Pi Wars Scotland

On the 26th of May, Digital-Maker CIC ran a full day event in the University of Strathclyde for families & robotics enthusiasts.

Having been given the blessing of Pi-Wars (thanks Michael Horne & Tim Richardson!) (and a logo!) We put out the call for teams to join us in a friendly competition, using various courses & obstacles. Our entrants mostly consisted of families with little or no experience of making & running robots. We were also honoured to have Danila Deliya join us from London with his amazing robots.

We set up our pi-top Ceed units & obstacle courses, helped by our fantastic volunteers, Kerry Kidd (@RaspiKidd) and Alec-Angus Macdonald (@alecangus). We were then joined at 10am by our participants. Primary School kids, teenagers, mums & dads full of excitement & trepidation, all saying this was the first time they had done something like this…

Martin gave a short intro to the day, what we (Digital Maker CIC) do & got straight into building CamJam EduKit 3 robotics kits we handed out. The teams worked at their own pace & constructed their 2 wheel robots, working from worksheets. Once built, the teams started to test the driving functions they had programmed in Python 3, moving on to adding sensors (line following & ultrasonic “distance sensors”). The rest of the day was filled with testing, coding, testing, more coding, testing and a little bit of fun competition with the worlds most robust balloons. (for the jousting challenge).

The line following course was a hit with a family that had been struggling with a previous course that was too reflective & our set up was prefect, and after some tweaking, their beautiful bot made full circuits around the course.

The “minimal maze” was also a great hit with some of the families with younger kids, as creating & honing an algorithm using our customised Blockly Interface , making them think about distance, time, directions, with exciting & satisfying results.

We thoroughly enjoyed our first adventure in setting up & running a robotics event in Scotland. The feedback we received from the participants was very encouraging. We were told the event was fun, engaging, welcoming & not intimidating at all, sounds like a lot of “growth mindsets” in the house!

We’ll be running a Pi Wars Scotland again next year, having learned a lot this year, we’ll be more visual & confident with the next one, so, eyes peeled for news & application forms.

Thank to everyone that joined us on Saturday 26th May, we couldn’t have done it without you! and, you really helped us with your positive vibes & relaxed approach to all we offered.

Below are some photos from the day.

Digital Maker CIC win major funding & support from FirstPort Scotland.

Digital Maker CIC has won £25,000 funding from FirstPort Scotland to boost their business, providing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics) education to Aberdeen Schools.

Set up in 2017, Digital Maker CIC’s mission was to get high quality STEAM education to pupils that don’t usually have access to the technology, expertise & opportunities. Digital Maker CIC have had a phenomenal first year of business, working for the Prince’s Trust, Edinburgh & Abu Dhabi Science Festivals and Aberdeen & Aberdeenshire councils’ Schools impressing FirstPort with their work and passion to get exciting STEAM education to pupils that don’t usually have access to it.

“This funding is going to help Digital Maker CIC a great deal” said Martin Evans, Director and lead tutor, “It gives us funding to develop new workshops & curriculums, and offer our services to underfunded areas in need of STEAM education”. Philip Thompson, also a director and lead tutor for Digital Maker CIC  said “It’s also given us a confidence boost, FirstPort were really excited about what we’re doing & see the benefits of our work for pupils that don’t have the kinds of opportunities we offer, we can really contribute to the Scottish Government’s plans to get Scottish School Pupils digitally savvy & turned on to STEAM opportunities”.

With the FirstPort funding, Digital Maker CIC are in a strong position to expand their business and provide more high quality STEAM education in Aberdeen and beyond.