At Raspberry Pi, we’re determined in our ambition to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world: one way we pursue this is by developing high-quality learning resources to support a growing community of educators. We spend a lot of time thinking hard about what you can learn by tinkering and making with a Raspberry Pi, and other devices and platforms, in order to become skilled in computer programming, electronics, and physical computing.

Now, we’ve taken an exciting step in this journey by defining our own digital making curriculum that will help people everywhere learn new skills.

A PDF version of the curriculum is also available to download.

Who is it for?

We have a large and diverse community of people who are interested in digital making. Some might use the curriculum to help guide and inform their own learning, or perhaps their children’s learning. People who run digital making clubs at schools, community centres, and Raspberry Jams may draw on it for extra guidance on activities that will engage their learners. Some teachers may wish to use the curriculum as inspiration for what to teach their students.

Raspberry Pi produces an extensive and varied range of online learning resources and delivers a huge teacher training program. In creating this curriculum, we have produced our own guide that we can use to help plan our resources and make sure we cover the broad spectrum of learners’ needs.

Progression

Learning anything involves progression. You start with certain skills and knowledge and then, with guidance, practice, and understanding, you gradually progress towards broader and deeper knowledge and competence. Our digital making curriculum is structured around this progression, and in representing it, we wanted to avoid the age-related and stage-related labels that are often associated with a learner’s progress and the preconceptions these labels bring. We came up with our own, using characters to represent different levels of competence, starting with Creator and moving onto Builder and Developer before becoming a Maker.

Progress through our curriculum and become a digital maker

Strands

We want to help people to make things so that they can become the inventors, creators, and makers of tomorrow. Digital making, STEAM, project-based learning, and tinkering are at the core of our teaching philosophy which can be summed up simply as ‘we learn best by doing’.

We’ve created five strands which we think encapsulate key concepts and skills in digital making: Design, Programming, Physical Computing, Manufacture, and Community and Sharing.

Computational thinking

One of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s aims is to help people to learn about computer science and how to make things with computers. We believe that learning how to create with digital technology will help people shape an increasingly digital world, and prepare them for the work of the future.

Computational thinking is at the heart of the learning that we advocate. It’s the thought process that underpins computing and digital making: formulating a problem and expressing its solution in such a way that a computer can effectively carry it out. Computational thinking covers a broad range of knowledge and skills including, but not limited to:

• Logical reasoning
• Algorithmic thinking
• Pattern recognition
• Abstraction
• Decomposition
• Debugging
• Problem solving

By progressing through our curriculum, learners will develop computational thinking skills and put them into practice.

What’s not on our curriculum?

If there’s one thing we learned from our extensive work in formulating this curriculum, it’s that no two educators or experts can agree on the best approach to progression and learning in the field of digital making. Our curriculum is intended to represent the skills and thought processes essential to making things with technology. We’ve tried to keep the headline outcomes as broad as possible, and then provide further examples as a guide to what could be included.

Our digital making curriculum is not intended to be a replacement for computer science-related curricula around the world, such as the ‘Computing Programme of Study’ in England or the ‘Digital Technologies’ curriculum in Australia. We hope that following our learning pathways will support the study of formal curricular and exam specifications in a fun and tangible way. As we continue to expand our catalogue of free learning resources, we expect our curriculum will grow and improve, and your input into that process will be vital.

Get involved

We’re proud to be part of a movement that aims to empower people to shape their world through digital technologies. We value the support of our community of makers, educators, volunteers, and enthusiasts. With this in mind, we’re interested to hear your thoughts on our digital making curriculum. Add your feedback to this form, or talk to us at one of the events that Raspberry Pi will attend in 2017.

The post The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Digital Making Curriculum appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Source: Raspberry Pi – The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Digital Making Curriculum

Way back in April of 2014 we launched the original Compute Module (CM1) which was based around the BCM2835 processor of the original Raspberry Pi. CM1 was a great success and we’ve seen a lot of uptake from various markets, particularly in IoT and home and factory automation. Not to be outdone by its bigger Raspberry Pi brother, the Compute Module is also destined for space!

