University of Northampton hosts PiJam

Taken from: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/minecraft-jam-and-history-in-the-making/

History was made on Saturday as the University of Northampton hosted Northamptonshire’s first-ever Raspberry Jam.

Raspberry Jams see those with an interest in the affordable – and tiny –Raspberry Pi computer get together to share knowledge, learn new things and meet other enthusiasts.

More than 30 people of all ages attended the county’s inaugural Jam at Avenue Campus, which was organised by the University’s Associate Professor in Computing and Immersive Technologies, Dr Scott Turner.

He said: “The Jam was a real success, with a wide mixture of people including fairly notable experts; those who have a Pi, but aren’t quite sure what to do with it and complete novices.

“It was great to see people who had some sort of Pi-related query have their questions answered, and others showing off what they have managed to get their Pi to do.

“It really helped to inspire the novices to get more involved in the Raspberry Pi, which will ultimately help them develop their coding skills.”

Computing and Science teacher Steve Foster, from Wollaston School, led a session on the popular Minecraft game, and was ably assisted by five of his Year 10 pupils.

One of the pupils, Ellie, said: “One of the groups had a problem with their coding and I managed to solve it for them. I love the challenges a Raspberry Pi can give you, and when you are able to solve the problem it’s really cool.”

The University is committed to making a positive social impact on the people of Northamptonshire and has set itself four ambitious challenges to meet by 2020.

One of these ‘Changemaker+ Challenges’ is to make Northamptonshire the best county in the UK for children and young people to flourish and learn – something the Raspberry Jam has contributed to.

All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.



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

Northamptonshire Raspberry Jam - 16th April 2016

 PiJam event on Saturday 16th April 2016, in Newton Building, University of Northampton, NN2 6JB.

This is a free event, open to those who either want to found out more about the Raspberry Pi; want to share with others what they have done with the Pi; or just want to talk with others about them. Most of all (I hope) to have some fun.

The event has been supported by the University of Northampton providing the rooms.

Tickets (Free) are available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/northamptonshire-raspberry-jam-tickets-20886649531

Examples of possible 'show and tell ' items include:

-Minecraft running on a Raspberry Pi with movement controlled with gesture control of an Star Wars styled X-Wing

- Raspberry Pi controlling a 'junk robot'

More updates to follow. 

Tickets (Free) are available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/northamptonshire-raspberry-jam-tickets-20886649531

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

mini-project: Gestures controlling a Minecraft X-wing

This post is part of an occasional series of post about Computing projects carried out by people within Northamptonshire. 

This posts looks at combining Raspberry Pi, gesture control and Star Wars in  Minecraft.

figure 1

This post builds on an earlier project to get a simple X-Wing into Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi.  The goal was get Python to build and move the X-Wing. Details of this project can be found here.

In this post the additional of Pirmoroni's Skywriter HAT included to allow movements of a hand to enable the X-Wing to take-off, land, move forward or backward.

It builds on ideas from the book Adventures in Minecraft on using Python and Minecraft with a Raspberry Pi.

figure 2

The Skywriter is a Raspberry Pi HAT (see figure 2) that allows positional information of the hand just above the board to detected. In this project it is detecting flicks of the hand up, down, or across the board to determine the direction of motion (see video above)

Before you start, to use the Skywriter, in the terminal you need to add curl -sSL get.pimoroni.com/skywriter | bash

Now we can start building. To start with we just placed the X-Wing above the player by placing blocks in the shape (roughly) of the X-Wing based around the method MinecraftShape (see Chapter 8 of Adventures in Minecraft ).

figure 3

• Find the position of the player;
• To avoid building on top the player the starting position of the X-Wing is set by:
• add 5 to the x position of the player;
• add 10 to the y position of the player(The bit I have to keep reminding myself is the y-axis is vertical.);
• add 5 to the z position of the player;
• Using these values build using, Wool blocks, the X-Wing - 0 for white, and 14 for red blocks;
• If a flick starts at the top of the board (or "north") this moves the X-Wing down towards the ground;
• If a flick starts at the bottom of the board (or "south") this moves the X-Wing vertically up;
• If a flick starts on the right of the board (or "east") the X-Wing moves backwards horizontally;
• if a flick starts on the left of the board (or "west") the X-Wing moves forward.

from mcpi.minecraft import Minecraft

from mcpi import block

import mcpi.minecraftstuff as minecraftstuff

import time

import skywriter

import signal

mc=Minecraft.create()

xPos=mc.player.getTilePos()

xPos.x=xPos.x+5

xPos.y=xPos.y+5

xPos.z=xPos.z+5

xWingBlocks=[

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(0,0,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(-1,0,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(-2,0,0,block.WOOL.id,14),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(-3,0,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,0,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(0,1,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,1,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(2,0,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(2,1,0,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,2,-1,block.WOOL.id,14),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,2,1,block.WOOL.id,14),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,-1,-1,block.WOOL.id,14),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,-1,1,block.WOOL.id,14),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,3,-2,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,3,2,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,-2,-2,block.WOOL.id,0),

minecraftstuff.ShapeBlock(1,-2,2,block.WOOL.id,0)]

xWingShape=minecraftstuff.MinecraftShape(mc,xPos,xWingBlocks)

@skywriter.flick()

def flick(start,finish):

  if start=="south":

    for count in range(1,10):

      time.sleep(0.1)

      xWingShape.moveBy(0,1,0)

  if start=="west":

    for count in range(1,10):

      time.sleep(0.1)

      xWingShape.moveBy(-1,0,0)

  if start=="east":

    for count in range(1,10):

      time.sleep(0.1)

      xWingShape.moveBy(1,0,0)

  if start=="north":

    for count in range(1,10):

      time.sleep(0.1)

      xWingShape.moveBy(0,-1,0)

signal.pause()

Main text is adapted with permission from a post originally posted on http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/




All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Minecraft | Code.org

Minecraft | Code.org:





This is really good fun. Taken from the code.org using Minecraft to develop programming skills.

go to https://code.org/mc to play with it.



'via Blog this'

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

Minecraft in 3d virtual reality

As a little experiment with the Oculus Rift I wondered if I could view a Minecraft world through the oculus Rift. The answer is yes and relatively easily (certain easier than I though it was going to be).

Download Minecrift from: https://share.oculusvr.com/app/minecrift

Unzip the files and run the installer file.

figure 1

You should get something similar to figure 1. All I did then was press OK.

Figure 2

Run the Minecraft launcher and create a new profile. After creating a new profile, edit it to change Use version to release minecrift-1.6.4-b12-nohydra which can be found in the drop down menu now. Now save the profile.

Now play the Minecraft normally but with the Oculus Rift on (it helps to have two people one wearing the Oculus Rift, the other pressing keys to control the movement).

Figure 3

Most people who have tried enjoyed it but could only play for a short while. If I was susceptible  motion sickness I wouldn't try this.


Related links
http://minecraft-vr.com/

http://www.theriftarcade.com/minecrift/

http://vrwiki.wikispaces.com/Minecrift 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/10/minecraft-is-the-latest-game-to-get-oculus-rift-support-with-minecrift-mod/

http://riftmod.com/how-to-setup-minecraft-for-oculus-rift/


All views are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisations the author is associated with in any way. Nor is post advocating the use of approach described above, but is reporting on an experiment.