PyCon Tutorial: Build your own PiDoorbell - Learn Home Automation with Python (Shallow Thoughts)

PyCon Tutorial: Build your own PiDoorbell - Learn Home Automation with Python

The first batch of hardware has been ordered for Rupa's and my tutorial at PyCon in Montreal this April!

We're presenting Build your own PiDoorbell - Learn Home Automation with Python on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 9.

It'll be a hands-on workshop, where we'll experiment with the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins and learn how to control simple things like an LED. Then we'll hook up sonar rangefinders to the RPis, and build a little device that can be used to monitor visitors at your front door, birds at your feeder, co-workers standing in front of your monitor while you're away, or just about anything else you can think of.

Participants will bring their own Raspberry Pi computers and power supplies -- attendees of last year's PyCon got them there, but a new Model A can be gotten for $30, and a model B for $40.

We'll provide everything else. We worried that requiring participants to bring a long list of esoteric hardware was just asking for trouble, so we worked a deal with PyCon and they're sponsoring hardware for attendees. Thank you, PyCon! CodeChix is fronting the money for the kits and helping with our travel expenses, thanks to donations from some generous sponsors. We'll be passing out hardware kits and SD cards at the beginning of the workshop, which attendees can take home afterward.

We're also looking for volunteer T/As. The key to a good hardware workshop is having lots of helpers who can make sure everybody's keeping up and nobody's getting lost. We have a few top-notch T/As signed up already, but we can always use more. We can't provide hardware for T/As, but most of it's quite inexpensive if you want to buy your own kit to practice on. And we'll teach you everything you need to know about how get your PiDoorbell up and running -- no need to be an expert at hardware or even at Python, as long as you're interested in learning and in helping other people learn.

This should be a really fun workshop! PyCon tutorial sign-ups just opened recently, so sign up for the tutorial (we do need advance registration so we know how many hardware kits to buy). And if you're going to be at PyCon and are interested in being a T/A, drop me or Rupa a line and we'll get you on the list and get you all the information you need.

See you at PyCon!