An Interview with the Team of British Students who Built a Raspberry Pi-Powered Robot Boat @Raspberry_Pi #piday #raspberrypi
Earlier this week, Linuxuser interviewed the Aber SailBot team. The team, made up of a group of British students, built a raspberry-pi powered robot sailboat that has competed in both the US and Ireland. Read more about the project on the team’s own page here!
What made you choose the Raspberry Pi as a way to power your SailBot?
LT: We needed some sort of brains for the boat and it needed to be somewhat low- powered, somewhat compact enough to fit inside the boat. We wanted to have the freedom to choose pretty much any language we wanted and obviously the Raspberry Pi lets us do that because it’s running a full Linux operating system. It meant we could develop software on our Linux laptops, debug it on the laptops and then just put it on the Pi and it would work instantly. Essentially we wanted something that would run on Linux.
DC: We already know how to use it, so it saved us from having to learn anything that’s particularly new.
Had you used the Raspberry Pi in any projects before the Aber SailBot?
LT: I had. I’ve also used the BeableBone and the BeagleBoard, which are both considerably more expensive than the Pi.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is one of the sponsors for the SailBot, how did that come about?
DC: In May last year we went to Cambridge to present the boat at the Cambridge Raspberry Pi Jam; as it turned out Jack Lang – one of the founding members of the Raspberry Pi foundation – was there. He saw us and our presentation where we said we needed some money and he came up to us at the end to tell us the Foundation could probably help us with that
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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. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!