Python, Raspberry Pi, and physical computing

[Josh Gold]

Howdy!

I have $500 to spend and I was hoping to use it on a python unit.  I'd ideally like to have students learn some python then use this knowledge to interact with a raspberry pi and possibly make a very simple physical game.  Might be a stretch for this year, but any suggestions on products?  

The PiTopCEED seems neat, but not ideal for a class of 24 students and only $500.

[Diego Fonstad]

I've only tinkered on the edges (i.e. bought one over a year ago and haven't done much with it) of it but I've always wanted to figure out how to use some of the Pycom products www.pycom.io since they combine IOT and Python....

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[Clint Johns]

Raspberry Pi 3's are awesome. You can install full ubuntu linux, and they have a cobbler T adapter to take the full GPIO pinset and push on to a breadboard for easy access to physical computing projects. Python's GPIO library is pretty slick, if you want to go down that route.

As for a full station, there is a clever motorola atrix lapdock (not laptop) hack that you can assemble for $50-100 depending on availability on ebay. Otherwise, setting up vnc to remotely connect is another option if you have existing computers to utilize, but check with your IT network admin to make sure they allow vnc tcp/udp port traffic for vnc and ssh, because by default they are usually blocked.

Cheers! You are embarking on an awesome adventure! :)

-Clint Johns

Resident Tinkerer of the DREAM Lab

Sacred Heart Prep, CA

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[Tim Cooper]

I have a set of pis with brickpi ($100) hats and we do robotics on scratch and python with them.  Also bought some Pimoroni Explorer Pro shields (https://www.adafruit.com/products/2427). All work well and have loads of potential for projects. Since you have a limited budget, buy a few pis with hats OR maybe go with the Pi Zeros (5-10 bucks though hard to find) there are many different hats made by Pimoroni(https://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/raspberry-pi/pi-hats-plates) and other vendors. You could get a bunch of different hats and have kids rotate them around. The explorer one (https://www.adafruit.com/products/3018) has easier pin management and an hbridge for motors but you could go directly to the GPIO without a hat and still do some fun stuff. The Raspberrypi.org site has a fair number of cool python projects. 

The regular pi has wifi built in otherwise you can terminal in. We use VNC on ours to connect. You can have more than one kid terminal or vnc to a pi each as different users. I would not do more than 2 maybe 3 if it is all ssh. If you use hats than multiuser is a bit of a management problem.

Good luck, the world is your berry ....

Best,

Tim

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[David Held]

I agree with the Pis, but check out Micobits. With $500 you could get 30 of them and still have money left. 

You can use python, block programming on any device. See my post at 
https://www.google.com/amp/s/makingwithheld.com/2016/07/29/bbcs-microbit-looks-like-the-answer/amp/

from mobile device

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[Trevor Shaw]

Hi Josh,

I think you might find it hard to outfit a classroom with a set of useable Pis for a budget of $500. As you know, the cost comes not from the pis themselves but from the monitors, keyboards, mice, or hats required to introduce novices to the pis.

As someone pointed out, using vnc to remote into the devices is a viable option, but I have found the classroom management of that to be a little tricky. You either need to know all of the ip addresses or you need to have them pre-set to broadcast their host names, so students can find them.

I would suggest that you take that $500 and spend it on yourself!  :-)

Spend $300 on a Pi-Top device with a rPi v3.  This will give you a  portable environment to experiment and develop your program without having to lug a keyboard/mouse around or having to plug it into your TV at home. With the other $200, you might pick up some micro-bits as David suggested. Those sound promising.

With a couple of months to play around, you will get a genuine sense of what works well on the pi that you would want to replicate in your classroom and how best to do it.

I have been working for the past couple of months to replicate my Arduino Physical Computing curriculum onto the Pi, and I have learned a lot. Happy to chat more, but here are a few highlights:

The bad stuff...

• The GPIO pins are not intuitive (or even labeled). You will need a pi-cobbler or some way for students to connect those pins to a breadboard. I also am not a fan of the male headers.
• The Pi does not support any analog inputs. This means that while buttons and digital sensors will work fine, you can't connect analog sensors like photoresistors, temperature sensors, potentiometers, etc unless you add a hat that can translate those into digital signals.
• I have found the PWM functionality of the Pi to be far less precise than PWM on Arduino. I am still trying to control a servo with any kind of reliability. There are only two pins that do true hardware pwm. Other pins accomplish it through software with the gpio Python library. Even these hardware pins, don't seem to give me a consistent pulse width.
• As a full-blown computer, there are lots of things that could go wrong with it compared to an arduino that is just going to boot and run whatever firmware you have flashed to it.

The good stuff...

