Paper Cup machines, Edison robots and digital technologies

It has been a busy week developing a range of ideas for the MOVING module class. We have moved away from scratch and the development of algorithms that are being laser cut this week, through to more hands on activities where students have opportunities to be curious and creative.

It started with coffee cups, with other stuff added in. Students created their own paper cup machine that they used to see if they could develop some interesting patterns. One thing that they talked about was all the testing that they did flattened the coin batteries that we were using.

Classroom Post

A pretty great lesson where large amounts of learning, laughter and fun of machines doing some pretty weird things.

This lead to students being able to compare their paper cup machines to robots today.

The kit, Edison Robots and LEGO

Year 13 working along side Year 9 and 10 exploring the edison robot and potential uses

Classroom post

The edison robots provided a good platform for students to learn how to develop and test ideas as part of the Computational Thinking Progress Outcome today. Having an opportunity to work in pairs to design a way for the pen to be held on the robot through to programming and testing the ideas out. Students were required to develop three patterns with their time today. This gave them the opportunity to try out different ideas. We used the the EdWare programming where just in time learning supported students to develop code, figure out how to upload the code to the edison robot and also trouble shoot fail codes. It is amazing how many of the students had there volume turned to mute.

We are continuing to use these for the next couple of weeks. The reason is that want students to develop cultural patterns using computers.

We have been looking at different ideas for holding the felts, however the hole is too small on this. But it has potential. The comments from students who liked the fact that we were using LEGO to develop the mechanisms to hold the felts. Even students who were not part of the class today and in other areas commented that they could hear the lego being tipped out and wished that they could join in the learning today.

co creation

It has been an interesting couple of days at school. I decided to get a project that I have been working on and off one up and running again. It is a RFID scanning system to assist with a 5km run, where people can scan when they start and when they finish. This has been talked about in my blog post, Challenging myself as well as building on building on existing message.

I managed to get the base version that I had been developing up and running again, after formatting the SD Card and reimaging it with the LCD drivers with this time with a 3.5inch screen attached to the RPi.
Through this I have been trying the GUI and the console version, I must say the console is helping as it is providing opportunity for rapid prototyping with its quick restart and low loading.

With the base system and running, it was time to start thinking of the next part, linking the data into a more suitable outcome, instead of being just on screen and in a text file, link it into a database service.

This is where I had a conversation with one of the students, what next. I showed him what the program was doing and how I had achieved some of the aspects. It was however something that needed to be developed better and have some more features. 15 minutes later he had a plan written on what the program could have done to it to support the ideas. Overnight he wrote a function that allows the creation of text documents to support start and finish tags, manage data during an outage or lack of connection.

This morning was integrating his function into the program and testing the ideas to see if they work. Many conversations have taken place and coding changed, is this a pair programmed piece of work now. Looking at what we are doing, could the standards that exist support this idea?

He has now taken a copy of the code home to continue development, as well as the dimensions to develop the next phase, putting it into action.

Looking at getting the data out to a mysql database so that we can add in different features, these will allow students to do creation of their own data next year using a mixture of google charts and bootstrap.


Note: since we are recording seconds, there is a function within mysql called SEC_TO_TIME() which will help with the conversion



There has been some great working on this project, It now no longer saves files to the raspberry pi, instead it is linked up with mysql.
Using google chart api has now allowed the data that is collected to be graphed based upon a PIN number.

Instead of using bootstrap, now use materialsecss, this is something different, while it is still responsive.

The beginnings of the website

What is the learning that has happened?

Version 1:
Development of rfid scanning system through the use of raspberry pi
Addition of LCD screen to the raspberry pi
Simple testing

Version 2:
Adding in database system to record data
To add mysql.connector to raspberry pi, sudo apt-get -y install python3-mysql.connector
Note: no phpmyadmin setup, for security, instead have to use mysql command line. (very important to note as it took me 2 hours to realise this as I have not worked on the project for 3 months)

Version 3:
Creation of website to show data through use of materialisecss and google charts api
This has now been complete, there was a bug that wouldn't allow the top record to be shown, this has now been fixed. Great setup and information is being recorded, this has been verified through a live test of the system on Monday 28th November through the EOTC Get Lost.

Version 4:
Login system to see profile

Version x:
Put out into real world and promote to a small group. Need to think about what this looks like and can be powered and developed.
- The idea of badges, for number of runs, beating personal best.
- The idea of developing a team, and running each week.
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Also have to think about how to promote and develop promotional material.