Coventry and Warks Jam '19

Jam '19 was at Coventry Central Library with one session using an improved version of 'Big Red Button' Scratch resource(link) and session two was the first outing for the 'Micro:bit Minecraft PixelCakes'  resource(link). I'll upload the master folder with the other files needed.

Secondly many thanks to Anthony Orme and Kari Lawler for their much help.

Below you can see a few photo's I managed to take in between running around.

Next Jams are......

The next two Jams will be Nuneaton(tba) and Leamington(tba) at some point over the next 3 months.

The next Minecraft coding session available is 'Experiments with Minecraft' in collaboration with Coventry FabLab (link). The first session has filled up quickly so we will be offering a second session to try and give people chance to get a ticket. 

 

Cya.

Experiments with GPIO(all the links in one page)

Triggers /switches 1
link

Experiments with GPIOTriggers / switches)

Using gpio triggers / switches 3 demos.

All of these three demos use GPIO PIN 3 as a trigger.

Demo 1 / Scalable housing

This code will allow you to use gpio PIN 3 and GND with two male to female jumper cables attached as a switch / or trigger for an event in Minecraft. This example triggers an question to ask you how many houses you would like in a row/ street. After typing this in you it then renders the "street" in your Minecraft world. Which needs to be open before you execute the code or else it will give an error.


What you will need:

• Two female to male jumper cables
• Raspberry Pi
• Minecraft Pi installed the code from below

You can see below an example street of 7 houses:

Code

You can download the code from here

Demo 3: Storm Trooper and Rainbow Walls

This is 32block x 32 block grid animation. Coding wise its not as efficient as demo 2 but creates some nice effects. You can see what it does by clicking on the link to the video below.

You can see the event working here:

link

Code

link

Demo 2: Pixel Cakes

This is a simplified version of the RPI pixelcakes activity which works with Micro:bit. You can see what it does by clicking on the link to the video below.

You can see the event working here:

link

Code

link




Enjoy,


Chris

BitIO blog 14: Scalable housing

Scalable Housing

This blog is based on the original house an article from issue 68 of the Magpi Magazine which you can buy here , or download for free from here.

The article is on page 54.  It was written by a chap called Steve Martin who you can access on Twitter here . Without digging too deep it seems as though he helps run/ attends the Cotswold Jam. This is an excellent tutorial in how to get started with Python and Minecraft. I have slightly modified and extended the code to work with the Micro:bit. This version creates a 3-4 storey version which creates 2 sides of a "road". It is buggy as the right handside faces the wrong way. You click on 'b' button to set how many houses are in the road and then 'a' button to execute the printing of the rows of houses.

As usual this Micro:bit code uses the excellent bitIO library created by David Whale see more here.  Here is an example of what my extended version does:

5 houses...

Each printing session creates two rows, notice the glitch with the doors being on opposite sides.

You can download the extended version of the code here.

Enjoy,

Chris Penn

  

RPI Big Birthday weekend: Pixel cakes resource!

BitIO: Pixel Cakes resource

NOW UPDATED WITH TUTORIAL LINK.

On the 3-4/03/18 the Raspberry Pi community are hosting a whole load of Raspberry Jams around the world to celebrate the 6th RPI birthday. I had intended to host a Jam in Coventry Library but I have had to rearrange the Jam for a later date. So instead I have developed a celebratory Minecraft cake using python. 

This celebratory cake can be controlled by using a Micro:bit and button presses animate through different pixel cakes. 

Examples:

Basic pixel cake

Creeper pixel cake

Alex pixel cake

You can now download the worksheet to go with this activity and the complete code to test it out.

Tutorial :
Link 

Enjoy.

Over Chris Penn :)

BitIo blog 11: PixelCraft 2.0

This code uses the Micro:bit as an interactive controller in Minecraft. You can read all about it in BitIO blog 1 here to fully understand how to set it up and run it. But suffice to say that the Brains behind it is David Whale. Over the course of the the last 5 months I have been integrating the Micro:bit into my Minecraft coding experiments.
This is the latest.... In a short summary this builds on blog 9 PixelCraft which was building on work done by Kari Lawler you can read about that here.  This updated edition will render the normal Pixelart with the press of the 'a' button, with the 'b' button you can render the same pixel art with random wool colours. The overall effect is a pop art style pixel art.

You can see for yourself below:

Below you can see a twitter video of this code working:

link

Picture of the various pixel art forms you can produce

Here is the code:


Alex Pixel art code
link
Pig Pixel art code
link
Steve Pixel art code
link

Enjoy,

Chris Penn.

BitIO blog 10: Micro:bit transport

This code uses the Micro:bit as an interactive controller in Minecraft. You can read all about it in BitIO blog 1 here to fully understand how to set it up and run it. But suffice to say that the Brains behind it is David Whale. Over the course of the the last 5 months I have been integrating the Micro:bit into my Minecraft coding experiments. This is the latest.... In a short summary this allows you to create a TNT line of blocks and through the press of the 'a' button on the Micro:bit allows you to power the character along. If you press the 'b' button you can teleport back to your starting point. You can see for yourself below:

Below you can see a twitter video of this code working:

link

Picture of code working in Minecraft:

Here is the code:

link

Enjoy,

Chris Penn.