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Welcome everybody to our presentation on Programming in the Small: Kids, Chickens, and Ruby. I'm Jason Clark, and I work as a software architect at New Relic.
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And this is your opportunity to introduce yourself.
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Hi, I'm Korra. We're so glad that you're here today!
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A few years ago, Korra and I did a presentation at Cascadia Ruby, which was about Shoes programming. Shoes is a GUI library, and we will see a little bit more about it later.
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Together, we had created a series of different programs using Shoes. Can you tell us about some of the things we made, Korra?
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We made a Star Wars program!
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That's right! What did the Star Wars program do?
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Well, when we pressed 'D', Darth Vader's lightsaber lit up.
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And when we pressed 'Y', Yoda's ears went down.
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And when we pressed 'L', Princess Leia's lightsaber came up.
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That's right! And I found a bug that my dad didn’t notice. If we pressed 'D' too many times, Darth Vader's lightsaber went off the screen.
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Yep, she was my tester! This was just one example of the many programs we created together, and we had a really good time.
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We love Ruby in our household, don't we?
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Ruby is pretty awesome! How much do we love Ruby?
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A lot!
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So who's this on the screen? This is Mike, our pet guinea pig.
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That's right! We like Ruby so much in the Clark household that we named our guinea pig Ruby.
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After enjoying our programming and games, we wanted to take things to the next level. We wanted to solve a real-world problem in our lives.
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What was our problem, Korra?
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Our chickens weren't laying eggs!
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That's right! We have chickens in our backyard. We are from Portland, Oregon, so of course, we would have chickens.
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Keeping track of the chickens and the eggs they lay is a real challenge for us.
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Can you explain why this is such a problem, Korra?
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We have two identical ones.
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We have eleven chickens.
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Now, if the city of Portland asks, 'Is eleven a lot?'—well, eleven chickens is a lot to keep track of!
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A big part of the trouble is that, as you may know, chickens lay eggs that look very similar.
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We have a couple of Ameraucana chickens that lay kind of blue-green eggs, one that lays white eggs, and the rest lay brown eggs.
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We can't tell the difference between the vast majority of these chickens and what eggs they lay.
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The Polish doesn't lay eggs very often.
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That's right! We'll see a picture of her in a few minutes. She's pretty small and doesn't lay often.
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But we can tell when she does!
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Another issue is that the chickens lay eggs at different rates, depending on their age and the time of year.
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During certain times, they may lay eggs every day, or every two to three days, or they may hold out for much longer.
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This isn't ideal, especially as winter sets in.
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They all tend to slow down considerably.
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So, let's give them a little introduction to some of our flock.
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This is Cuckoo Maran. My brother and I named her Blackie because she's black.
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Alright, let's move to the next one.
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These are a pair of our Ameraucana chickens.
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Yeah, that's what Mom said. One is an Americana, and the one at the back...
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is the kind that I forgot.
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Well, she might...
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Okay, Mom is confirming she may actually be correct about this.
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This is why it's great to co-present!
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Alright, the next one. This is one of our Turkens.
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They aren't actually related to turkeys, but you can understand where the name comes from.
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Yeah, that's our oldest one. It's among our older ones. We got them from some friends after there had been a little coyote incident.
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People would come over and we'd say, 'These are the chickens we adopted because they got attacked by coyotes.'
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And they would respond with, 'Oh, that's so terrible! When will her feathers grow back?'
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But that is just what turkens look like—it was not related to the injuries at all!
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Okay, next we have I think three Red Sexlinks.
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Because when they lay eggs, they're brown.
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This is our Polish chicken, the one chicken we have that is actually named. Her name is Rockette.
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She had a little incident early in her life, and we ended up nursing her back to health.
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My brother tried to pet her with a stick, which almost killed her!
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Life's rough as a chicken!
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So, this is a bit of what we're dealing with. We've got so many chickens and different things to keep track of.
