kids tick.

After the making funtimes, the Pioneers got to learn about career opportunities within the field of digital making from some of the best in the industry. Representatives from Google, YouTube, and the Shell Scholarship Fund offered insights into their day-to-day work and some of their teams’ cool projects.

And to top off the day, our Pioneers winners went on a tour of the YouTube studios, a space to which only YouTube Creators have access. Lucky bunch!

The evening

When the evening rolled around, Pioneers got to work setting up their winning projects. From singing potatoes to sun-powered instruments and builds for plant maintenance, the array of ideas and creations showcased the incredible imagination these young makers have displayed throughout the first two seasons of Pioneers.

As well as a time for showing off winning makes, the evening was also an opportunity for Pioneers, mentors, and parents to mingle, chat, swap Twitter usernames, and get to know others as interested in making and changing the world as they are.

The Pioneers Summer Camp came to a close with a great Q&A by some eager Pioneers, followed by praise from Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Philip Colligan, Mike Warriner of Google UK, and Make it outdoors judge Georgina Asmah from the Shell Centenary Scholarship Fund.

Become a Pioneer

We’ll be announcing the next Pioneers challenge on Monday 18 September, and we’re so excited to see what our makers do with the next theme. We’ve put a lot of brain power into coming up with the ultimate challenge, and it’s taking everything we have not to let it slip!

One thing we can tell you: this season of Pioneers will include makers from the Republic of Ireland, thanks in part to the incredible support from our team at CoderDojo. Woohoo!

We’ll announce the challenge via the Raspberry Pi blog, but make sure to sign up for the Pioneers newsletter to get all the latest information directly to your inbox.