School's out - but not for coders!

It is the ultimate summer school for coders.

Young Rewired State is a global community of self-taught young coders under the age of 18 who use their digital skills to "program the world around them". Every summer YRS stages a Festival of Code. It is a sign of the progress coding has made that when the festival was first held, in 2009, it took its co-ordinator Emma Mulqueeny "three months to find 50 young coders in the whole of the UK". At this year's festival, held recently, over 1,000 children took part at 61 centres across the country.

During the week the young programmers built apps, games, websites and projects, some just for fun and others which met real-life needs and challenges. The venues included the Raspberry Pi Foundation offices in Cambridgeshire and the Compare the Market HQ in Peterborough. After brainstorming ideas they worked on their projects. All that is asked of the participants is that they use one piece of open data. Teams had access to a mentor who could offer advice and support, but otherwise the teams worked independently. At the end of the week the teams presented their final projects in front of a panel of judges in a huge 'show and tell' event at the University of Plymouth.

Awards were given for best designs and best use of code, along with unique categories in the spirit of YRS such as "Code a Better Country" and "Should Exist". Among the most popular projects were "YouDraw", a crowd-sourced video animation platform giving the opportunity to create user-generated animated music videos; "Tourify", an app supplying unique customised tours for travellers; and "Miles Per Pound", a website which calculates the cost efficiency of your car. Other more idiosyncratic innovations included an app that measures proximity to danger, a bitcoin exchange rate service and a coat rack weather forecasting device.

Children as young as 8 made presentations that as one adult tech start-up founder commented, "could rival those of people 3 or 4 times their age".

#YRS2014 participants from all over the world present today as well! Incredible people and projects! @youngrewired pic.twitter.com/zhf4t2rTTk
— Alex ThinkBig (@AlexThinkBig) August 3, 2014

However, it is not so much the winning that matters in Young Rewired State as the coding: perhaps the definitive image of the event is that of hundreds of kids at their laptops, not playing games or wasting time on the web but creating new games and new websites.  The final gathering is a chance to have fun, meet other members of the community and learn from each other. These are the people born after 1997 who, in Mulqueeny's view, are the 'digital natives': children who have grown up around the web and who through 'peer to peer learning' have the skills to shape society and education.

"Digital skills in education has been a hot topic for the past few years", says Mulqueeny. "Young Rewired State, the organisation behind the Festival of Code, was a champion of that effort - but the festival is much more about this community of young people." The Plymouth gathering also included 40 youngsters from overseas as well as a YRS group from Kosovo who presented remotely.

And for the final phoootooo, the entire group of @YRSKosovo, parents & children together. #YRS2014 #YRSFoC pic.twitter.com/PV6ZpA1iyS
— STIKK (@STIKK_KS) August 3, 2014

It may make some feel rather old and unskilled by comparison; but it should also leave us inspired and confident about the future innovators, engineers and entrepreneurs amongst us.

https://youngrewiredstate.org/

Gary Wiles

The new Raspberry Pi? We'll give it more than a B+

Our integrated circuits product manager Richard Philpot (right) couldn't wait to get his hands on the newly redesigned Raspberry Pi. Here he explains what's new about the Model B+, which is now available from Rapid.

When the Raspberry Pi was released almost two and a half years ago, Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation had clear but limited aims for the project. He hoped to shift a few thousand boards to willing educators as a tool to help teach children more about programming computers. It quickly became apparent that they had actually created a groundbreaking piece of 21st-century tech. The iconic Pi has now reached the three million sales mark.

As British industrial success stories go, from design to manufacture (after production switched from the Far East to the Sony factory in Wales), there can have been few to compare with it in recent years. After the first model was upgraded a few months after its release with double the memory, the B+ has now appeared. We are delighted to be one of the lucky few suppliers in the UK. So what has changed with this new version?

More ports, more pins

The major changes are to the board design rather than the OS or processor, which is still the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC. The B+ has found room for two more USB ports, which is a great improvement. If you wanted to connect a keyboard, mouse and wifi dongle to the previous model you would need a USB hub, which sucked power from the board and added more hardware and wiring to what by its nature should be a small footprint device.

The Raspberry Pi Model B+

The GPIO connector header has also been extended from 26 to a 40-pin configuration. Existing headers and ribbon cable connectors will still be compatible with the old 26-pin system. The first 26 pins are in the same pinout as previously, but the extra pins give greater capacity to modify and hack the Pi. However, some headers will not be compatible - it will depend on the size of the bezel surrounding the pins (some are wider than the pin spacing).

The Pi now uses a microSD card rather than a standard SD card. As well as the space and physical benefits of dispensing with a large SD card tray, the NOOBS load out means that the Pi will require an 8GB microSD card. 4GB may be enough but it will be a close call! Combining separate audio and video jacks into one composite audio/video connector makes for a sleeker board with two sides free of protruding ports. This will be good news for makers of homebrew enclosures, for whom the Raspberry Pi has been an incredibly fruitful muse.

Less power-hungry

The B+ is less power hungry than its predecessor, consuming 2.8W in idle and under load states, compared to the B's 3.1 and 3.8W. Users who integrate their Pi in embedded applications will appreciate these power savings. Other notable changes include neater mounting options with the addition of a further two pre-drilled holes giving a rectangular configuration.

This is only a short summary, but the model B+ has addressed the (admittedly small) list of concerns some people had about the Raspberry Pi. By adding extra ports and pins the Pi designers have set a new standard for single board computers. With excellent community support, open source content and huge array of accessories this will definitely get more than a B+ on user's report books.

However, if you are thinking of ordering, don't hang around - the shelf of B+ boards in our warehouse is getting emptier by the day!

The Pibow Rainbow case for the B+

Custom enclosures have been one of the fastest growing areas of the cottage Pi industry, and the new design has already started to inspire a new generation of cases. We are looking forward to receiving the new batch of Pimoroni's popular Pibow range for the B+. The existing cases, which Liz Upton from the Raspberry Pi Foundation called 'one of the most solid and best looking cases I've seen', are still available from Rapid in rainbow, black, green, clear and translucent yellow.

There are a few other exciting add-ons in the Pi-peline - watch this space for details.

Click here to find out more about the Model B+ from Rapid