Sunday, February 14, 2016

Making with Izzi at the San Diego Fab Lab


So impressed with Izzi I had to cross post this this blog, too.


As we travel, Craig and I like to visit and blog about creative spaces and convergences.  While in San Diego we got to visit two different maker spaces - The Fab Lab San Diego and MakerPlace.

During our  first visit  to the Fab Lab,  I noted four female makers on the poster board that featured their Resident Maker Experts -- one seemed a little younger than the rest.




Yesterday  I got to meet this most amazing young maker at the San Diego Fab Lab - 8 year old Isabelle (also known as IZZI).   When I met her, I could see why she was part of the Team That Gets Things Done at the Fab Lab.  

Izzi knows her way around a maker space! As you can see in this video, Izzi is totally at home with the space, the tools, and supplies.  


When I asked her to show me what she likes to make, she darted towards a back room, stopping  by a box of jumpers, and told me that she was learning to code and then identified a numerical value for each color jumper.

I was immediately curious to know more because, I had never heard anyone assign a numerical value to jumpers before.  But then Izzi proceeded to pull out a set of resistors calculating the value of the resistors by the color bands and then explained that one of her fellow resident makers used the colors on the jumpers to ‘drill her’ about these values. That is totally brilliant!  Izzi has some smart mentors who understand both making and learning!


Izzi quickly moved on to what CLEARLY was one of her favorite rooms filled with black and yellow crates that contained lockable plastic pieces, wheels, gears, pulleys, and a remote.  She pulled down a bridge from a high shelf,  rummaged through the drawers until she found a remote and then became entranced with the structure and its moving parts.  It was obvious that the world of mechanical engineering was one that fascinated her.  




Although I’ve seen a lot of different STEM products, I had yet to encounter the Rokenbok STEM kits and what better way to learn about them than through Izzi’s eyes. This reinforced my beliefs that STEM does not have to be pink or girly  to engage girls, but it does need to have a variety of entry points. The Rokenbok STEM kits quickly went on my list of  products with low threshold, high ceilings, and wide walls which I feel are  key to engaging a more diverse population of tech-savvy creators, makers, innovators, inventors and problem solvers.





When I  learned that another area that fascinated Izzi at the FabLab was the sewing area. filled with different types of sewing machines for various types of maker projects, I shared with her my interest in using Arduino in eTextile projects and showed her my latest hat project -- a black hat designed to show off an Arduino Bean that controls blue and white LEDs sewed into embroidered snowflakes. She was particularly fascinated with the fact that the project included a sensor that triggered a buzzer to play Star Wars music and started dancing to set off the accelerometer.







I asked her if she’d like to do some making together with some of my supplies.  We broke out some sewable LEDs, a sewable battery holder, conductive thread and quickly created a felt bracelet.   Her  comfort with circuits and ability to problem solve shined as she dashed across the room to find a multimeter when our LEDs failed to light on the first try.  


True confession:  My comfort with a multimeter pales compared to Izzi’s.   But her confidence with the tool inspired me to use mine more often until it becomes as second nature as it was for Izzi.  After learning that she had given the mayor of San Diego a soldering lessons, I was tempted to ask her for pointers.    But alas it was time to go and I wanted to leave Izzi with some supplies that would help her move our project to the next steps.   


I pulled out a  LilyPad Twinkle, some conductive thread and  some more sewable LEDs to leave with Izzi so  that she could  experience the way microprocessors  can be used  in her next sewing project. Then I showed her how I was using a more powerful microprocessor called the LilyPad Arduino to control some multi-colored neopixels on a unicorn headband project I was working on.


I would so love to come back and show Izzi to code a future Arduino project.  But my guess, is that Izzi is not going to need me to learn to code.  Izzi is fortunate enough to be surrounded with fabulous mentors from the FAB LAB who have taken her under their wing -- including her mom (Joy) who serves as  Community Relations Manager for the FabLab - San Diego.


The joy I was feeling while hanging out and making with Izzi was slightly dampened when hearing that Izzi school environment doesn’t seem to provide the opportunities for Izzi’s passion to shine.  The strong confident voice I heard from this young lady is not part of the Izzi you might see at school.

It’s sad that more kids don’t get to bloom the way Izzi obviously has by being surrounded in a rich environment for learning like the FabLab.   

It’s sad that students with passions for creating and making often don’t find a place to use that passion as part of everyday learning.  

Thankfully more schools are integrating more STEM/STEAM opportunities for students, and many educators I  work with are building their own maker spaces in their schools.

Thankfully more and more products like the Rokenbok STEM kits are being created with thoughtful attention to engaging a diverse group of students to “think like engineers gives them the skills and confidence to change the world.”

