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Friday, January 4, 2013
HOLLIS ? Aaron Hill is not your average seventh-grader.
He spends his days taking free online courses from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities learning about computer programming. He researched and bought a computer the size of a credit card early last year, and in November, he added ?international contest winner? to his resume.
Aaron, 12, a student at Hollis Brookline Middle School, won the computer programming contest, sponsored by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the makers of the tiny computer, for writing a program, which he named ?PySnap,? for doing time-lapse photography using the Raspberry Pi.
?I was really excited when I found out I won,? he said.
Aaron has been interested in computers and technology for as long as he can remember. When he was 8, he got his ham radio license. And when he was 10, he started learning computer programming, looking up online tutorials about the programming and teaching himself how to do it.
?He?s always been a little precocious,? his father, Lee Hill, said, laughing, at the family?s Hollis home.
It was when Aaron was looking around for more programming tips that he discovered the Raspberry Pi. He researched the tiny computer and bought one online.
He was on the foundation?s website when he learned about the programming competition, a mere two weeks before it was ending. He decided to enter, and took a suggestion from his family to create turn the computer into a time-lapse camera ? all before he even received his own Raspberry Pi.
He had to test the program on his laptop and said he wasn?t sure it would even work properly when he submitted it to the competition.
The program works by hooking the Raspberry Pi up to a webcam. The program then allows the user to program the camera to take a picture at a certain time every day, week, month or year. The images are saved, and can be looked at in sequence, to see how the scene has changed over time.
He found on Thanksgiving morning that his program had won.
?I just woke up and was going to do some programming and I noticed on the Raspberry Pi blog that there was a new post about contest winners,? Aaron said. ?Then I saw it was me.?
Lee Hill and Aaron?s mother, Ellen Groh, said they heard their son scream and thought he was hurt, until he starting running around the house yelling, ?I won! I won!?
Aaron is humble about his accomplishments so far, slightly embarrassed even, for the attention he has received over the contest win, but said he?s happy that his program was selected.
He received $1,000 for winning, and said he plans to save the money for programming work, or maybe school, later in life.
He said he?s too young to really know what he wants to do for a career, but that he?s sure it will somehow involve computer programming.
It?s a passion that his friends don?t really understand or share, but one that he is committed to.
In addition to winning the Raspberry Pi competition, Aaron has also worked with his family?s church to design an electronic ?wall? to display parishioners? prayers and thoughts during a ceremony. The program, which allows users to text a message to a phone number and display their message on the screen, was first tested out around Thanksgiving.
And Aaron said he hopes to enter more contests in the future.
He has plenty of ideas for computer programs and even applications for smartphones, including one that would allow the user to manage multiple computers, installing updates and doing other maintenance work, from their cell phone.
For now, however, he?s focusing on his online programming courses, hoping to perfect his craft before his next competition.
Luckily, he has his engineer father around to help with some of the tougher math problems in the course.
?The programming is easy for him, it?s the college level math that?s difficult,? Hill said, laughing.
Danielle Curtis can be reached at 594-6557 or dcurtis@nashuatelegraph.com. Also follow Curtis on Twitter (Telegraph_DC).
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