We have Maker Spaces in schools now. Huzzah! Surely by 8^th grade all the kiddos are hacking on Arduinos and Raspberry Pi’s then, right? …um, not so much. We still have a long way to go before the tools and training we supply teachers meets the need to reach lots more students. And hey, every student deserves a chance to experience the awesomeness of embedded systems, right!?

Edtech startup Firia Labs launched their first robotics product into the education market back in 2018, and has been successfully equipping classrooms worldwide with state-of-the-art hardware and software ever since. Custom hardware, supercharged MicroPython firmware, cloud backends, amazing user-interfaces, and rich real-world-oriented curriculum… it’s amazing what a small team of motivated engineers can achieve!

In this presentation David will discuss the hardware and software Firia Labs has developed to meet this challenge. Along the way you’ll learn of some “world first” technologies they created to meet the need, tales from the “startup bleeding edge”, and more!

https://firialabs.com/

13:53:24	 From  Michael Kirkhart : +1 for interactive python debugging capability!
13:54:26	 From  Michael Kirkhart : +1 for teaching how to use a debugger!
13:55:49	 From  Michael Kirkhart : Block based programming still needs the ability to debug
13:57:07	 From  Puru Patil : so chromebook + webUSB + board... do we need internet connection to run the Firialabs's Python environment?
13:58:31	 From  Puru Patil : and is board designs open sourced?
14:00:22	 From  Puru Patil : you guys are doing great work - I have taught few robotics classes. What you do is closer to real embedded dev - thanks!
14:00:26	 From  Puru Patil : how old should be the kid?
14:01:10	 From  John Jeffers : You are on a STM32L476 with python?
14:01:21	 From  Jay Cosper : Versus a block-based tool, how do you deal with educators who are not well versed in coding? Does the approach involve a great deal of training and hand-holding? Or have you figured out something different that works?
14:06:40	 From  Jay Cosper : the sim is pretty cool
14:07:04	 From  Phillip Kajubi : That's fantastic
14:07:09	 From  Jay Cosper : like a video game the kids can relate to
14:07:10	 From  Puru Patil : es sim is really good - I tried few things. Very non engineer friendly
14:10:12	 From  Jeremy : That was really great!
14:10:24	 From  Grunklee, Jacob : Incredible! Keep up the great work
14:18:40	 From  Jay Cosper : Your passion is obvious. Great work
14:20:52	 From  Stephane : Great presentation indeed