The CamJam EduKit – basic electronics for £5!
Liz: I wasn’t at the Cambridge Raspberry Jam this weekend: I was working in Manchester on Friday, and then became an aunt that evening (congrats Katie and Ben!). It meant I missed a special announcement: so I’ve asked Mike Horne, king of the CamJam organisers, to fill everyone in with this guest post. Over to you, Mike!
From little acorns…
We realised after the May Cambridge Raspberry Jam that we now had a good stock of workshop material, and began to think of ways to use the material away from the Jam. After all, educational material isn’t much good if it isn’t in the hands of people who might use it.
Liz sells Pis at a previous CamJam. If you want to meet people from the Foundation, the CamJams are the place to be.
At the May Jam, we ran a basic electronics workshop – you know the sort of thing: LEDs, switches and buzzers…and we wondered if we could create a kit with the necessary bits and bobs. People could buy the kits, then download the worksheets and teach themselves.
Around that time, Jamie Mann from The Pi Hut came
to us with the exact same idea – use the CamJam material as the basis for kits. And so, a partnership was formed to bring the idea to fruition. Jamie was in charge of procurement and assembling the kits, Tim would write the worksheets and Mike would test them
out.
Eventually, we came up with a name and the “CamJam EduKit” was born.
The CamJam EduKit is priced at £5 and comes with everything you need to have fun with basic electronics projects, including a project tin to keep it all in! We hope that this low price point will allow the kit to appeal to both families and education.
If it is successful, there will be more kits, the first of which is likely to use sensors to detect temperature, light levels and movement.
We hope that the CamJam EduKits will be used to further the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s educational aims and to get kids started not only with electronics but with Python programming as well.
Profits from the kits are going to be donated to the Cambridge Raspberry Jam, so we can continue to develop our educational programme.
You can buy the EduKit from The Pi Hut via the CamJam site, and you’ll find the accompanying educational material on the same page. All the material is free to download, so if you want to take a look at it beforehand, go right ahead!
Michael Horne (@recantha), Tim Richardson (@geeky_tim)
& Jamie Mann (@ThePiHut)
24 comments
Alex Eames (RasPi.TV)
I’ve got one of these and it’s a very nice kit for the price. At some places you’d only get the breadboard for £5, let alone all the components and a nice tin to keep it in. Excellent value for money. :)
Michael Horne
:-)
Liz Upton
The little tin is a very nice touch: I’ve got a kit on my desk at the moment and I’m amazed you managed it all for only £5!
ThePiHut
:) thanks Liz!
William Patton
I’ll grab a pair of these and cross my fingers that additional kits with sensors are released in future.
There’s a nice little collection of components here for a great price and the tin just sets it all off nicely.
Also as a sidenote its not just kids yiu can get interested in electronics and python its adults too. I was already into novice electronics and could program many languages, but not Python.
My electronics knowledge has grown from owning a Pi but the benefits of me learnig Python to use on it have been huge. Python plays a hbig role in my day to day tasks at work – from automating repetetive tasks through to doing web analytics processing and reporting.
Python is such a useful language to learn for anyone working online as a developer.
Andy Crofts
Hi
In the program “User input” the option to select #times to flash is missing…
Trivial, but might confuse…
Michael Horne
Cheers Andy – I’ll take a look and amend.
Rick
Looks like there’s something wrong with the checkout of thepihut.com – no matter what location I enter, it wont calculate shipping, and the delivery page suggests shipping is only free if the order is over £50.
ThePiHut
Sorry to hear you’re having problems – could you drop us an email via the contact form please (wouldn’t want you to have to post your details on a forum!)
James Hughes
I’ve seen the same issue – hit calculate postage, it says it calculates it but never puts the figure anywhere on the screen! I didn’t go through the checkout process to see if it appeared later.
Stick
At that price I really have no excuse for just looking at those pins on the Pi.
ian. poynter
Hi all I am thinking getting one soon
Matt Smith
May I suggest a DS18B20 temperature sensor for a mk2 kit, probably my favourite transducer, with the triple LEDs you already have it would be fun to set up a RED too hot, Amber too cold, Green is comfortable. Maybe when its cold it reminds you to call Nan to help her set the heating controller or to buy more hot chocolate and marshmallows. Possibly even interfaces with you heating and lets you set the temperature via your tablet/phone.
(Don`t touch your heating at home unless you are a Gas Safe Engineer. Unless you have electric heating then contact a Qualified Electrician.)
That escalated quickly…going to go buy some DS18b20s and control my heating via wifi now.
James Hughes
I’ve got oil heating, what should I do? PANIC!
Matt Smith
*Amending my previous post* Always consult a suitable professional before commencing work. lol Which is a good rule for life anyway!
Robert_M
Fantastic! Fortunately, I did not have to prove that I was a child to order this ;-)
When I *was* a child (back in the mid 70’s) one of the best Christmas presents I ever got was a Radio Shack 100-in-1 electronics kit. I had a lot of fun with that, and I predict the same with this.
I look forward to seeing what other kits become available in the future. Thanks!
Geoff Riley
In the 1970s I was a teenager _working_ for Tandy, and used to sell those 100-in-1 kits. I loved it when people asked what you could do with it because it gave me the opportunity to ‘play’ with it whilst demonstrating and getting paid for doing so!
I first started experimenting with electronics at about the age 7 or 8 when I got the Ladybird book How to Make a Transistor Radio. I was hooked. I see the Pi very much in the same sort of vein for the modern child.
Shoui
Cor, that looks great. Totally would.
ilneill
Excellent. And at a really impulse buy price.
Click. Ordered.
Can’t wait!
belen esteban
Out of stock? :-(
Liz Upton
Mike tweeted last night that they’d sold out, yes. He’s @recantha on Twitter – that’s probably the best place to get hold of him!
Stick
Sold out is always a good sign…
Nils Olav
Seems to bee in stock now.
I just ordered three of them.
Must try to get me children more interested in programming than just playing Minecraft. :-)
Jill Rogat
This is a really cool kit and the price is definitely right. Great stuff!