What’s Happening 17-Jan-2014!

We had great fun last week, “Scratch”ing and Arduino’ing!  More of the same will be happening this coming week, so I’m looking forward to another exciting session!
The Scratch team continues to develop awesome Scratch programs!…well done all!
In the Arduino group, we’ve started right at the beginning….with a basic overview of what an Arduino is, and what a simple Arduino software application looks like.  We then worked on making the on-board Arduino LED flash, and most everyone got that working.  (I’ve solved the issue with getting the Seeeduino’s working, so we will have one or two more Arduino modules for use this coming week!…..yeh!!!!)   I then set out a challenge for the Arduino’ers…..make an “SOS Flashing Distress” flashlight, and two of the groups managed to get their product working!  We’re pretty sure that if we were lost on a desert island, and all we had was a laptop and an Arduino (and we didn’t have internet, or mobile phones ;-)….), we’d have been able to flag down a passing ship, with our flashing distress beacon!…well done to all teams!
This week, we’ll see if we can progress our Arduino explorations, and get a real LCD module working.  This is exactly the same challenge we’d have if we were building an electronic product, and we needed to get a display working on our product (like an alarm clock)!…..see you all there on Friday!
Cheers, Jim/Nick/Alan