This year we were lucky enough to recruit some special judges to help us with Coolest Projects: Tim Peake, Eben Upton, Hayaatun Sillem, Limor Fried, and Mitch Resnick.
For young people who enjoy making things with technology, Coolest Projects is an amazing opportunity to get creative, have fun, learn from others, and be a part of something truly special.
After much deliberation, our judges have picked out some of their favourites from the Coolest Projects online showcase!
Which projects did Tim Peake like the best?
Tim Peake is a British ESA astronaut and a passionate advocate for STEM education. Tim played a huge part in the first Astro Pi Challenge in 2015, and has helped us spread the word about the work of the Raspberry Pi Foundation ever since.
“It’s so important that you’re embracing technology and design and creativity, when we look in the world around us today, our lives are surrounded by technology and that’s going to become even more important in the future.”
Young tech creators registered projects from their homes in 39 countries, including Ireland, Australia, Palestine, UK, USA, India, and Indonesia. In total, an incredible 560 projects from 775 young creators are part of the showcase.
These are the projects Tim liked the most:
Abhiy: Burglar Buster
“As we know, burglary cases are very frequent and it is upsetting for the families whose houses are burglarised and [can] make them feel fearful, sad and helpless. Therefore, I tried to build a system which will help everyone to secure their houses.”
Carlos, Blanca, Mario: El ojo que te observa (The all-seeing eye)
“Our project is a virtual big eye doorman that detects if you wear a mask […] we chose this project because we like artificial intelligence and robotics and we wanted to help against the coronavirus.”
Zoe: Find It
“This is a game, coded in MakeCode Arcade, where the aim is to find and collect items that bring you to the next level […] I chose to do this as I thought it would be fun to play.”
Oluwadabera Jedidiah: Galaxy
“I created a project about the universe. I love the universe so much […] the project is about the planet[s]. It gives users information about the universe with beautiful pictures of the nine planets.”
Patrick: Pear Pad – Have Fun With Apps
“The Pear Pad is sort of like an iPad but you can draw your background a lot by just pressing the draw button. I made the Pear Pad during lockdown because I had been using an iPad and I thought I could try and make my own version of the iPad but even better.”
Hala, Ranwa: Help Me To Learn
“Mobile application in education is a great way to make students more interactive and perform better. This led us to develop a smart educational application for children. We chose this because preschool children need to develop their language skills in a fun way, through play.”
You can view all the projects — games, hardware builds, Scratch projects, mobile apps, and more — in our showcase gallery now.
This year’s Coolest Projects online showcase wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors — thank you!
