Documentation Station

The Documentation Station is a great tool to offer to students so they can document their own progress as they are doing making activities in class. It is as simple as moving around the camera to point at your project, then pushing the big white button to take a picture of it. The pictures are all saved to a USB drive on the side of the box which you can out to transfer the pictures onto your computer at any time. You can unplug the station and bring it to your classroom or wherever you are doing a making activity at any time.

Here is a photo of the marketing posters that the P3B class made for the parachute design challenge they did. The pictures on the posters were all taken by the students with the Documentation Station as they built their parachutes. They were asked to take a photo every time they tested their design so they could track their progress and learn from it over time.

  • When you want to collect the pictures, press the blue button on the left side to exit the program, then turn it off with the power switch.
  • Take the USB drive out of the door on the left side and plug it into your computer.
  • Move the pictures onto your computer, then plug the USB drive back into the machine on the left and turn it back on.
  • If the camera is temporarily unplugged from the station and it exits to the Raspberry Pi home screen, just plug the camera back in and turn the station on and off.
  • Only plug and unplug the USB when the machine is powered off.