Showing posts with label raspberry pi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label raspberry pi. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

The project that was worth no credits

This year I have been working with a student as part of the independent project at school. I have been a guide to his project.

He aim was to help develop fitness using the point's parks and reserves.

The project looked at the current ideas of the powerade challenge, parkrun and apps on a phone.

It is a pretty great system he has come up with and is looking at how to develop this to an actual community project as part of next year.

But that is not what this blog post is around.

It is the learning, when this project started, he didn't want any credits from it, it was more about the learning and him wanting to develop something for the community. He is a year 12 student currently sitting NCEA Level 2. He already had the plan for what he was wanting to study this year, and what credits would fill the pieces, he already had worked on part of his level 2 pathway at year 11.

During the year he was encouraged to look outside the box, brightsparks was identified and the requirements looked at. A video outlining his project.

As part of the independent project requirements, a dragons den were presented the projects and those that were allowed to develop an individual project got the opportunity, an individual log was required that showed some form of planning and reflection, he was encouraged to take photos along the way to show his development and ideas. Out of this fell the views and perspectives social science standard.



The project was entered for Brightsparks, and he is now a finalist, in the engineering and software categories.
Update to this from brightsparks; 3rd place senior software, 3rd place senior engineering, 1st place senior best design concept.


A week before externals were to be sent away we were discussing the project, technology scholarship was talked about, would he be able to put his work together to meet the requirements. A late entry and the challenge was on.
He managed to complete the work and the timelines. We wait to see what the outcome will be.

After the submission, I started sharing the idea and the video. Since then we have found out that the ideas of the project could be submitted for PE scholarship.
It has also started being talked about within PE circles and the student has been encouraged to share his ideas and project through a podcast, The video will also be shared this week as well as part of it.

Through this project has also fallen out the Kendall Engraving Supplies Ltd Student Design Award, as the project has been laser cut through our school's equipment, this provides another opportunity to show his learning.

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

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.


Sunday, 24 November 2013

Great RPi resource

http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/by-subject/computing/raspberry-pi/

OCR resources for Raspberry Pi to liven up your lessons

We have been working in collaboration with Raspberry Pi and with leading practitioners to create resources that support the use of the Raspberry Pi in the classroom.

Recipe cards