Celebrating with double Jam

RS South Africa celebrated Raspberry Pi’s sixth birthday in March with two successful Pi Jams – one in Johannesburg and the other in Cape Town.

A Raspberry Pi Jam is an organised community event where people get together and share knowledge, learn new things and meet fellow enthusiasts. RS South Africa believes some of the best innovations happen at this type of forum and intends to support multiple Pi Jams in the future.

The Johannesburg event was co-hosted with Entelect, a software development company who also partnered with us for the very first Pi Jam South Africa, held in September 2017. This time, the focus was on education and how the Raspberry Pi could be used to solve the challenges of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills. One of the highlights was from Bjarke Gotfredsen, who uses a micro screen and components that fit onto the actual Raspberry Pi board and can be used for multiple applications like video streaming and playing space invaders. Another was Mario Marais’s environmental sensor set-up for schools, to monitor moisture and temperature.

RS South Africa sponsored Raspberry Pi kits as prizes at the Cape Town event. This took the form of a coding workshop, with young people who would otherwise have limited access or opportunity to learn about computer programming.