• It's a full-blown computer. So kids can get it to do way more stuff from the python development environment. This can include hitting apis in social media services, accessing the file system, databases, email, attached peripherals like a camera, etc.
• Minecraft Pi is awesome. The API gives kids the ability to connect their work in Python to the game and also to incorporate hardware they can connect to the GPIO pins. The API will require a little bit of advanced programming knowledge (object oriented, arrays, etc), but here is a great intro: https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/getting-started-with-minecraft-pi/worksheet/ 

I am currently working on a Pi version of my block-based tool iforge iforge.genlrn.com . I should have something ready for people to preview in a few days if you are interested in checking it out.

Let me know if you want to chat some more.

Trevor

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Trevor Shaw
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Dwight-Englewood School
315 E. Palisade Ave
Englewood, NJ 07631
"Challenging Minds for a Changing World"
v 201.227.3178
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[Andrew]

Clint-

Have you actually built an Atrix Pi-Top? I've had the laptop-dock for a few years, but can never find the super specific micro-HDMI adapters.

--andrew

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[Andrew]

Trevor - 

Thanks for that detailed write up. I agree that the primary benefit of introducing kids to Python is easy access to the huge world of libraries, tools aimed at every aspect of modern computing. The fact that there's also these lackluster GIPO tools on the RasPi seems like a tiny feature in comparison.

My question for Josh is - Why RasPi? If your goal is to teach Python, teach Python! As cheap as they are, there's no way to build a class set of kid-useable RasPi machines for $500. Use existing computers and teach python from there. 

Spend $500 on a small set of physical computing components. I second David's enthusiasm for the BBC Microbit. You could also use any Arduino-derived device and Python Firmata: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyFirmata

The only thing RasPi specific that I use with kids is the Minecraft version that natively supports external programatic commands. Kids love writing Python/JS scripts that build castles block by block. But again, that can happen with a headless RasPi - kids SSH or VNC in to run the code, and can connect to the active Minecraft sever to see the results.

The RasPi is a great general purpose mini computer. But it's still just pretty good at a lot of things with a low sticker price. If your going to use a general purpose language like Python, there's no real advantage to not using general purpose computers to which you already have access.

--andrew

@tieandjeans

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[Josh Merrow]

Hi Josh

We use Pi's and Processing (an artsy version of java) via VNC, which saves a lot of monitor/keyboard space - kids use laptops from a laptop cart to control the pi's. Each pi has a reserved ip address that's labeled on it so the kids know what address to vnc to. Agreed, the lack of analog GPIOs is a bummer, and some magic is required from a security-minded IT dept, but the ease and fun of Processing is a big selling point. 

Best

Josh Merrow

http://lindylabs.org

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******************************
Trevor Shaw
Director of Technology
Dwight-Englewood School
315 E. Palisade Ave
Englewood, NJ 07631
"Challenging Minds for a Changing World"
v 201.227.3178
*******************************

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[Trevor Shaw]

Sorry if you are seeing this twice, but I wanted to make sure it got linked to this thread.

I have a (mostly) functional version of iForge that can program the Raspberry Pi.

It can control GPIO pins and can mod minecraft.  I have also added a block to spawn additional threads for checking for button presses.

If anyone is interested, you can check it out at: http://iforge.genlrn.com/rpi.html . You will also need to install the server portion on your raspberry pi by typing sudo pip install piforge from a console prompt.

I would really appreciate some formal feedback. If anyone is willing, please let me know, and I will send you some questions to answer.

Thanks,

Trevor

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[Lucie deLaBruere]

That's great Trevor... I am traveling for a few weeks and will don't have access to my Pi resources until I get back.. but I can't wait to give these a try. 

On Sunday, February 12, 2017 at 8:13:24 PM UTC-5, Trevor Shaw wrote:

Sorry if you are seeing this twice, but I wanted to make sure it got linked to this thread.

I have a (mostly) functional version of iForge that can program the Raspberry Pi.

It can control GPIO pins and can mod minecraft.  I have also added a block to spawn additional threads for checking for button presses.

If anyone is interested, you can check it out at: http://iforge.genlrn.com/rpi.html . You will also need to install the server portion on your raspberry pi by typing sudo pip install piforge from a console prompt.

I would really appreciate some formal feedback. If anyone is willing, please let me know, and I will send you some questions to answer.

Thanks,

Trevor

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:26 AM, Josh Gold <jgo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Howdy!

I have $500 to spend and I was hoping to use it on a python unit.  I'd ideally like to have students learn some python then use this knowledge to interact with a raspberry pi and possibly make a very simple physical game.  Might be a stretch for this year, but any suggestions on products?  

The PiTopCEED seems neat, but not ideal for a class of 24 students and only $500.

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