Key Takeaways
- Pi Wars 2024 made a successful comeback after taking a hiatus, showcasing both junior and adult competitors in various challenges.
- The event featured maze navigation, obstacle overcoming, and item sorting tasks, emphasizing creativity and ingenuity over combat.
- If you missed out this year, start preparing for Pi Wars 2025 by getting your Raspberry Pi robots ready with beginner to advanced projects.
Making Raspberry Pi projects is always fun, but how do your skills pair up against other builders? If you think you have what it takes to show off your circuitry skills over everyone else, why not sign up for Pi Wars? The event went dark in 2019, but after five years, it returned with a bang in a two-day event that saw both juniors and adults compete for the top spot.
Related
Raspberry Pi 5 review: The holy grail of DIY projects got even better (and rarer)
The Raspberry Pi 5 is one of the most powerful consumer-grade SBCs out there. Sadly, its limited stock means you’ll have a hard time finding one.
Pi Wars 2024 restarted with a roaring success
Pi Wars closed doors in 2019 due to the pandemic until 2023, but the team had to take another year off to get things sorted. Fortunately, the stars aligned for a 2024 event to take place, which occurred on April 20-21st.
If you missed out on the event, Tom’s Hardware posted a full description of everything that went down. Saturday was dedicated to junior builders, while Sunday was for the adults to compete in. There were seven events in total; some of which could only be done with remote-controlled machines, some could only be done with autonomous robots, and most could be done with either.
Pi Wars 2024 showed off both ingenuity and creativity
Despite its name, Pi Wars isn’t akin to something like Robot Wars or Battlebots, where machines took chunks out of one another; in fact, the closest it got to combat was a balloon-popping duel called “Pi Noon.”
Otherwise, the challenges consisted of maze navigation, overcoming obstacles, and even sorting items. Remote-control events allowed people to make decisions for their robot as they drove it around the course, while autonomous designers had to set the robot down and pray it did the right thing. The official Pi Wars website lists all the challenges used, so be sure to check them out if you plan to enter next year.
As you might expect from such an event, people got creative with their SBC-building skills by submitting some amazing-looking robots, such as this one that looks like it’s on fire. Don’t worry, though; it’s only using paper and LEDs to create a really realistic illusion.
If you missed out on the jubilations, don’t fret. Given how 2024 has just finished, now is the perfect time to get your Raspberry Pi robots ready for Pi Wars 2025. If you want to get started with Raspberry Pis, we recommend you try out one of these beginner projects to learn how they tick. Or, if you think of yourself as a grizzled veteran, you can de-rust with these complex projects for advanced Pi builders.