Bring your ideas to life with Python, a Microcontroller & AI

Coding from Beach is ten years old and this year we're changing things up: regardless of your skill or experience level, you're going to learn to bring your ideas to life with Python, Microcontrollers & AI.

We have added the inimitable Chris Drake to the organising team and he’s bringing his unique inventor skillset to the mix.

We learnt that the most popular meetups last year were hands-on learning-by-doing sessions that catered for both experienced and novice coders. This year we’re doubling down on that recipe.

Chris has organised a very cool program to kick off the year that you won’t want to miss. We’ll each get our own ESP32 microcontroller device which Chris has pre-configured to run Python and is ideal for learning and experimentation. Thanks to Moore’s law, these things cost around 10 bucks and we’ll ask you to bring a crisp $10 note with you so you can take one home as your device for the year.

These tiny little computers have a camera, wifi, bluetooth etc and can be programmed from your web browser. They can be powered by usb or small batteries and are ideal as IOT devices. You can of course write little python programs that connect to the OpenAI api’s we played with last year, turning them into intelligent assistants.

Chris will kick us off by showing some of the inspirational projects he has been building with these and others from the community. He’s done a bunch of work to get us all up and running quickly with our own devices. We’ll do a basic intro and then the beginners can join a mentor for an intro session on how to get started with your first program.

Important new additions:

• We have created a CfB resource portal where you’ll have access to the resources, examples and notes we share during the sessions
• Between sessions, we will use the Coding from Beach Slack channel to share what we’re working on, provide assistance etc
• Many of you have expressed a desire to learn to program and this is the year we make that happen. We’ll be running classes from the Hub that will take you from zero to Python programmer.

As ever, our meetups will involve gourmet pizza, craft beer and drinks sponsored by our friends at Bendigo Bank.

Note: You MUST bring a charged laptop.

Lock in the first Thursday of every month for this exciting journey.

Cheers
The CfB Team