{"id":1570,"date":"2016-11-02T12:27:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2016-11-02T12:27:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T12:27:14","slug":"pumpkin-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/?p=1570","title":{"rendered":"Pumpkin Hack!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday we had our first Aberystwyth Robotics Club<\/a> pumpkin hack. Kids, pumpkins, flashing lights and electronics together in a fun afternoon workshop.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

In the carving station, the kids hacked away at their pumpkins with kid-safe tools or gave their design to one of our high powered Dremel wielding helpers. With a suggested age range of 6-12 we weren’t going to let the attendees loose with super sharp knives or powertools, but they managed to design their pumpkins themselves and help to cut them out (or at least, carve them)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the coding zone, we had a bunch of laptops, a bunch of Arduino nano microcontrollers, battery packs, wires and some ultra-bright LEDs. Kids wired up their own microcontrollers, with assistance from our student helpers, then programmed them in Arduino C. The programming aspect was mostly copy-and-paste but with just an hour and a bit to spend on it the wiring and the coding was sufficient to keep everyone involved.<\/P>\r\n\r\n

Our final display was so much<\/i> more impressive than I expected.<\/p>\r\n