Something has just occurred to me.
Next week I start the Stanford AI Internet course.
If I see a way of getting a Raspberry PI (or a group of them) to implement some of the course work I'll give you a shout.
For those who have not heard about the AI course its FREE and a distance learning experiment.
You can find out about it here
http://www.ai-class.com/
I personally haven't done a course like this inYEARS
