High tech, high up at Ridgefield Academy @ The Ridgefield Press.

Eighth graders at Ridgefield Academy were introduced to electronics, operating systems and coding Raspberry Pi, a $35 mini computer running Linux.

Ridgefielders Jonah Norwitt, Connor Larson and Craig Certo, along with Bryce Chu, Skylar Sugar and Kevin Maldonado, completed their programming class with an “out of this world” project. They attached a wirelessly networked Raspberry Pi with a camera to a helium balloon and sent it soaring over the school campus.

Using remote terminal commands, the students took aerial photos of the 42-acre campus. The photos were then collected remotely, during the flight.

Their photo was selected as a runner-up in Adafruit’s first annual photography contest. The contest had few rules: Anyone with a Pi could enter, and all photos had to be taken with Pi and a Pi camera or a webcam or a camera connected to the Raspberry Pi…

A shot of our last 8th grade raspberry pi class. It’s an RPi tied to helium balloons tethered to the ground. Wireless dongle, kids built the OS, made the camera code (python), launched, logged in (ssh) ran the camera code (python) and downloaded the images (sftp) in real time.