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KOSOVO PI WARS
KOSOVO PI WARS
Above The Young
Innovators is a
robotics club
based in Shtime,
southern Kosovo
Below The robots
built by Young
Innovators, ready to
do battle in Pi Wars
Young makers in troubled country learn to build robots
M
any of us will know of
Kosovo due to the war that
took place there in 1998-9.
However, young makers in
this country are putting that real
war behind them by running
the ountry firt ever i r
(magpi.cc/2iHC4QK).
“We declared independence
from Serbia just eight years ago,”
says Andy Moxon. Despite living in
diut time the ountry i not
without Python coding, physical
computing, robots, and a good
number of Raspberry Pi computers.”
Andy has been running an
after-school club called Young
Innovators (magpi.cc/2iHAtuc),
based in the small town of Shtime in
southern Kosovo.
“The club aims to bring maths and
physics to life, while also teaching
the students programming and
robotics,” explains Andy.
“Our robots are pretty standard,”
he adds. A Pi Zero is powered by a
thin mobile phone power bank. Each
robot has two motors controlled by
an L293D motor controller chip. Also
included are ultrasonic distance and
infrared line sensors.
“We use two additional infrared
sensors to count wheel revolutions,”
says Andy, “having painted
white stripes on our wheels using
nail polish.” The sensors open
the robots up to some interesting
autonomous challenges.
One area which has caused a
lot of excitement in the club has
been the recent introduction
of an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer
(magpi.cc/2iHC5Eg). “Using
FreeCAD, we have designed the
chassis of the robots from nothing,”
reveals Andy. “This has been a
tough but worthwhile exercise,
Big thanks must go out to the
Raspberry Pi community
demonstrating the wonders of
3D prototyping.”
The robots took part in the
ountry firt i r tte in
December. The event was even
covered by TemaTV, a regional
television station.
“Big thanks must go to the
Raspberry Pi community,” says
ndy. firt ued perry i
just a year ago and without the
dedication of excellent bloggers,
we would never have been able to
reach this stage.”
10 February 2017
raspberrypi.org/magpi