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So what was our solution? What did we come up with to figure out how to keep track of the chickens?
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We made a Raspberry Pi camera!
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Okay, why don't you step forward and we can show them our system diagram.
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You took care of the artwork! So, what happens in the first stage?
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A chicken lays an egg.
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And then what happens above it?
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The Raspberry Pi takes a picture.
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And then where does the picture get sent to?
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Amazon! That's right. We send our chicken pictures to the cloud.
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It's great working with modern architectures; it makes development so easy.
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Then it shows this on Shoes.
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So then we wrote a little desktop app to view this data. This was a fun project to put together.
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There were many different stages to it, which brings us to the first tip I have for working with kids.
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When you're working on projects with your kids, it's important to break things into small, digestible pieces.
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The attention span of an eight-year-old is not the same as that of an adult. As kids get older, their attention spans typically improve.
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You need to know how much time you can spend with them, and plan accordingly.
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You don't want to overwhelm them or bore them with long sessions.
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It's important to keep it light and fun.
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So, Korra, what's your first takeaway?
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It's fun to spend time with Dad!
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And I totally agree! Building things together with kids is a fun way to connect.
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It links the work we do as developers with their interests and helps teach them valuable skills.
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Our first big section that we're going to discuss is hardware. So, what is hardware, Korra?
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Stuff you get at Home Depot!
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I love it! That's technically accurate but not exactly what we're talking about.
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What kind of hardware are we really discussing?
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We're talking about computers!
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That's right! We're inside the computers.
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What we've got up here on screen is a partial shot of our Raspberry Pi.
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It's just a little teeny tiny computer—about the size of a card.
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This brings us to our next dad tip.
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As you're doing these projects, it's great to explore with your kids, but it's also valuable to try some things out yourself ahead of time.
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For me, I had never worked with a Raspberry Pi before this project, so I spent some time debugging it.
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I wanted to make sure everything would run smoothly when Korra and I started working together.
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It's great to do as much as you can with the kid while avoiding roadblocks.
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So, what's in this picture, Korra?
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The Raspberry Pi with the camera attached.
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That's right! The Raspberry Pi does not come with a camera—you have to order it.
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You also need to get a Wi-Fi card.
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So we got both the camera attachment and a little Wi-Fi adapter, so the Pi could connect to the network.
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What step of our process are we on now in building out the hardware?
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We put a hole in the box to fit the glass part of the Raspberry Pi camera.
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This way, it can take clear pictures of the chickens and their eggs.
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Why did we need this plastic box?
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To prevent the chickens from picking at it.
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We're placing this outdoors in a chicken coop, so it needs some protection.
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But we didn't do anything fancy—we just used a plastic box we had and punched a hole in it.
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So let's look at the completed physical part of the project.
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We screwed it down to a couple of pieces of wood, and what did we use to prevent it from sliding?
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Duct tape! Why would we use duct tape in a chicken project?
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Well, it should have been chicken tape! But I guess it worked out in the end.
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So here is a picture of our chicken coop with the camera installed.
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You can see the ladies roosting at nighttime.
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That's partly why the lighting looks like it does. We have those lights strung up so that during the darker parts of the year, they get a few extra hours of light.
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This sometimes encourages them to lay eggs more frequently than they otherwise would.
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I hope those of you into woodworking appreciate the craftsmanship involved in this!
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You can see the hole where the camera looks through, positioned right over their nesting area.
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Now, there was some software to go with our hardware. What software did we write?
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We wrote all sorts of software! It's the instructions we give the computer.
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If the Raspberry Pi is just a small device, how do we program it?
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We plug it into a big screen because the Raspberry Pi does not have a built-in display.
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Thankfully, Raspberry Pi has an HDMI output, allowing us to connect it to our TV.
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We were also able to plug in a USB keyboard to get programming!
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So what was the first thing we did when we booted up the Raspberry Pi?
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Raspberry Pi will, by default, run a basic desktop Linux environment called Raspbian.
