Save the date 26th January 2020 is the next Egham Raspberry Jam.
Registration is open on the Eventbrite page:
The maze will be set up so you can test your driving skills.
Also, there will be 2 workshops using a new piece of hardware.
Here's a short video getting the board to work.
Now it's been mastered we can finalise the details for the workshops and prepare the worksheets.
With the old venue no longer available for the Egham Raspberry Jam we are moving to a new venue.
Gartner
Lovett House
Causeway Corporate Centre
Lovett Road
Staines-Upon-Thams
TW18 3AZ
This will be our home for at least the next two years.
The venue has a great area for the show and tell as well as a room for workshops and talks.
Area for the show and tell
Room next door for workshops and talks
Along with this there is free tea/coffee facilities and a self-service snack counter where payment is through card or contactless.
If you are into making things with electronics bring your project along to show others or if just come along to see what others have made any maybe get inspired to make your own.
It's free to attend and tickets are available on Eventbrite where more details are listed.
Announcing the 22nd Egham Raspberry Jam to be held on the 14th of July 2019
Free to attend. You just need to register so we know numbers https://eghamjam22.eventbrite.com
At the last Jam we ran two python programming workshops
We are finalising the workshops for the 22nd Jam, but they will be camera related.
Also, at the last Jam we had the first appearance of the new Egham Jam Maze. It's based on the PiWarsmaze but modular so can be reconfigured. Below is a short video of a self-balancing robot navigating the maze.
The maze will be coming back so if you are into building either remote control or autonomous bots this is your chance to test out your skills on out minimal maze.
Yeah!. We can confirm that Andy Balaamwill be running a programming workshop at the 15th Egham Raspberry Jam. If you've been to a previous Egham Rapsberry Jam you will recognise Andy as the person with Rabbit Escape game.
We are also finalising the details for a second workshop on physical computing with Scratch.
In addition we all love a bit of retro computing.
Install RetroPie and see what the little Pi can do when it comes to retro gaming.
Well, what about retro physical computing
How about doing physical computing on a computer released in 1980. I had to count that out and it's 37 years ago.
Well, Thomas Stratford has agreed to bring along his VIC-20 where he has added an external adapter to enable him to do physical computing.
I've a soft spot for the VIC-20 as it's the first computer I ever bought and it's the one I did most of my programming on. Having only 3.5K (yes kilobytes, not megabytes) and a 1MHz 8 bit processor teaches you to think compact when it comes to your code.
Also, it had 2 of my favourite games ever.
Arcadia, way better on the VIC-20 than the C64 which I traded the VIC-20 for.
Metagalactic Lamas Battle at the Edge of Time
Again, came out on the C64 as well, but for me the VIC-20 version was more playable.
It was written by Jeff Minter who had a thing for Llamas and Sheep in his games.
Just in case some C64 fans are reading. I had my own favourite games on it too.
A puzzle, tile spinning game called Zenji from Activision. My main memory about Activision was they used the Function keys on the right to start their games, even after most people had move to using the joystick to make selections and start the game with the fire button.
Uridium was the other one. A top down space shooter when you could turn on your side to get through narrow gaps. It was a fast game and really set the standard for all horizontal scrolling shooters on the C64 after it came out. A unique thing it introduced was firing on pressing the fire button and on releasing it. So, it was worth while bashing the fire button rather than just pressing it as you could fire twice as many bullets/lasers.
Maybe I should fire up a PiZero with RetroPie and see if I can find a copy of these classic games.
