It has been truly excellent for us to see Raspberry Jam events popping back up all over the world in recent months. Our Community Engagement guy Matt has pulled together every single Raspberry Pi-focused event you’ve told us about in one handy place so more people can find a local nerd squad to hang out with and show off their projects.
Matt has received some brilliant photos from David Whiteley of Hackberry Men’s Shed which hosted a Raspberry Jam in Ontario, Canada. Let’s take a look at some of the builds on show:
Dial “D” for Diesel
Dial “D” for Diesel was the oldest project at Hackberry Men’s Shed Raspberry Jam, having previously toured Maker Fares in Ottawa and London in Ontario, Canada. The model train control unit runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, and converts dial pulses from the rotary telephone to commands that control the two engines and lights. The large gauge shows steam pressure, which slowly reduces unless you call for more coal by dialling 0. The project uses the eSpeak speech synthesiser to make announcements such as “The train on platform two is the 12:27 for…”. It can also play WAV files to imitate the screech of brakes or a steam whistle.
Reminder clock
This clock (on the left hand side of the table above) was made for an elderly grandparent who was prone to waking up at 2am and, thinking it was 2pm, getting dressed and walking unsafely around the house in the dark. To help avoid this, the clock only shows the time during waking hours. At night, the screen instead displays a gentle reminder to stay in bed.
Pico-powered WWI imitation fighter aircraft
This creation is Hackberry Men’s Shed’s Sopwith Camel. It’s a half-scale model of a British First World War fighter aircraft. You can see the accompanying cockpit simulator in the background of the photo above, and there’s a closer look in the image below. A Raspberry Pi Pico-powered sound system is built into the aircraft. The box you can see next to the wing tip in the photo above lets visitors start the engine (well, make it sound like they’ve started the engine) and listen to gunfire sounds at the flip of a switch.
Thinking about starting your own Raspberry Jam?
If you can’t see anything like this near you on our events page, please do consider hosting your own thing. Libraries, schools, and community centres might be up for offering you space for free. Alternatively, some of our oldest and most established Raspberry Jams happen in local pubs and are just a regular place for people to come along and chat to folks who share similar interests. Whether you think five or 500 people might show up, scroll to the bottom of this page and click ‘Tell us about your event’. We’ll share it with our million-strong audience on social media and connect you with others who want to join you. And remember to get back in touch and share photos so we can inspire more Raspberry Jams.
Coming up soon, Raspberry Pi fans are hosting events including a workshop for teachers in Zambia looking to enhance their IT and physical computing understanding, and regular relaxed meetups for people in Melbourne, Australia and Cornwall, UK. That’s on top of online events that you can access from anywhere, like this free online session exploring RP2040’s impressive capabilities for generating sound.
