BCS Event Report: Raspberry Pi

Two parallel Raspberry Pi activities were run by the BCS Northampton branch at the Newton Building, University of Northampton, UK 











The first activity was aimed at generating interest in the use of of VOIP on the Raspberry PI  and covered a number of topics:-

• Outline of VOIP as a voice technology
• Advantages of VOIP telephony for business and the consumer.
• FreePBX on the Raspberry PI - build, configuration and usage.
• Discussion of VOIP trunk technology, VOIP services.
• Demo of a PI FreePBX system with two VOIP phones.

The second activity was aimed a beginners to the Raspberry Pi and was run by staff and a student from the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton. 

The central aim was, what can you do with that Raspberry Pi this half term? You brought a Raspberry Pi but never got around to using it, what could you try?  

During this session some basic example activities were shown. 

• Basic Scratch programming activity:- Bonfire Night Game. Create graphical stars and make them act like fireworks - shot across the screen, multiply, expand changing colours and then shrink
• Scratch control of LEDs via a Raspberry Pi making two LEDs flash all under the control of a Scratch based program.
• Junkbot  program a robot made from a Raspberry Pi, a drinks can, pens, and a motor and get it to draw (see the video below and http://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/ for more details)

The event attracted both members of the BCS and non-members (youngest two being 7 years old).








If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with.