Reprinted from the PEG page, a programming education project promoted by CANVAS.

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We held a workshop on the theme of "Manufacturing × Programming"!

On February 27–28, we held a two-day overnight training workshop at the Aoshima Youth Center in Miyazaki Prefecture for students from local vocational schools and universities, focusing on the theme of “Manufacturing × Programming.” Participants ranged from programming beginners to experienced users.We welcomed Ms. Aoi Yoshida (Assistant Professor, School of Social Information Studies, Aoyama Gakuin University) as our instructor, and she led a programming session using Arduino-compatible boards and the Arduino IDE.

In the end, we formed teams of two to three people, similar to a hackathon, and worked on the theme “Products that add a little something extra to make daily life more convenient.” We handled everything from development to pricing and even created promotional posters, culminating in a product presentation. At the presentation, participants could use mock currency to “invest” in the products they wanted to purchase, creating a system that allowed us to gauge how much support each product received.

The team that created a product that lets you know when you need an umbrella also built their own rain sensor using aluminum tape, designed to generate an electrical current from falling raindrops. There were many other projects as well, such as a product that uses LED colors to alert people who are deaf to potential dangers, and a team that sold an automatic pet feeder along with the food.

Although many of the participants this time had programming experience, it seemed to be their first time going through the entire process—from prototyping to product launch—with the goal of selling the product, and it appears they found the two days to be very stimulating.