Frome College are winners in national schools programming challenge

The winning team from Frome Community College.

FROME Community College has won a national schools programming challenge for their invention ‘Plant Pi’

The college was awarded the winners of the national Raspberry Pi programming competition at a ceremony held at London’s Science Museum.

The event brought together 13 groups of finalists who presented their inventions which would ‘help the environment’ to a high-profile judging panel including Cambridge University’s professor of computer technology Andy Hopper, BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones and Raspberry Pi’s director of educational development Clive Beale.

Frome Community College’s winning entry in the secondary school category was a system that allows people to remotely monitor the environmental conditions in their garden.

Known as the ‘Plant Pi’, the device uses its attached sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, light intensity, rain and soil moisture and then relays the information to the user through the web. Plants can then be watered at the press of a button. The Plant Pi will also automatically water plants if soil moisture falls below a certain level.

The judges commented that the Frome entry won because it was brilliantly conceived from start to finish. The conception, design and engineering of the Plant Pi were all impressive.

Anita Chandraker, head of IT delivery at PA Consulting Group said, “As there was so much enthusiasm around last year’s competition, we wanted to give schoolchildren and university students another chance to develop their programming skills and show off their creativity and passion for technology.

“The inventions we have seen show tremendous potential and highlight some of the incredible things that can be achieved through programming. I hope that the teams will build on the programming skills, team work and creativity that were required for this challenge and inspire many more young people to get involved.”