I have been silent here for a while, sorry, school wasn't fun anymore; exams, project presentations and documentation et al. Thanks be to the Creator, all is over. My final semester has really taught me lessons and challenged me to do things I once dreamed of. Yes, I have awesome dreams. :)
I once told my friends I wanted to study electronics and build robots (I have always wanted to build a robot), they badly pulled my legs. That did not stopped me, I kept a lot of dreams to myself and shared not with them. I knew someday these dreams will be materialised. At
Barcamp Takoradi 2010, I met the
TTI Fab Lab and lo and behold, the journey for the search of knowledge on electronics begun.
My last days in school, CapeVars was magical. I cried sometimes. I had a tall list of projects and did not know which to do and where to start. I discussed these with lecturers and friends and finally settled on an
arduino-based temperature monitoring system with SMS capabilities (using Falcom Samba75 GSM modem). I went in for this because of the arduino! I wanted to know what/how it is and works. And whiles I worked on my project, I did tried out
other basic stuffs.
On submission of my final year project, I was promised a
Raspberry Pi in return of the arduino kits I used. I got excited, but never knew what followed. I had to present a real project idea, make sketches and prove what it is, uses and what I hope to learn from it. I failed on the first presentation, I was not well convincing. I could not just say the type of processor the RasPi uses, upon all the weekend reading and study. I guess I had to much on my mind.
Yesterday, I got up fully prepared with less #vim to get the RasPi. I missed the set time and had to wait for 6:00pm to show up. At 6:30pm, "So what do you intend to do with it, what do you have?" the first question went. A sudden dumbness struck me, I managed to say a few things about the board and the projects. In a blink of an eye, I saw a blue box with the inscription
"MAKE: kits for the maker in all of us", a Raspberry Pi Starter Kit from
makershed? There I remembered something he said on the first bid, "I got no one to give it to, you have to prove a reality in your concepts". "Hope you know the worth of this? It is expensive, it's not just the board, it contains many things to get you started, here you are, all the best." Silence griped me as I stretched out my hands for the box. "You have to update me on whatever you do with it. In two (2) months time, I expect a report. All the best in Kenya!, Good bye."
I just did not believed what had happened till I got home. The
MAKE: Raspberry Pi Starter Kit costs around US$125.00. The box had everything without an SD card and one of the locks for the
MAKE: Pi Enclosure was missing. I had decided to do something over the night, all plans had to come to a halt cos I had no SD card. I am going for one today and start the hacking and tinkering.
I just do not know what to do, all I say is thank you,
Dr. Farahmand, you are a real gem. I am not going to rest on my oasis, I will do my best to get the best out of this gift.