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We did quite a bit of work in the terminal. What command were we using?
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What do you want? 'LS'!
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Anytime Korra sees a terminal, she wants to type 'LS'.
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And what does 'LS' do?
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It shows us the files!
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This leads me to my next dad tip. Korra really enjoyed working in the terminal.
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Learning these basic commands was empowering for her.
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She could tell the computer what to do and received immediate feedback.
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While there are powerful programming tools for kids, giving them real developer tools can lead to a great experience.
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What’s your tip around this, though, Korra?
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Be careful; otherwise, the program won't run!
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Computers are really picky! One letter off and things won't work.
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Initially, I wrote our 'rb' all in uppercase, and my dad corrected me. 'No, no, it should be lowercase!'
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It was interesting to see how many conventions and assumptions we just understand after using computers for a while.
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It was fun to teach her about the oddities of computer programming.
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Next, we explored command line utilities that come with the Raspberry Pi camera.
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What does 'raspistill' do?
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It creates a new file with a picture!
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It will pop up a little preview and then take a picture, saving it as a JPEG where you specify.
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Next dad tip while programming with kids: Focus on things that provide fast results.
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Within minutes of plugging in the camera and booting up the Raspberry Pi, we got images working.
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It's great to make things visual and provide immediate feedback, so kids can stay engaged.
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Now, let’s look at the code we wrote. This is what we ran on the Raspberry Pi.
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At the top, the 'loop do' command means taking a picture repeatedly.
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Then we used 'raspistill' to take the picture.
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And 'sleep' followed by the desired time in seconds determines how long to wait between pictures.
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We wanted a reasonable amount of time to pass, knowing that it takes about 10 minutes for a chicken to lay an egg.
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We chose to take pictures every two minutes.
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This was also an upgrade because Korra started using the Atom editor, which many programmers use daily.
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More importantly, Atom is customizable!
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What was the first thing we changed to set ourselves up?
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We changed the background color.
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We would like to thank Amy Wilbois for her Fairy Floss theme. It works wonderfully for Sublime and Atom.
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Let’s move to the next dad tip. There are some drawbacks to the coding we showed.
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As a developer, my instinct was to use a gem for interacting with Amazon.
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I quickly realized it would be boring for Korra to get into.
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Instead, we took the commands we used in terminal and placed them in backticks.
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It wasn’t as reliable or had good error handling, but it worked, and we received quick feedback.
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When you work with kids, focus on having a good experience.
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The Raspberry Pi is only one aspect of the software equation.
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The other is Shoes.
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Shoes is a GUI library for Ruby that allows us to write desktop applications.
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I've discussed Shoes at several conferences, and if you're interested, come talk to me.
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When we're writing a Shoes program, what's the first thing we do?
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We draw it on paper first!
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We plan before diving into typing out the code. We draw how we want our program to function.
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This planning is critical when programming with kids.
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Programming is about understanding and expressing problems and how to use tools effectively.
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This reflection can happen on paper and in our minds before we start coding.
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Here's a great picture of Korra working on her programming.
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What was your favorite part of writing the Shoes application?
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Experimenting with how it looks!
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One of the great aspects of Shoes and similar tools is the fast feedback you can receive.
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We often spent as much time customizing how it looked as we did writing the initial program.
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What did we customize about this application, Korra?
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We experimented with the colors for the characters.
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We also adjusted the window size and worked with the pictures.
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Let's take a quick look at the Shoes code we wrote before we move to a demo.
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This is a basic Shoes app, and it's quite minimal compared to some other UI frameworks.
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What do we do first in our code?
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We ask the user to input any number.
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Then, we ask what day they want to see on the pictures.
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This is another point where I thought we should interact with Amazon’s API, but it was simply easier to just download the files.
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We had more fun that way, and it was a better experience overall.
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Almost time for the demo, but I have one more quick tip.
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As much as possible, let kids have control and guide them; don't just dive in.
