Lorraine Underwood
“Nora is a little robot car, where video feed is sent to a virtual reality headset.”
Lorraine is from Ireland and works with teachers in Lancashire to help them gain confidence in teaching computing. Lorraine is new to the maker community and this is her first Maker Faire UK, and she has chosen to show off her new project: Nora the Explorer, a firstperson virtual reality robot.
LXF: Hi Lorraine, can you tell the readers a little more about yourself? Lorraine Underwood: I’m the Computing at School coordinator for Lancaster University. Computing at School is a government funded organisation that helps teachers teach computing. Today at Maker Faire UK I am here with my project Nora the Explorer. LXF: So what is Nora the Explorer? LU: Nora is a little robot car, based around the Raspberry Pi Zero W. She has a camera on top of her and you control the car using a Wiimote, and the video feed from the camera is sent to a virtual reality headset giving the player a firstperson view of the course. LXF: Amazing, so the Raspberry Pi Zero W is able to handle the video, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi while driving the course? LU: Yes, the Wiimote is connected using Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi on the Zero W is broadcasting an access point that can be connected-to using a mobile phone in the headset. The effect is similar to FPV drones. LXF: So what inspired you to build this?
LU: I just wanted to because I believed that I could do it, this coupled with really wanting to take part in Maker Faire UK. I’m fairly new to the maker community, and looking into the various genres. I went to Liverpool Makefest last year and I was really excited by the maker community. But for Maker Faire UK I wanted to be an exhibitor, so I needed a cool idea to make. I saw someone do the same project with an Arduino and use a radio transmission to transmit the video to the user, but the costs were extremely high. But everything I see I always think “I can do that for cheaper!” so that is what drove me to create Nora. LXF: You’ve just hit upon the maker mentality “I can do that!” LU: Yes! And I always add “and cheaper”. LXF: So how new are you to the community? LU: This time last year I took part in Picademy, the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s teacher training course. I have a degree in Computer Science, and I have always loved programming. But I have never really been into the physical side of computing, the making aspect. But at Picademy I had a go. Now for most of Picademy I was “nah this isn’t very good” as I am not into Minecraft, and I am tone deaf, but the simple LED lighting up, that was amazing and started my interest in making. Since then I have hacked projects with Neopixels, which uses a Raspberry Pi 3 and my staircase! The outside temperature is displayed using a string of Neopixels down my staircase. The data is from a public API which uses your map reference to provide a local weather report. The code simply checks the temperature and then uses a conditional test which will trigger the corresponding neopixels. If the temperature goes above 25C then the staircase is illuminated red, but living in the UK I am unlikely to see that happen! The coding side of the project was simple, as I am already a coder, but the electronics side of things was a steep learning curve. But luckily I had help from my husband who is exceptionally good at electronics. I’m a little scared that I may break a Pi. For example I didn’t know that the Neopixels and the Pi could share the same power supply. For my next project I hope to
break a Raspberry Pi! LXF: So what is your next step? LU: The tricky next step is learning electronics. I don’t know how you learn it. Is it self taught? I’ve got a book on electronics, which I am slowly going through, it is helping but I am a rather impatient learner. The community is amazing and I can ask questions via social media. LXF: Have you had the time to visit the other Maker Faire UK exhibitors? LU: Yes I’ve had a wonderful time going round and talking to the other exhibitors. I met Jonathan Sanderson who has made an amazing “Heart of Maker Faire” which records your heartbeat and then plays the recording using lots of Neopixels. We’d both talked over Twitter about the problems that we faced... Maker Faire is a great place to put a face to the Twitter handle and have the opportunity to discuss and share ideas.