Thankfully many places like the FabLab are offering outreach opportunities to help our schools create tomorrow’s innovators.   

I can’t wait to see what path Izzi will follow as she continues to learn -- but something tells me engineering is somewhere in her future.









Sunday, February 07, 2016

Getting Started with Raspberry PiZero (Part 3) - Installing the OS using a Windows Computer

Installing OS using a Windows Computer.



This post will be a duplicate of my last post, EXCEPT that instead of using a MAC we are going to use a Windows based Machine.   If you have a MAC - go back to the last post, and skip this one. If you have a Windows computer, you’re in the right place.  



If you are following my  journey back into the world of Pi, you know that this short  series on the Pi Zero  is meant to document and reflect my process and point out the little things (both technical and not)  that might help the real newbie gain confidence as they grow their maker skills and develop a growth mindset using a Pi Zero


In my first post, I shared some backgrounds on my attempts to venture into the world of Pi.


In the second post, I tried to prepare you for  some of the chicken and egg scenarios that might derail you as you gear up to use your Pi Zero.  Basically there are two important steps to starting out
1) getting the operating system installed
2) getting a monitor or display up and running


You can't really do one without the other.  In the second post, I mostly talked about getting your monitor or display set up -  but you can't really do that until you have an Operating System running your Pi Zero.  So these first few post are really quite intertwined.   In my last post I shared how I installed the Operating system on a Mac,  while in this post , we are doing the same on a Windows machine.  In my next post, I plan to focus on some  troubleshooting I went through to deal with my display/monitor issues.


So let’s start with “What is an operating system and Why do you need one on your Raspberry Pi Zero.”


According to Webopedia ....


The operating system is the most important program that runs on acomputer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs and applications. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files anddirectories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such asdisk drives and printers.  ...Webopedia

So basically your Pi Zero did not come with its most important program - the Operating System-- which basically means it can't do anything until you figure out how to install an operating system for your Pi Zero.


If you purchased your Pi Zero as part of a kit, there is a chance your kit included the operating system already installed on a microSD card.
If not, you’ll need two things to get started.


  1. A 8 gig micro SD card  and adapter  (about $5.00)
  2. An Internet enabled computer with an SD card slot


The recommended Operating System for the Pi Zero (at this time) is called Raspian Jessie.
You can find both Raspian Jessie and instructions for installing it on the Raspberry Pi download page.   The Windows direction in the installation guide provided there were pretty straightforward.  





When you unzip the file, open the unzipped Raspian folder and note that you now have an ‘image’ file ending with .img file.   
Now insert your MicroSD Card and Adapter into your Windows computer.
Note that my SD card is is my (D:) drive.  Yours might be assigned another letter.
It’s very important to note the CORRECT letter.





Download the Win32DiskImager utility from the Sourceforge Project page





When you unzip the file, you will now have a file  called Win32DiskImager-0.9.5-install.exe




If you are the administrator on your computer, Double Click on this file to Run.



Note: If you are not the logged in as an administrator, you may need to right click on the file and select run as administrator, typing in your administrator password when prompted.

Note: If you are not the logged in as an administrator, you may need to right click on the file and select run as administrator, typing in your administrator password when prompted.

You’ll get the usual series of prompts that ask you to hit NEXT several times until you get the final INSTALL  prompt to click on.



When the Win32 Disk Imager has installed you’ll get a README file (which you can just close)  and the following screen.   Click on FINISH!



You will now have Desktop Icon along with a Program on your computer called Win32 Disk Imager.  Click on either to run the Disk Imager.






When prompted, click in the Image Box and then Select the Raspbian Jessie  image file you downloaded and unzipped  earlier and press OPEN.



Then click on DEVICE Box  in the Disk Imager Program and make sure to Select the drive letter of the letter that matches the letter your computer assigned to our SD Card. Mine was D:  but yours might be different.


VERY IMPORTANT!  Be careful to select the correct drive; if you get the wrong one you can destroy your data on the computer's hard disk!


It’s very important to note the CORRECT letter.



Click Write and wait for the process to finish..



Eject the SD card  which now contains the Operating System (Raspian Jessie)!


Remove the MicroSD Card from the Adapter.

Congratulations!  You are ready to insert your microSD card with the new RASPIAN JESSIE operating system into your Pi Zero. Of course,  you’ll need to hook up power, a monitor or display option, a USB adapter and USB mouse.


Note that the order of operations matters when you connect everything!  

Turn on  your Monitor/Display first
THEN connect to POWER so that the Raspberry Pi can sense that a monitor is attached and figure out what resolution the monitor is set to.
(You might remember from my earlier post.. that this can be a bit tricky).


If all goes well  --- after a few minutes of WAIT time.. you will get a screen that looks like this.

