BIG.Cube as Partner of the Coding Day at the EGG

We were a Partner of the 7th Grade Coding Day at the Erasmus Grasser Grammar School in Munich

On 14th and 17th of February, we had the pleasure of supporting the Erasmus Grasser Grammar School in Munich as a partner for the first Coding Day for the 7th graders. In order to get young people interested in computer science professions at a young age, we took over the presentation of the project “Programming a Calliope Controller” in the kick-off event for all classes.

Our colleagues Julia and Jochen connected a Calliope controller to a Legotech car, turning it into an autonomous vehicle. “Murphy”, as the autonomous driving car was then called during the presentation, could drive autonomously in two versions:

Murphy Version 1: Autonomous driving without collision detection
Murphy Version 2: Autonomous driving with collision detection

Murphy vs. Tesla

In order to make the dimensions of autonomous vehicle programming clear to the students, Julia made an interesting comparison:

Murphy V1 was programmed with 68 lines of code
Murphy V2 was programmed with 135 lines of code
Tesla, a well-known manufacturer of autonomous cars, requires over 150 million lines of code for one of its cars

This comparison made a noticeable impression on the students.

Inspiring programming ideas from the young developers

The kick-off event also introduced the work of a software developer and the importance of good teamwork. The students were then able to experience the latter for themselves when they took to their PCs and programmed with the Calliope. To do this, they first got an overview of the individual components, labelled them and then started their own development environment on the PC.

And off they went. After a “simple” programme at the beginning, own projects could be implemented on the Calliope. We were thrilled by the creative ideas of the seventh graders:

an alarm system that makes use of position and light sensors
a heat-free detector that uses the temperature sensor
a mini quiz that counts the correct answers
a Tamagotchi
a Timer
various games in simple form (as the Calliope only displays a 5×5 LED matrix) and
one group even used the Bluetooth communication facilities to send messages to each other.

The young developers have shown how creative solutions can be found with simple means.