Preview 2018 – the first six months

We will be presenting our bricks at numerous events this year and will be starting with didacta 2018 in Hanover in February. The trade show covers all important fields as early education, schools / universities and further qualification. So our bricks will fit perfectly in this event and we are looking forward to the show starting on 20th of February 2018.

We will be participating in the conference of the “GI” expert group “Computer science education in Berlin and Brandenburg” on the 1st of March. The 17th conference of this kind will take place at Humboldt-Universität Berlin at Erwin Schrödinger-Zentrum Adlershof.

You will have the possibility to check out our bricks on the Computer Science Day North-Rhine Westphalia on the 19th of March. Students and their teacher from Villa Wewersbusch who already worked with our bricks at school will join us in Paderborn and introudce the bricks to the audience. We are looking very much forward to this fun event!

We will also participate in the MNU Bundestagung and the Bayerischer Informatiklehrertag in Munich from 25th to 28th of March. Regarding the motto “Inspire with technology: how to design your lessons in a valuable and practical way” a number of experts will give presentations and workshops in the different STEM fields. This is the program: http://www.bundeskongress-2018.mnu.de/index.php/kongressprogramm

For sure, you can meet us at one or the other Maker Faire in Germany – get to know more about it in our next blog post!

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Our new Maker Store – Kiel becomes digital

We opened our second Maker Store together with our partner Addix in Kiel, Germany, at the end of November. Originally, we planned to have it running until 23rd of December. However, the feedback was overwhelmingly good so we decided to have it open at least until mid of January 2018.

The “Kieler Nachrichten” (KN, newspaper in Kiel) was so kind to let us use their premises which are situated between two Christmas markets. The KN did a variety of reports on us which supported us a lot in making more contacts in the education field. By now, more than 120 students visitied our store, playfully getting to know the world of electronics, robotics and coding.

Kiel Maker Store

Zeitungsartikel Kiel Maker Store

Opening Maker Store Kiel

We opened our new PopUp Maker Store in Kiel last weekend. During Christmas time, all interested people (individuals as well as schools) can participate in workshops regarding electronics, robotics and coding. Furthermore, you can buy all products at the store – and you might find the perfect Christmas present.
Register for one our workshops! Simply call 0431 -7755 180

Here are some pictures of the opening on Saturday:

Artikel Maker Store Kiel

Maker Store Kiel

Maker Store Kiel

Maker Store Kiel

Maker Store Kiel

Außenansicht Maker Store Kiel

SIMO Educación 2017

We were at SIMO Educación in Madrid last week to show our bricks to the Spanish. SIMO is a big education faire for teachers, professors and instructors who are interested in the latest product development and their implementation into schools and training facilities. Finally yet importantly, this was why they very much liked our experimental sets – but not only educators, also students occupied our booth and tested the bricks.

Simo 2017

7 Color Light Set

Bricks

The three days in Madrid quickly went by and were worth the visit. We will be back next year, that’s for sure and we are already looking forward to it!

Panospace und Bricks

3D Druck und Brick

Our partners from Panospace and bq were also at our booth showing their latest 3D printers.

Bricks at school – guest commentary

Digital week – in Moenkeberg !

The first Digitale Woche was opened in the RBZ Wirtschaft/Kiel on Saturday, 16th of September. Kiel’s mayor, Mr U. Kaempfer, Schleswig-Holstein’s minister of digitalisation, Mr R. Habeck and a team of Allnet who taught students more about technology by using the electronic components of Brick’R’knowledge.

Schüler und Bricks

The ALLNET team luckily had some time left for our students. So our kids of class 2a had the opportunity to experience a completely different morning than usual. They used mini boards, connected electric circuits, had LEDs lighten up and playfully learned the basics of electronics.

Schüler und Bricks

Thank you very much to Mr Dohse who established the contact!!

…and we say thank you to the Grundschule an der Bake for this nice guest commentary!

Preview – Maker Faire Hannover

It’s this time of year again: at the end of August, Maker Faire Hannover will take place.

On Friday, 25th of August, all students and teachers are invited to vitit the “Student’s day” and to get to know and test hands-on exciting projects by makers. At the weekend, the fair will be open for the whole family.

Maker Faire Sachsen

We will be silver sponsor this year and will be present in Eilenriedehalle with a pretty big booth that you hopefully won’t miss. We plan to have a table displaying all our brick sets that you can use for building your own circuits and asking questions regarding the different components. For those of you who would like to know more about the brick system can also visit our presentation on Saturday, 1 pm. Topic: “Not just another brick in the wall! Experimental kits by Brick’R’knowledge”. Michael will introduce our sets and will tell you more news about our Berlin Maker Space.

Maker _Store_Berlin

And if you won’t have enough by then, please feel free to join our workshop on Sunday where we will teach you how to do circuits and have LEDs blink using our bricks.

By the way: We will draw some free tickets for Maker Faire Hanover in the next weeks….Check out our  Facebook page!

