Coding By: Katie XXXXXX

Agenda Programming Languages Hardware Coding Example 1: Hello World Coding Example 2: Fibonacci Sequence Coding Example 3: Balloon POP! More Examples Resources

Programming Languages SCRATCH: A beginners language designed to make programming fun for small kids. PYTHON: A powerful, easy to learn, and widely used programming language. JAVA: A very popular programming language especially for web-based applications. C/C++/C#: A set of low level programming languages. Very powerful, extremely widely used, hard to learn. Dozens, if not hundreds, of more obscure programming languages.

Programming Language Selection For elementary school aged kids, SCRATCH is probably the best choice. PYTHON is generally considered the best learning language. It's powerful, quick to learn, and makes it easier to learn the other languages like JAVA and C later.

Hardware IPAD: iPads are made to be simple to use making it hard to program on them. PC/Laptops: Powerful platforms for coding. Expensive. Hard to interface with electronics. Raspberry Pi: A computing platform designed to get kids interested in programming, and to be about the cost of a school textbook.

Hardware: Raspberry PI The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer, costing between $25 and $35 (depending on version). It was originally designed to get kids interested in coding. Over 5 million have been sold (mostly to non-kids to play with). It was originally designed to help kids learn PYTHON, but all of the languages named on the previous slides are supported.

HARDWARE: Eben Upton The idea for the Raspberry Pi came about because the Cambridge Computer Lab saw both a decline in the number of applicants for their C.S. Course, and a drop in the number that had programming experience. Eben Upton initially hoped to sell 20,000.

Coding Example 1: Hello World! A simple, one line program in Python, printing words to the screen: print ("Hello World!")

Coding Example 1a: Adding Variables Variables store data. This program asks the user their name, then says hello to them: name = input("What is your name? ") print ("Hello %s!" % name)

Coding Example 1b: IF statements IF statements let us look at variables and do different thing depending what is in them. Note, Alex is my brother and messes with my stuff: name = input("What is your name? ") if name.lower() == 'katie': print ('Katie is Awesome!') elif name.lower() == 'alex': print ('GO AWAY ALEX!!!') else: print ("Hello %s!" % name)

Coding Example 2: Fibonacci Sequence Amongst other things Fibonacci sequence can predict bunny populations. bunnies, baby_bunnies = (1,1) generations = int(input('How many generations do you want? ')) for x in range(1, generations+1): print ('Generation {} has {} baby bunnies'.format(x, baby_bunnies)) bunnies, baby_bunnies = (baby_bunnies, bunnies + baby_bunnies)

Coding Example 3: Balloon Pop! Using a pin to pop a balloon is cheating, and uses ancient technology import RPi.GPIO as GPIO from time import sleep GPIO.setup(26, GPIO.OUT) answer = input('Do you want to pop the balloon? ') if answer.lower() == 'yes': GPIO.output(26, True) sleep(10) GPIO.output(26, False) else: print ('Save the balloons!')

Balloon pop circuit diagram The transistor is being used as a switch. When the raspberry pi turns on pin 26 the transistor switches on. This allows a lot of current to flow through the resistor, which gets very hot and pops the balloon.

More Examples As Eben Upton says, the Raspberry Pi “puts a space program within the reach of every primary (elementary) school in the world” The following slides show some ways Raspberry Pi's have been used.

My 3D Printer l This was the 3-D printer that I made for my GT project and it is controlled by a raspberry pi that lets me upload files and control it from my iPad or other computers.

Pi's with Weather Balloons Raspberry pi's have been sent up to the edge of space in a weather balloon to take a picture of a potato in a space ship.

More about weather balloons o Weather balloons can be launched for around $400. o They typically go over 100,000 feet before popping. o Flight time is usually 2-3 hours. o Usually fly 50 miles or less. o Payload can be up to 12lbs.

Quad-copter Semi-autonomous quad-copter that you can program your own flight plan on.

Erica the Rhino Erica is powered by five raspberry pi's that allow the rhino to move it's ears, send out and read tweets, make rhino sounds, and even interact with nearby smartphones.

Minecraft Pi In Minecraft you can use python to create objects, build games, and even link it to a webcam to take real pictures to use in the game.

Other resources