Talks
Early in 2015 I was asked to give a talk about the Enchanted Cottage project that I completed last year. A group of eager London Arduino enthusiasts learnt about my struggles and successes with the Arduino Yún. One of the attendees was Brian Byrne who runs the Linuxing in London group, he approached me later in the year to talk about another project, more on that in a bit.
Workshop
My next challenge for the year was from Emma Bearman, she had also spotted my enchanted project and wondered if I could bring enchantment to her gnomes. A gnomes workshop was arranged in April to show the youth of Leeds how to use a Raspberry Pi 3 to control motors and LEDs using the IOT software NodeRed. The project got a write up in issue 212 of Linux Format.
As part of my research for the workshop I looked at a bunch of different motor controller boards, one of those the PiCon Zero was to be used later in the year too.
Dragon Detector
The dragon detector was a "joke" entry into the Qualcom DragonBoard competition, they called my bluff and sent me a board to work with.
https://www.element14.com/community/people/Workshopshed/blog/tags#/?tags=dragonboard%20410c
I managed to complete a project in time and although I did not win the grand prize, Qualcomm awarded me a "Developer of the Month" award.
Since the competition has been completed the project has been enhanced and I've been asked to talk about that project for the London Linuxing group and also for the 96Boards group.
Wins
In August, my enthusiasm for the Zx Spectrum won me a Ben Heck Zx Portable. Unfortunately, it was DOA but with some help from the Element14 members we got it back working again and playing games.
My Terminator Eye also won me a Pi3 which will be put to good use as running MineCraft and Scratch for my young daughter.
Mini Project
To help with the above ZxPortable diagnosis a Test Card Generator was made using a Raspberry Pi.
Road Tests
It's been a busy year but I also squeezed in a road test, Elegant and Robust Capacitive Touch Interfaces - Review
I also tested a little board from 4Troniks and got it to sleep and blink as well as smile
Hopefully, I will be starting another Roadtest before the end of the year.