Hopefully this is the case for you.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, post,  I experienced a chicken and egg dilemma trying to get my display to work and installing the OS.  You can’t do one without the other.  You can’t test whether your OS install went well without a display; but you can’t test if your display is compatible with your Pi Zero without the OS.


I’m assuming all is well and that you will not experience this dilemma.. unfortunately I did  and I’ll share how I resolved it in my next post.
  


Oh.. and just a reminder for those who might not have seen the first post… this series is meant to give less experienced users the CONFIDENCE they need to move forward with their Raspberry Pi Zero.   There are lots of great resources out there - but it’s so easy to miss a step if you are a new user and from experience I know that one misstep can cause you to lose confidence. Pictures to guide you can help give you confidence that you’re on the right track.  
But visuals can also throw you off if a version changes or your computer is slightly different; in that case look for similarities.  
Thanks for reading my  Raspberry Pi  series  where I try to point out areas that a new user might need to pay special attention to stay confident and to show my own errors as a way to model how  my Raspberry PI journey helped me develop my growth mindset and build my confidence as a maker / educator.

Saturday, February 06, 2016

Getting Started with Pi Zero (Part 2) - Installing an Operating System for your Pi Zero on a MAC


If you are following my  my journey back into the world of Pi, you know that this series is meant to document and reflect my process and point out the little things (both technical and not)  that might help the real newbie gain confidence as they grow their maker skills and develop a growth mindset.

In my first post, I shared some backgrounds on my attempts to venture into the world of Pi.

In my last post, I tried to prepare you for  some of the chicken and egg scenarios that might derail you as you gear up to use your Pi Zero.  Basically there are two important steps to starting out 
1) getting the operating system installed
2) getting a monitor or display up and running

You can't really do one without the other.  In my last post, I mostly talked about getting your monitor or display set up -  but you can't really do that until you have an Operating System running your Pi Zero.  So these next few post are really quite intertwined.  I'll start with installing the Operating system on a Mac, then offer a post for doing the same on a Windows machine, and finally share the troubleshooting I went through to deal with my display/monitor issues in the following post. 

But for this post let's stick with installing the  operating system on a Mac!
I'll share my Windows journey in the next post.


What is an operating system? 

According to Webopedia ....


The operating system is the most important program that runs on acomputer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs and applications. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files anddirectories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such asdisk drives and printers.  ...Webopedia 


So basically your Pi Zero did not come with its most important program - the Operating System-- which basically means it can't do anything until you figure out how to install an operating system for your Pi Zero. 

If you purchased your Pi Zero as part of a kit, there is a chance your kit included the operating system already installed on a microSD card.


If not, you’ll need two things to get started.

  1. A 8 gig micro SD card  and adapter  (about $5.00)
  2. An Internet enabled computer with an SD card slot

The recommended Operating System for the Pi Zero (at this time) is called Raspian Jessie.
You can find both Raspian Jessie and instructions for installing it on the Raspberry Pi download page.   But honestly… these instructions were intimidating to me!


The Adafruit  tour of the the Pi Zero and its components is the perfect place to start before you start installing the  Raspian Jessie Operating System on your Micro SD card.  


You'll need to start by downloading Raspbian Jessie Operating from the Raspberry Pi downloads page (Adafruit provide you with a direct link to the latest version download)
Next double click to  UNZIP the file!

You should now have the following IMG file in your Downloads folder

Next we are going to download a special installer for MAC that the the folks from ADAFRUIT have shared called the PI SD installer for MAC -- (OMG.. this step is so amazingly more simple than the intimidating instruction on the RASPBERRY PI site for MAC -- THANK YOU- ADAFRUIT and Ray Viljoen!)

Clicking on the Download ZIP  button you find on Ray’s Git Hub page  to get the SD Installer for Mac.

When you double click on the ZIP (or Extract the zip file),  you will end up with a folder called 'Raspberry-PI-SD-Installer-OS-X-master'.
I renamed  the  Folder  to RASPBERRY   to make it easy to work in some of the later steps where I found myself typing the name of the folder to navigate in the TERMINAL Window. (We’ll get to that later).

I then moved the  Raspbian-jessie.img file that  I had downloaded earlier into my Raspberry folder


So far -- So Good!
Now here comes the part that might be unfamiliar to some because it uses some UNiX commands -- but no worries,  it just takes a little confidence and some attention to details to avoid typos.

You need to find the TERMINAL WINDOW for your MAC.
I used the SPOTLIGHT window to search for the word TERMINAL and clicked on it to OPEN IT up.


