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  • Author Author: e14phil
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#WorldOfPi - How has Raspberry Pi Impacted YOUR world?

Hey Gang!

 

With the Raspberry Pi Birthday coming up soon, we are working on rounding up all the good Raspberry Pi is doing in the world and how it has impacted people’s lives.

 

I want to hear how Raspberry Pi has impacted YOUR world.

 

How has it shaped your home, your job, your creativity, your world and people around you?

We will be compiling these and would Love to hear your story!

 

To get the ball rolling... here is MY story:

 

It was 2012 and I was sat looking over banks of web developers and sysadmins in the head office of an eCommerce company I used to work for.


One of the developers is stood against the wall fiddling with the back of a TV, which was used to display outstanding bug tickets.

Hanging precariously by a cable I see a small PCB, this is the first time I saw a Raspberry Pi.

"It's a credit card sized computer" he says... "it's new, it's called a Raspberry Pi" that's it... MY.. MIND.. WAS.. BLOW.. and by the end of they day I had an order placed.

 

The less romantic side of this story is that I waited almost 3 months for my board to arrive and when it did, I was so disillusioned it got put in the back of my draw at work and left to gather dust.

 

2014 rolls around and I am sat (without knowing the relevance) watchingLaunch of the Raspberry Pi 2 - Press Conference, which was promoted and put together by people I now sit next to!

 

I recognize the name, Raspberry Pi, and after a bit of tinkering with the Raspberry Pi 1, I internally decide that an injection of cash will help me get into programming and extend my skill set. I put my order in for the Raspberry Pi 2.... again stocking and then shipping takes its time, an effect of the Pi's popularity.

Unbeknownst to me the team I will come to work with are working late nights to get the new Raspberry Pi guides ready for me to use.

As a project minded person I was always looking for simple ways to tie in existing works and programs to get my own projects off the ground quicker, the raspberry pi afforded me this luxury.

 

In 2015, after the initial shortages I order 10 to be used at a Convention I volunteer at. We set them up to manage the registration system of the not for profit event and allow 10 operators to "check in" 1500 attendees.

The Raspberry Pis work flawlessly, sadly, our code did not.

 

Late 2015 I get a job offer in Leeds. As a "maker" from a small town, with limited resources and tools,  I am hit with a moments excitement... so I Google, "Hackspace in Leeds" BINGO! A city with a well stocked Hackspace and new community to mingle with. Moving to Leeds I left lots of friends behind and this would be a great place to make more and dive deeper into the maker community.

 

Walking into Leeds Hackspace was a bit of a biblical moment for me, surrounded by a community of makers, hackers, coders, artists and engineers who all have something to say about anything you are working on. One of the members of Leeds Hackspace is our very own , "There is a job going in the community team, you should apply, I think you would fit in on our team at element14,"

 

That was just about 1 year ago and I have never looked back.

All this... thanks to the Raspberry Pi.

-

 

 

I want to hear and collect how Raspberry Pi has impacted YOUR world.

 

With the Raspberry Pi Birthday coming up soon, we are working on rounding up all the good Raspberry Pi is doing  in the world and how it has impacted people’s lives.

Anonymous

  • I guess I was a bit late to the R-Pi party only joining in at v3. There were perhaps a number of reasons for this, including:

    • initially they appeared difficult to get hold of
    • there were so many other competing platforms around to look at
    • colleagues that did manage to get hold of them early on appeared to be doing very little with them

     

    However, after joining the Element14 Community that changed things. This was more my sort of party - lots of people doing interesting things with microcontrollers, single board computers etc. including interesting projects using the Raspberry Pi platform.

     

    At that point I started to read up on the R-Pi - looked at the core books, found the back issues of MagPi magazines (around 50 by this stage so a lot of catching up to do!), the essentials book series and project books:

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/

     

    It also rekindled my interest in the Python language, which I hadn't used in perhaps 20 years or so, so first with Jessica McKellars's two courses:

    Introduction to Python - O'Reilly Media

    Intermediate Python Programming - O'Reilly Media

    followed by David Beazley's deep dive course:

    Python Programming Language - O'Reilly Media

     

    Being interested in how physical computing was currently being used in schools, I then looked at the Raspberry Pi Foundation's first two courses published on Futurelearn, one on physical computing:

    https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/physical-computing-raspberry-pi-python

    and the other on coding OOP in Python:

    https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/object-oriented-principles

    Amongst other things, what I learnt there was that teachers most definitely:

    • "don't pay attention in class"
    • "must try harder"

     

    Around the same time Hello World magazine was also launched:

    https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/

    and now on its fourth issue, also featuring R-Pi related educational projects and tutorials, so another welcome distraction.

     

    Needless to say, whilst all this was happening, R-Pi based projects and challenges have continued to feature here on the Element14 Community. Notable mentions would have to be Spanner Spencer's PIK3A gaming table:

    PIK3A: The Raspberry Pi 3 IKEA Retro Gaming Table

    and the Pi Chef Design Challenge:

    Pi Chef Design Challenge

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Awesome Nico!

     

    Glad to hear it. Thank you for sharing.

  • My story is not a life-changing as for others, but still fun...

    (and yes I'm a little late to the party as usual )

     

    Having a Raspberry Pi encouraged me to create my first PCB (designed on Eagle, manufactured in China, populated by me). Prior to this it was mostly temporary breadboarding, with the occasional wire-rats-nest-on-perf-board project.

    This Raspberry Pi and circuit board, together with OpenSprinkler, now runs my sprinkler system!

     

    This saved me about a thousand dollars over buying a regular system (!!!), and now I have web based control from my computer as well as app-based control from my phone - so much easier than before.

     

    Plus I added a zone to allow me to easily fill up the decorative ponds when they run low. That in itself has made my life so much easier already.

     

    Cheers,

    -Nico

  • in reply to e14phil

    that's right, a teacher could make your dreams come true or break it all at once!

  • I heard about the Raspberry Pi before it's launch.

    The Raspberry Pi organisation promoted they would be available thru Farnell (They changed to element14 some years before over here) and luckily the launch time was a reasonable 0600.

    After a few crashes of the server, I was able to order and receive one of the first 10k produced.

     

    I think they were a game changer in terms of pricing. The size was small but there are others that are much smaller, and of course they look huge against the Pi Zero.

     

    It's fair to say I've dabbled with them, but nothing serious or running full time around my place ... yet.

     

    . Nice to see it resulted in you getting a job at element14.

     

    Cheers

    Mark

  • in reply to e14phil

    I don't have anything so dramatic in its impact as you do!

     

    For me the Pi has been an enabler for projects. A small, cheap and standard embedded ARM development platform to build test projects around, rather than having to wait for the first prototype hardware of a product to arrive, or buying expensive eval boards for the target processor. It makes the process of getting proof of concept prototypes much quicker.

     

    Best Regards,

     

    Rachael

  • in reply to rachaelp

    Thanks Rachael!  Do you have any stories with the Raspberry Pi?

  • in reply to electrorubixtech

    Love it! A good Teacher makes ALL the difference

  • I love this, what a great story of how the Pi had such a big impact on your life Phil

  • Fantastic story! my story is in fifth grade I my laptops battery was completely broken so i asked my science teacher about it she was actually chemistry teacher so she didn't knew how to fix it but she told me to go the the physics teacher he told me about the fixing procedure, then he started to teach me about basic electronics i told him about raspberry pi and he told me about arduino we bought both of them and started to work with them mostly with raspberry pi we made a car with auto break and started a project about student tracking that is still not finished, from a laptop battery to raspberry pi, strange way but that's how i got to wok with raspberry pis!