Do You Need an Operating System? Using a small computer that runs an operating system (OS), like the Raspberry Pi for example, adds an overhead which can be uncessary if you’re just wanting to turn things on and off, or read whether a pin is set high or low. If you’re doing more complex calculations, such as doing live image recognition with open CV, then an operating system might be required.
Background Following on from our Scratch Robot Workshop we’ve been running a second workshop that allows our students to apply some of the Python skills gained from previous Code Club World projects. This workshop lets students connect to the GoPiGo robot to read and understand example scripts, and also see how abstraction is used to simply programming using functions. The information gathered by learning to reverse-engineer existing scripts is used to creat their own script, using sensors to gather information from the robot’s environment and allow it to perform various tasks.
This term we had some great fun with Python.
Raspberry Pi Robots with Python One of the major changes was the introduction of a second robot workshop, using the GoPiGo by Dexter Industries. One of the key differences in this robot, from our BrickPi robot, is that it doesn’t use Lego Mindstorm parts. It is equipped with a camera and ultrasonic (distance) sensor, which can be rotated together in an arc, using a small servo motor.