It will open a little window that looks like  this
You’ll also see the following  back icon in your dock

If you have never used the terminal window before, try typing in a few UNIX commands (like the ones in RED) to get familiar with how the TERMINAL window works.
Last login: Wed Jan 20 10:36:51 on console
Lucies-Mac:~ lucie$ ls
Pictures
Desktop Public
Documents
Lucies-Mac:~ lucie$ pwd
/Users/lucie
Lucies-Mac:~ lucie$ cd -
/Users/lucie
Lucies-Mac:~ lucie$

Here are a few other UNIX  Commands I find useful for beginners using the TERMINAL window.
CD to change Directory (folder)
LS  to see what is in a Directory (folder)
CD ~ to go back a directory
CD - to VIEW the name of the previous directory
CTRL Z to cancel a command
(I used this once I started the install and got some prompts that I wasn’t sure about such as which DRIVE I wanted to install.  I didn’t want to hit enter and format the wrong drive, so I used CTRL Z and went on to do more research)
CTRL+Z stops (pauses) a job
CTRL+C terminates a job
  with CTRL+C you cannot resume the process but with CTRL+Z the job can be resumed by just entering at the command prompt

Command: ls
Use this command to display the files within the current directory.
Command: ls -a
This command shows all files in a directory, both visible and invisible. All files preceded by a period are normally invisible, and are not normally displayed when using ls. These files are often called dot files and are initialization files for the various programs. Some examples might be:
Command: pwd
The pwd stands for "present working directory" and shows what directory you are in. It indicates the exact path from the root. The root is the top level of the unix file system, similar to the desktop on a Macintosh, or C:\ on a PC

Now that you are warmed up using the Terminal Window, let’s get back to our Raspberry Pi  Project!
Make sure that you have the SD CARD INSERTED into your MAC and that you KNOW the NAME of the SD CARD. If you are not sure.. eject the card.. inspect your Finder window to see which DISK has disappeared and then put it back in to see which DISK appears.


Great.. you now have the information you need to continue.

In the Terminal Window, type in the following  command

















CD RASPBERRY to change over to the RASPBERRY folder

LS  to make sure you are see the files located in the RASPBERRY FOLDER

Then type in the INSTALL command you see in Green in the image below carefully typing in name of the jessie  image file that is in your folder.
Don’t forget to hit ENTER or RETURN.





A prompt will appear asking for you to input the SD card Disk  number !  Caution:  Use the correct one!!
If you use the wrong one, you could wipe out your HARD DRIVE on your MAC.
I know.. this sounds scary.. but just take a breath and pay attention and you'll be fine!

Note that on MY installation I knew it was  Disk 7 because of the in the size column I noted a disk with the size (7.4). Remember that I started with an 8 SD card --- close enough!

But guess what -  I wanted to feel more confident, so instead of moving forward, I used CTRL Z to cancel the whole install process,  pulled out the SD card, and redid the process and noticed there was no Disk 7.  Then I cancelled again, and redid the install using Disk 7 with confidence!

It took me a few tries and a little UNIX refresher to get the command to work because I was in the wrong folder when I started.
I’m pasting my false start below.. in case it helps you to see the corrections I needed to make to get it right!


But after I got it right.. it took a few minutes to finish.  Be patient!
You’ll know its done when you get the following
ALL Done message!


Congratulations!  You are ready to insert your microSD card with the new RASPIAN JESSIE operating system into your Pi Zero. Of course,  you’ll need to hook up power, a monitor or display option, a USB adapter and USB mouse.

Note from my last post, that the order of operations matters!  

Turn on  your Monitor/Display first
THEN connect to POWER so that the Raspberry Pi can sense that a monitor is attached and figure out what resolution the monitor is set to.
(You might remember from my last post,. that this can be a bit tricky).

If all goes well  --- after a few minutes of WAIT time.. you will see a slew of text flying past you and then get a screen that looks like this.


Hopefully this is the case for you.  As I mentioned in my last post, I experienced a chicken and egg dilemma trying to get my display to work and installing the OS.  You can’t do one without the other.  You can’t test whether your OS install went well without a display; but you can’t test if your display is compatible with your Pi Zero without the OS.

I’m assuming all is well and that you will not experience this dilemma.. unfortunately I did  and I’ll share how I resolved it in an upcoming post.
  
But first I need to post my journey for  Installing  the OS for  Raspberry Pi Zero for those using a  Windows computer.

Oh.. and just a reminder for those who might not have seen the first post… this series is meant to give less experienced users the CONFIDENCE they need to move forward with their Raspberry Pi.  There are lots of great resources out there - but it’s so easy to miss a step if you are a new user and from experience I know that one misstep can cause you to lose confidence. So in this series, I try to point out areas that a new user might need to pay special attention to stay confident and to show my own errors as a way to model how a my Raspberry PI journey helped me develop my growth mindset and build my confidence as a maker / educator.
Hope that this post might guide new users along their journey.