Pi Wars Mini Conference
This one-day event was a celebration of Pi Wars, bringing together veterans and newbies, with a programme featuring both longer presentations and lightning talks. For a taste of the day, view the 2019 gallery.
Check out the full programme for videos of the talks and links to the presentations.
The conference WILL RETURN in 2021!
The University of Cambridge is kindly allowing us to host the event at the Roger Needham Building in Cambridge on Saturday October 5th 2019. The Roger Needham Building is right next to the usual Pi Wars venue.
We have an auditorium with a capacity of 180 people, a large lobby area with stands for our exhibitors, and a breakout room as a display area for showing off robots. Please do bring your robot if you can, and tell people about it in the breaks!
We will have ample free parking available on the day in the University's Park & Cycle car park next to our building, and the site is also served by the Route U bus from the City centre and the Cambridge railway station.
If you are driving, ignore Google maps, the correct postcode for the venue is CB3 0RB.
You must have a ticket to attend this event, and there will be no tickets for sale on the door!
Tickets are now sold out!
Sorry!
There are still places available on the CVzero hackathon on the Sunday the day after the Mini Conference, Sunday 6th October.
| 9:30 | Breakfast and registration |
| 10:00 | Welcome from Tim Richardson and Mike Horne |
| 10:10 | Keynote by Brian Corteil - How not to build a Pi Wars winning robot! |
| 10:50 | "Computer Vision" from scratch - Brian Starkey |
| 11:20 | Break |
| 11:50 | Introduction to PID control - or how to make your robot drive in a straight line - Lance Robson |
| 12:20 | Will your next Pi Wars entry be a walker? The challenges of multi-legged robots - Chris Parrott |
| 12:35 | The Art Of Pi Wars - Amy W |
| 12:50 | Lunch break, and robot show-off |
| 14:00 | Turning Toys into Toybots - Leo White |
| 14:30 | Create a Raspberry Pi HAT with KiCad 5 - Making open source hardware with free and open source software - Leon Anavi |
| 15:00 | Our Pi Wars Journey - CERCBot Team |
| 15:30 | Break |
| 16:00 | Lightning talks, raffle, and close |
In addition to the scheduled talks in the auditorium, we have a breakout room for people to display any of their robots they want to bring, and show them off in the breaks.
We also hope to welcome exhibitors who you'll be able to talk to (and buy things from!) at their tables in the lobby area.
If that wasn't enough, we will also have a free raffle with prizes donated by our amazing sponsors.
Our keynote speaker Brian Corteil is championing the creation of a Python 3 library called CVzero. CVzero aims to simplify computer vision for the Raspberry Pi. As well as the library, a companion App for the Raspberry Pi is being developed for selecting an object and displaying its colour signature. It will be possible to save the colour signatures collected as a file for the library to use.
Brian has booked out the Cambridge Makespace classroom for a Hackathon on the Sunday following the Conference - 6th October. The aim of the Hackathon is to improve the library code, write documentation, develop code examples, demonstrate it in action and create videos.
If you are interested in helping with the CVzero library, and attending the Hackathon, please go to this Meetup page and sign up. It would be great to see you there and get your contributions! If you have any questions, please talk to Brian on Twitter or at the Mini Conference.
We are especially grateful to the University of Cambridge Information Services and the University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology who funded the catering for this event.
The Pi Wars Mini Conference would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors 4tronix, PiBorg, The Pi Hut, Pimoroni, Red Robotics, and Tindie.
If you would be interested in sponsoring us or exhibiting please get in touch!
Please note our Code of Conduct, Accessibility policy and Safeguarding policy.