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It takes patience, but you're the adult, so you can afford to be patient as part of your job.
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Alright, let's get ready for the demo!
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May I take the keyboard for a moment and get us set up?
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Here we go! That's my dad and me when I was five.
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I think we're ready now! Remember, that's the Raspberry Pi with our program.
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We'll run it with Shoes.
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So you want to start the Shoes program, and then you have to tell it the file.
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There it is! She learned how to navigate this and it makes me so happy!
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Okay, ready to hit it?
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So what date do you want?
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There's a very specific day you want—tell me the numbers!
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September 25, 2016.
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The secret story here is that as soon as we finished the project, we had about two days of the chickens actually laying eggs.
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They haven't laid anything since, which is a bit annoying.
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Alright, it's time to run!
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Yay, there we're seeing the red hen, and there's an egg!
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Let's watch a little longer; it will get dark soon.
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We can see the chickens moving around in the coop.
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One chicken is sneaking in on the edge, and it's going to get darker.
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The Raspberry Pi is quite light-sensitive, too, and we can see it cut out.
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My dad took the egg, and we shipped it out too!
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That was the plan for our demo.
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Now, what are some ideas we thought about for next steps?
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First off, improving the lighting would help.
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Better lighting in the coop means the camera wouldn't cut out as early.
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We could simply change the light positioning to improve success.
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Next, we need better date selection.
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Instead of typing the exact string for the date, we could implement a calendar selector.
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That would definitely enhance user experience!
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Moving forward, we could also play with the size of the images.
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The images might have been too large, causing some display issues.
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I've heard of people successfully streaming video off of a Raspberry Pi, which is very fascinating.
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Another idea involved OCR.
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Optical character recognition could help us distinguish which chicken laid an egg.
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Also, we can create a mechanism where the Raspberry Pi captures a picture right as the chicken lays an egg.
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One more idea was to automate the coop door opening and closing.
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Currently, I have to let them out every day in the morning and ensure I close it at night.
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We need to avoid predator issues, like raccoons.
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I once forgot to shut it at night, and a raccoon came.
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Thankfully, none of the others were harmed!
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Any other future ideas?
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Thank you! Any questions?
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Yes, the question was about automating the door open and close.
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It would primarily rely on light detection.
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Chickens usually head into the coop at dark, so if we can detect that, we could automate.
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We need a better mechanism to shut the door quickly.
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The last time a chicken was lost was around 10 or 11 PM.
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I didn't even hear the sticks crack, which might have indicated something was off.
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Using a glass door, we can gauge their movements, too.
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Someone said about exploring the OCR options for recognizing chickens.
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We've talked with experts to investigate how they recognized magic cards through OCR.
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The technology could be crucial for identifying the positioning of our chickens.
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It’s possible to develop flags for pictures when changes are detected.
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Any other questions?
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So the question was whether the Raspberry Pi can play music for our chickens to sleep.
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What do you think, Korra? Should that be on our future list?
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Yes! That could brighten up their environment.
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Especially the Star Wars program!
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So what was your favorite program we made?
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The princess game! That was our first big program.
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It was kind of an adventure game with your artwork.
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Yeah! We could create another one.
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So do you explore programming without me?
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Not much yet, but I'm beginning to run programs on my own.
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I hope to modify and extend them some day.
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Do you have programming friends?
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Not really, but at school, I do some coding with my friends.
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We use code.org during library time, which has been fun.
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Yay for pairing!
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Since our chickens look similar, could we add markings?
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That's certainly possible! It would help differentiate them.
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We also talked about using RFID tags to track them better.
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Some chickens are meaner to others, and we must be aware.
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Do chickens lay eggs in the same spot?
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Some chickens consistently lay in the same spot, while others vary.
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In the lower half of our coop, they can even lay eggs in an enclosed area.
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We've found their behavior can be quite unpredictable.
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Thank you so much for your questions!
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Thank you!
