CodeBug Blog

News and stories from The CodeBug Team

New CodeBug/RPi3 ‘Hat’ brings 360° photography to Raspberry Pi 3 Launch

If you’ve seen our Bullet Time Rig, or our Twittering Birdbox, you won’t be surprised by the slightly crazy looking creations we invent with Raspberry Pi. We’d wanted to build a camera that took instantaneous 360° pictures for some time, but the technology simply wasn’t available...until now! The new wireless networking capability of the Raspberry Pi 3 allowed us to network a ring of cameras without bulky wires or network switches, while the simple, compact display of CodeBug showed their status.

And of course the natural place to test the new rig was at the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3, 34 floors above London at The Shard. See what the launch was like for yourself. Scroll around the picture from the hat below and see how many famous faces you can spot.

If the panorama viewer doesn't work in your browser you can view the full panorama image here.

The hat is built from 8 of the new Raspberry Pis, 8 Pi Cameras, and 8 CodeBugs mounted on a custom laser cut rig attached to a yellow hard-hat. Pressing button A on a CodeBug tethered by USB cable triggers the cameras. The 8 CodeBugs surrounding the top of the hat then initiate a colourful countdown inviting all around to strike a pose for the picture. The images are copied over WiFi to a laptop that stitches them together instantly into a panorama. With the 8 cameras evenly placed in a circle to capture a full 360°, nobody can be camera shy!

With Raspberry Pis, cameras and a ring of brightly flashing CodeBugs strapped to our heads we looked like something out of Back to the Future! Needless to say, we had a lot of strange looks from Londoners on the tube. CodeBug Hat on train home

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3D printing for CodeBug

We love seeing all the cool projects you are making with your CodeBugs. Lots of people have been 3D printing all sorts of fun things for their CodeBug and we are excited to see what you come up with next.

@PiMinister from CPC has designed these handy 3D printed clips for mounting CodeBug ColourStar. These clips allow you to quickly secure CodeBug ColourStar to 3mm thick materials. They work perfectly with our star wand.

Steve Cox at Ultimaker 3D printers has printed some decorative cases for CodeBug. We are amazed at how colourful they are. Steve told us he made the bug case multicoloured by pausing the 3D print and swapping the material that the printer was using to a different coloured filament.

If you have access to a 3D printer, have a go at designing your own 3D printed addons for CodeBug and Tweet them to us.

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CodeBug at Bett 2016

CodeBug had an amazing time last week at the annual Bett show in London. We took down lots of CodeBug demos and two big CodeBugs that we had made especially for the event. Needless to say, it was an exciting train ride down to the show.

CodeBug's exciting train journey

Rapid electronics were kind enough to host us on their stand at Bett alongside our friends MeArm and Mirobot. CodeBug is now available from Rapid's online store.

Toms wearing CodeBugs

Teachers and students were lining up to try out CodeBug, and we gave lots of people their first taste of programming.

Programming CodeBug

Everyone wanted to have a try with the big CodeBugs, below are just some of the lucky CodeBug costume enthusiasts

Ben Nuttall from Raspberry Pi even had his own caption competition on Twitter.

CodeBug had a good look around Bett and even ventured into the Minecraft world.

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CodeBug in print

We are so excited by the hugely positive response CodeBug has been receiving. Articles and reviews on CodeBug seem to be popping up everywhere! There have been many magazine and newspaper articles on CodeBug, below are just a few.

CodeBug in Linux Format The January edition of Linux Format has an exclusive interview with CodeBug co-creator Dr. Andrew Robinson at OggCamp 2015. In the interview Andrew explains why CodeBug is so good at getting young people into coding and how important events like OggCamp are to the community. The article also show cases our very own CodeBug pumpkin which was present at the event in October.

CodeBug in Custom PC Elsewhere, the glowing review of CodeBug in Custom PC really warms our hearts. We hear about how much people love CodeBug all the time, and we never get sick of getting told it. The article goes on to detail the features of CodeBug and a brief history of our 6 legged friend.

CodeBug in MagPi This double page spread in MagPi shows how well CodeBug works with the Raspberry Pi. In the article, Tony Goodhew shows you how to make the classic ‘Zap the Rat’ game in Python using CodeBug and the Pi. You can read the digital copy of MagPi here (page 50).

CodeBug in IOM Examiner CodeBug has been making a huge impact in bedrooms and classrooms across the world, and our home towns are no exceptions. My local paper from the Isle of Man features an article about CodeBug where I explain why we love developing CodeBug and I highlight a few favourite projects including the GlowBug lightsaber we made for the release of Star Wars.

Please contact us at @_codebug on Twitter or on our contact page if you are writing an article about CodeBug and need more information.

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CodeBug Games!

Everyone loves playing video games and some of us enjoy making them even more than playing them! We have seen hundreds of games made on CodeBug,

Our friends at MadLab have been running great CodeBug workshops, and one of their attendees has made this super game of snake. It takes me back to my Nokia 3310 days (showing my age) where snake was the best game you could play on a phone!

Schools and coding clubs have been making all sorts of games, including these amazing year 3 and 4 pupils' steady hand games.

Simon Walters has recreated the classic Conway’s Game of Life on CodeBug, where cells can reproduce to create amazing patterns!

We have made a few fun game based activities, including Steady hand game, Pick up CodeBug (similar to Operation) and a Snakes and Ladders board game for you to get stuck into.

Our latest game creation is amazing... ;) it’s a maze! You navigate through the maze by holding the different leg inputs while touching the ground leg. Try it yourself here. If you enjoy it, have a go at Remixing it, and making your very own maze game! CodeBug maze game

Send us videos of your CodeBug games on Twitter @_codebug with the hashtag #gameoncodebug

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