Winners of national Raspberry Pi coding competition announced by PA Consulting
PA Consulting, the company bringing ingenuity to life, announces the winners of its 11th Raspberry Pi coding competition following the live judging and awards day on Wednesday 3rd May in London. Finalists from schools and colleges were challenged to use a Raspberry Pi computer to innovate to accelerate energy transition.
This year there were two awards for each category – innovation and inspiration. Finalists from each category presented their inventions in front of a panel of expert judges from organisations including Microsoft UK, Network Rail, Coca-Cola, and NHS England; the winning teams each received £1,000 prize money.
The winners of the 2023 competition:
Primary school award, academic years 4-6
- Innovation award – King Edward’s Junior School designed solar panels to generate heat to save water and energy, in response to the current cost of living crisis.
- Inspiration award – Steeple Bumpstead Primary School created a notification system, using a light sensor to detect when a light is on, to remind people to turn off lights at breaks and lunchtimes at school.
Secondary school award, academic years 7-9
- Innovation award – Francis Holland School, Regent’s Park, designed a Room Environmental Monitor Infobot to reduce their school’s energy use and carbon footprint. The Infobot measures a classroom's temperature and light level and warns the user when levels are above a certain threshold.
- Inspiration award – Churcher’s College designed a submarine to extract natural and renewable electricity through the use of thermal energy from the seabed and converting it into electricity.
Secondary school award, academic years 10-11
- Innovation award – The Liverpool Blue Coat School developed a system to improve the efficiency of domestic and industrial solar panels. The team calculated the optimum angle(s) at which panels should be fixed throughout the day using hyper-sensitive phototransistors which are rotated by two stepper motors.
- Inspiration award – Stonelaw High School created a drain turbine to manage water usage. The turbine can be installed into pipes, and as water flows down drains, it spins the turbine linked to a rotary encoder, and the amount of water usage is shown on an accompanying app.
Sixth form and college award, academic years 12-13
- Innovation award – Fulford School developed a prototype using a solar panel to power a data centre and to extract the heat, redirecting energy to heat a local swimming pool. This solution enables small businesses to generate revenue whilst reducing their carbon footprint as well as making substantial savings on heating costs.
- Inspiration award – Barking Abbey School designed a smart Pingu device which uses temperature and humidity sensors in the Pingu device to alert users if any appliances are switched on.
We were truly inspired by this year's record number of finalists. It wasn’t just the technical capabilities that amazed us, but the passion, energy, and sense of purpose around our theme of innovating to accelerate energy transition. The enthusiasm from all of the children throughout the day, and from those that won, is a real joy to witness and be a part of.”
Encouraging the next generation of innovators and leaders is so important to us, and our competition aims to help children develop their interest in the impact that technologies can have. The ingenuity of young people is remarkable, and it’s this ingenuity coupled with their drive that will help shape our future.”
Each year, PA’s competition challenges primary, secondary, and college students to invent products and processes that could benefit our health, our society, and our world using their technology and coding skills. In doing so, it helps to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in a hands-on and interactive way while bringing a real-world element to it in the form of a live presentation to a panel of industry experts.
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