Brick clock part 2

This is the final part of our brick clock series:

After having started, the BRK clock does a self-test, turning on the RGBW bricks in sinuous line and in different colours from lower left to upper left. The connection set-up with the internet takes place two seconds after that. While connecting, the three letters “BRK” lighten up in blue, red and green in the lower left of the matrix. The English clock shows the letters “TFS” at the same position. Usually, the connection set-up only lasts a few seconds. When you use the clock for the first time you need to select the WLAN named “IoT brick” with a smartphone or tablet, for example. Afterwards, the browser will open automatically and you can choose your hotspot from a list of available WLAN hotspots and enter the password. Once you entered everything correctly the WLAN connection will adapt to the selected hotspot and the BRK clock can establish an internet connection. As soon as the connection is established the letters “BRK” / “TFS” expire and the clock starts receiving the time from the internet. Again, this only takes a few seconds and finally the current time is displayed on the BRK clock.

Brick Clock

Once you push the button on the Internet of Things brick the IoT brick’s OLED display shows the IP address. You have to enter this IP address in the browser to open the website for the BRK clock.

Brick_Clock2

Programming the BRK clock is modular and it can be easily complemented for several functions. ALLNET will add more functions during the course of time encouraging you to develop own ideas for the clock. We are working on a MQTT connection now with which you can send push messages or information on to the BRK clock to display these information on the RGBW matrix. Thanks to our libraries and examples that are very well documented even beginners in coding can quickly and easily add to our programs. You can download the libraries, programs and documentation on the Brick’R’knowledge Homepage:

 

Libraries & Beispiele

Maker Faire Berlin 2017

Maker Faire Berlin time again! The event took place on 10th and 11th of June Juni at the “Station” Berlin, close to Gleisdreieck. More than 15,000 visitors came – which is one of the main reasons that Maker Faire Berlin 2018 will be at FEZ Berlin.

Maker Faire Berlin

It was already our 3rd time at Maker Faire Berlin. And it was as good as always!! It really is recommendable to join this great event. Whether Arduino, R2D2, different kinds of robots, self-made jewellery or steampunk: Makers’ ideas were awesome, involving knowledge, creativity and time to develop.

Maker Faire BerlinBrick Uhr

MakeblockKinder auf der MF Berlin

We had two presentations about our brick system on Saturday and Sunday as well as a workshop in which participants could test our bricks and we explained the most important basics of electronics to them: What is an electric circuit? How does a resistor work? What can you do with a transistor? These questions and more were answered during the workshop.
MF Berlin Vortrag

We will definitely be back next year!

What about you?

Maker Faire Berlin

Flipflops for dummies – part 3

For those of you who enjoyed our blog post series “For dummies”, this new post is the right choice. Being a complete beginner myself, I will deal with RS flip-flops, D flip-flops and JK flip-flops today. As the topic of “Logic” is quite complex I advise you to read the former blog posts about Logic first that involve main logic gates and that give an overall explanation about flip-flops.

„Defined“ – The D Flip-flop

The D flip-flop consists of an RS flip-flop that has a reset input connected to the set input via an inverter. If you already read the blog post “Flip-flop for dummies – part 2”, you probably know what this means: There won’t occur an undefined state. We’ve already learned that an undefined state is unconvenient as the visual “rocker” does not know which side to tip. This is why coincidence decides whether the right end is up or down. A D flip-flop can be either state-controlled or edge-controlled. The brick in our Logic set is an edge-controlled flip-flop. In the following picture, you can see the circuit symbol (note that our D flip-flop brick does not have a /Q output):

Schaltzeichen

II’s logical – the truth table

Wahrheitstabelle

As with the RS flip-flop, we can illustrate the D flip-flop’s performance according to a so called truth table. With regard to the brick circuit, this means that there is a 1 at the data input D for pushing the button, meaning the connection will be ended. At the output Q there is a 1 for the illuminated LED. The 0 at the data output represents not pushing the button and the LED does not lighten up in the truth table at the output Q when there is a 0 indicated.

Let’s talk about clock input C now: if the state at input C changes from 0 to 1, there can be a change at the output Q. If the state at input C changes from 1 to 0, though (meaning we don’t push the button) there won’t be any changes at the output Q, no matter whether there is a 1 or 0 at the input D.

Reversely, this means, it does not matter what is at input D, whether I push the button 30 times or whether I don’t. As long as there isn’t a change from 0 to 1 at input C, there won’t happen anything. Exept a button at the input C you can also do a clock generator which is nothing else than a virtual finger that pushes the button in specific intervals. It displays 1 or 0 in the same intervals. The frequency is measured in hertz. The truth table also indicates additional optional inputs S and R and the output /Q. As our brick does not possess these, we don’t need to bother about them. In order to rebuild the truth table you should build the following brick circuit:

Schaltung

We will be dealing with the truth table in more detail and will look into D flip-flops with asynchronous set and reset input in our next blog post.