Congratulations to Iris and Joseph Mitchell from Southend who met Tim Peake after winning the AstroPi SonicPi Competition, 11 years and under.
They composed music using SonicPi code for Tim Peake to listen to on the International Space Station at a Southend Tech Sonic Pi workshop at The Hive in Southend.
The UK Space Agency invited the Southend Raspberry Jam Sonic Pi winners and mentors to meet Tim Peake and we got to talk to Tim and have our photo taken with him – see below.
They also appeared in issue 47 of TheMagPi as shown below.
You can hear “Run To The Stars” by the “Mitchell Mob” and see their Sonic Pi code below, but first here’s Tim Peake on board the International Space Station to show you how it is being played on the AstroPi unit :
Tim sent a tweet down with the message :
UK students have reprogrammed @astro_pi_vis to be an MP3 player – playing #spacerocks now! https://t.co/9XY9FiZekehttps://t.co/TBiy1HKhSt
— Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) May 21, 2016

use_bpm 120 numberofbars = 0 live_loop :bar do sleep 4 numberofbars = numberofbars + 1 if numberofbars == 32 then stop end end live_loop :funkypiano do sync :bar with_fx :ixi_techno do use_synth :piano 4.times do play 72 play 75 play 79 sleep 0.5 end 4.times do play 62 play 65 play 69 sleep 0.5 end end end live_loop :bassdrums do sync :bar sleep 16 64.times do 4.times do sample :drum_bass_hard, amp: 1 sleep 1 end end end live_loop :cymbals do sync :bar sleep 32 16.times do sleep 2 with_fx :reverb, room: 0.9 do 4.times do sample :drum_cymbal_hard, pan: 1, amp: 1 sleep 0.5 end end end end live_loop :squelchybass do sync :bar sleep 48 with_fx :ixi_techno do 16.times do sample :bass_voxy_hit_c, amp: 1 sleep 1 end end end live_loop :aliens do sync :bar sleep 80 8.times do use_synth [:prophet,:tb303,:pulse,:square,:supersaw,:beep,:sine,:hollow].tick 8.times do play_pattern_timed [56,82,77,48,42, 72,98,34],[0.5,0.5] end end end
The Mitchell Mob will be showing their composition at future events and helping mentor people in Sonic Pi.
Their entry is listed on the Astro Pi site.
An entry in the Astro Pi science experiment competition from Southend was highly commended. This was created as part of a series of workshops held by Southend Tech in Southend :
“Direction Sense” by Marian Jago is an experiment to investigate how the crew’s sense of orientation changes during a long space mission; specifically, it explores how well the crew can estimate turning 360 degrees whilst free-floating. You close your eyes, hold the Astro Pi against your chest, begin spinning, and press any button to start the experiment. Then when you think you’ve done a complete 360-degree spin, you press any button to stop. As the astronauts have already been through some rigorous tests, nobody should be getting too dizzy.
Andy also ran a Sonic Pi workshop for the Raspberry Pi Foundation at their birthday weekend celebrations as well as at lots of other Rasbperry Jams.
You can see the other Astro Pi Sonic Pi competition winners on the Raspberry Pi site here and the science experiment winners on the AstroPi site above.
Congratulations to all the other winners and everyone who took part in the competition.