My wife wafted a leaflet under my nose that Lincoln had had from school @YsgolBrynHedydd about a Mini-Beast Habitat competition. That’s how it all started. Firstly, its the kind of task that’s right up my street as it involves Lincoln and insects. Not to mention its a COMPETITION. Not that i’m competitive or anything!
So the idea behind the task was to make a mini beast habitat fit for an insect (albeit slow moving from what I can gather, you know, snail, beetle, mere wood louse, that kind of thing) The task involves hunting for recyclable stuff to make the habitat with and then put a range of materials in there to see which habitat particular beasts prefer – grass, pebbles, leaves etc.
So with an old, large Rice Krispie box ready for a makeover, I got thinking how we could make a habitat that not only wins a place in the nature area but also one that would stand out from the crowd. If I was an arts or crafts teacher I am sure it would have been adorned with all manner of paper mache attire, glued and painted in glorified poster paint technicolor. But seeing as I am an IT/Computing teacher, I had to get some tech in there somewhere!
Initially I did a quick sketch and wrote a list of things to consider, I explained to Lincoln why these things were important as we planned our project. He is just happy he gets to play with a Raspberry Pi in the process!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.