Category: Presentations

Raspberry Pi, Cookies and Edge AI: CAS IT at the UD Tech Fair 2026

Updated on 3/14/26 (Pi Day!) with Pictures and Videos:

On, Tuesday, March 10th, I will be at the University of Delaware Tech Open House from 11am to 2pm, presenting alongside my colleague Eric Cantrell, Director of CAS IT. We are representing the College of Arts and Sciences Information Technology team with a booth that is simple, hands on, and genuinely fun to walk through. And yes, my daughter is bringing cookies, so come through hungry. 🍪

What the Tech Fair is about

The Tech Fair brings together departments, staff, and IT professionals from across UDEL, and it gives everyone a chance to see the projects that are actually running on campus. You get to see real systems, real experiments, and real work, not just slides or concepts.

Our theme this year is “Have some Pi with CAS IT” 🥧 You will notice a pattern if you look closely.

What We Are Bringing

We are running four Raspberry Pi projects live at the table, no mockups, no screenshots, just the hardware doing what it does.

🥧 Raspberry Pi 5 with Hailo 8L, Real Time Person Detection

A Raspberry Pi 5 paired with a Hailo 8L accelerator, running person detection entirely at the edge. When someone enters the frame, the system sends a Telegram alert, then captures a delayed full body snapshot so the image is clean. Everything stays local, nothing leaves the room.

Click to download this project’s handout (.pdf format).

🍪 Raspberry Pi 5 with BVM and Windows 11 ARM, Zoom Rooms Digital Signage

This is our main project. A Pi 5 runs Botspot Virtual Machine, which boots Windows 11 ARM, which runs the Zoom Rooms Digital Signage client. Departments can update their own signage, including images, videos, and web content, directly through the Zoom Rooms portal. No IT ticket needed. We are actively exploring this as a real deployment option for CAS.

Click to download this project’s handout (.pdf format).

🥧 Raspberry Pi 4 with Stanford Alpaca, Offline AI Chatbot

A Raspberry Pi 4 running a fully offline AI chatbot using Stanford Alpaca 7B through llama.cpp with 4 bit quantization. No internet, no subscription, just a Pi having a conversation with you in a terminal window. It is slow, but the fact that it works at all is the point.

Click to download this project’s handout (.pdf format).

🍪 Raspberry Pi 4 with Batocera, Arcade1Up Countercade Conversion

An Arcade1Up Pac Man countercade, rebuilt from the inside out. I replaced the original PCB with a Pi 4 running Batocera, added an LVDS driver to keep the original eight inch vertical screen, routed audio through the same board, upgraded the controls, and added a second controller. It looks factory made, but it plays hundreds of classic games. It stays completely offline.

Click to download this project’s handout (.pdf format).

Who I Am

I am Demetrius Pinder, MBA, Computing Support Specialist II at the University of Delaware, Adjunct Professor at UDEL and Delaware Technical Community College, and Owner and Project Manager of Nuts and Bolts Web Design. I enjoy taking hardware that should not be able to do something, and making it do it anyway.

You can reach me at [email protected], find me on campus at UD, or see more of my work at nabwd.com.

Come Through

📅 Tuesday, March 10, 2026 🕙 11:00am to 2:00pm 📍 Trabant Multipurpose room, University of Delaware

If you want to talk Raspberry Pi, edge AI, retro gaming, or you just want a cookie, stop by the CAS IT table. We will be there.

Demetrius Pinder and Eric Cantrell, CAS IT
Demetrius Pinder, CSS II, CAS IT
Eric Cantrell, Director, CAS IT

#RaspberryPi #EdgeAI #DigitalSignage #RetroGaming #UDel #CASITUDel #TechFair2026 #NutsAndBoltsWebDesign

Intro to Excel: Winter Semester 2023

Some people have expressed interest in enrolling into my “Intro to Excel” course, which is starting on Thursday, January 5th, 2023. Here are the details below. If you’re not already enrolled as a student at UDEL, please scroll to the bottom for registration details. UDEL students just need to find my course in the course catalog to register.

UAPP 467/667 – 014:  Intro to Microsoft Excel

Instructor:  Mr. Demetrius Pinder

COURSE OBJECTIVES: Intro to Excel, is a course designed to develop your familiarity with this spreadsheet software. During the semester, you will be exposed to Excels basic data entry functions, creating appealing charts, creating graphs and tables. This course includes usage of Excel simulations, videos, audio PowerPoint and in class assistance from the Instructor.
By the end of the semester, you are expected to be able to competently use Microsoft Excel.

Class location:
Pearson Hall Room 305
101 Academy St, Newark, DE 19716, United States

Class time and date:
Winter (1/5/23 – 2/2/23): 4 weeks
Thursday nights from 4-5pm.

Please contact Mr. Pinder with any questions or for more information!

E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: Office (302) 831-2903

Office Hours: By appointment only
Zoom Registration Link:  Join the class for the link.

Course Syllabus:
Click here to view the Syllabus (.pdf format).

If you’re not an UDEL student, please read this below:

Whether you are interested in taking individual courses to fulfill personal, educational or professional goals or looking to take classes prior to admission or readmission to a degree program, you may enroll in UD courses as a non-admitted student. You do not need to be officially admitted to the University to take credit courses. As long as you meet course requisites, many University of Delaware courses are available to non-admitted students on a space available basis. Non-admitted students are designated as Continuing Education Non-Degree (CEND) if they are taking undergraduate courses or as Graduate College Non-Degree (GCND) if they are taking graduate courses.

Register for classes here: https://www1.udel.edu/registrar/course-info-registration/register-for-classes.html

If you’re interested in attending my in-person or online course, please email me at [email protected] or [email protected] (or via social media), if you run into trouble registering.

-Demetrius

WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, etc: How to build an ECommerce website

I gave this presentation for the “eCommerce Sales and Marketing:Strategic Uses of Social Media Tools to Sell Your Product(s) and Market Your Business!”  sponsored by the Delaware Economic Development Office.

You can view the presentation here: http://prezi.com/vtkfr3cvdis6/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share 

You can download a .PDF version of the Presentation by clicking this link

WordPress, Shopify, Drupal, etc: How do I get started selling online, what’s required and what are my options?

What is E-Commerce?

e-com·merce
ˈēˌkämərs/
noun
noun: ecommerce
1. commercial transactions conducted electronically on the Internet.

Commercial Transactions include: B2B , B2C, mobile payments, utilities, in-app purchases, etc. Basically, anything that involves the exchange of money, over the Web.

This video gives a great explanation on how E-Commerce works:
 
 

How do I get Started Selling Online?

Your checklist for getting started on creating an eCommerce Website:

Choose a Product or Service to sell:

Do some brainstorming. If you would like to sell a product, go to www.alibaba.com and find someone who can help make your dream a reality. If you provide a Service, start with a Website that showcases your Portfolio of work, include a Quote Request form and look into ways to get your customers to pay you, on-line.

Choose where you want to sell your Product or Service:

Selling Products on-line means that you do in fact have the World at your fingertips and your customers can & will come from all over the World, to your Website (with Marketing in place, of course). Selling Services online is a bit different, mainly because your Service area will be limited. It’s important to determine a Target Market though, to make the most out of your Marketing $$$. There’s no sense in advertising a Plumbing business in California, that’s based in Delaware (unless, you can subcontract in other areas, this is common for IT and Web businesses).

Get set up on an on-line marketplace and/or build your own Website:

Most consumers will go to the Web first, to research your business and the competition. Do not discount the power of having a strong Web Presence.

Tips for a solid E-Commerce Website:

1. Have your Address, Phone # and Email Address / Contact form, very visible. Make it easy to reach you
2. Good Photos: A picture is worth a thousand words
3. Include a Video
4. Have engaging Product Descriptions
5. Simple Registration Process
6. Quick & Easy Checkout
7. Respond to Customer Service requests, quickly
8. Start an email subscriber list
9. Clearly state policies and terms, earn your Website visitors trust
10. BONUS: Experiment during the Holiday seasons with colors, design elements, etc
11. BONUS, BONUS: Offer coupons. Who doesn’t like getting a deal?

What are my Website options?

1. Online Marketplace like eBay, Amazon, Etsy (artists and crafts)
2. Build your own Website: WordPress, Shopify, etc

While you have the option to choose the DIY option, I suggest you still hire a Web Expert to help build your Website and help you market your Products or Services. Like you would hire a Contractor to build your physical store front, hiring a Web Expert to build your Website puts you into a professionals hands.

What’s required to sell online?

1. Product / Inventory List that’s organized to include “product attributes” such as “size” , “package-type”, “weight”, Color (“blue”), etc. An organized spreadsheet from Excel or QuickBooks would do fine.
2. Shopping Cart Software. There are TONS of options out there (show graphic of all shopping cart software). I suggest using WordPress or Shopify.
3. Shipping acct with Fedex, USPS, or UPS
4. Merchant acct with PayPal, your Bank, Merchant Processor, etc
5. Secure connection via a SSL Certificate, for secure transmission of credit / debit card information
6. You must know your Sales Tax rate, if you live in a State that charges Sales Tax and you have a physical presence in that State.
7. Analytics to track Website visitors, terms used to find your Website, etc. You need to know how and why people landed on your Website. Even better, knowing how and why they purchased from your Website.
8. A Marketing campaign. How do people know about your Products or Services, if they haven’t heard about you? Social Media, Print Advertising, Commercials, etc. You have to Market your business.
9. Privacy Policy & Terms and Conditions. The Privacy Policy outlines how your customers data will be stored and used, while they have an account on your Website. Terms & Conditions are rules which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service.
10. FAITH. You gotta have it. Success doesn’t happen overnight.

What’s next?

E-commerce can be a very rewarding venture, but you cannot make money overnight. It is important to do a lot of research, ask questions, work hard and make business decisions based on facts learned from research. Don’t rely on “gut” feelings, do the leg work. Put in the time to experiment to see what does, and doesn’t work.