Compute Module 3

Since releasing the original Compute Module we’ve launched 2 further generations of much faster Raspberry Pi boards, so today we bring you the shiny new Compute Module 3 (CM3) which is based on the Raspberry Pi 3 hardware, providing twice the RAM and roughly 10x the CPU performance of the original module. We’ve been talking about the Compute Module 3 since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3, and we’re already excited to see NEC displays, an early adopter, launching their CM3-enabled display solution.

Compute Module 3

The idea of the Compute Module was to provide an easy and cost effective route to producing customised products based on the Pi hardware and software platform. The thought was to provide the ‘team in a garage’ with easy access to the same technology as the big guys. The module takes care of the complexity of routing out the processor pins, the high speed RAM interface and core power supply and allows a simple carrier board to provide just what is needed in terms of external interfaces and form factor. The module uses a standard DDR2 SODIMM form factor, sockets for which are made by several manufacturers and are easily available and inexpensive.

In fact today we are launching two versions of Compute Module 3. The first is the ‘standard’ CM3 which has a BCM2837 processor at up to 1.2GHz with 1GByte RAM (the same as Pi3) and 4Gbytes of on-module eMMC flash. The second version is what we are calling ‘Compute Module 3 Lite’ (CM3L) which still has the same BCM2837 and 1Gbyte of RAM but brings the SD card interface to the module pins so a user can wire this up to an eMMC or SD card of their choice.

Back side of CM3 (left) and CM3L (right).

We are also releasing an updated version of our get-you-started breakout board, the Compute Module IO Board V3 (CMIO3). This board provides the necessary power to the module and gives you the ability to program the module’s Flash memory (for the non-Lite versions) or use an SD card (Lite versions), access the processor interfaces in a slightly more friendly fashion (pin headers and flexi connectors, much like the Pi) and provides the necessary HDMI and USB connectors so that you have an entire system that can boot Raspbian (or the OS of your choice). This board provides both a starting template for those who want to design with the Compute Module, and a quick way to start experimenting with the hardware and building and testing a system before going to the expense of fabricating a custom board. The CMIO3 can accept an original Compute Module, CM3 or CM3L.

Comprehensive information on the Compute Modules is available in the relevant hardware documentation section of our website and includes a datasheet and schematics.

With the launch of CM3 and CM3 Lite we are not obsoleting the original Compute Module, as we still see this as a valid product in its own right being a lower cost and lower power option where the performance of a CM3 would be overkill.

CM3 and CM3L are priced at $30 and $25 respectively (excluding tax and shipping) and this price applies to any size order. The original Compute Module is also reduced to $25. Our partners RS and Premier Farnell are also providing full development kits which include all you need to get started designing with the Compute Module 3.

The CM3 is largely backwards compatible with CM1 designs which have followed our design guidelines. The caveats are that the module is 1mm taller than the original module and the processor core supply (VBAT) can draw significantly more current and consequently the processor itself will run much hotter under heavy CPU load – i.e. designers need to consider thermals based on expected use cases.

CM3 (left) is 1mm taller than CM1 (right)

We’re very glad to finally be launching the Compute Module 3, and we’re excited to see what people do with it. Head on over to our partners element14 and RS Components to buy yours today!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Compute Module 3 Launch!

Happy new year to everyone! We’re back with a new programme of Picademy events for 2017. All our UK events have been scheduled up to the end of the year, so you can look ahead and choose something at a location and date that is convenient.

An educator gets to grips with our Camera Module

For the uninitiated, Picademy is a free CPD programme that aims to give educators the skills and knowledge they need to get creative with computing, no matter what their level of experience. In fact, you don’t need any previous experience to apply, just an enthusiasm for teaching kids computing. Each course lasts for two full days and is a mixture of digital making workshops, project-based learning, and hacking. Delegates graduate as Raspberry Pi Certified Educators (RCEs).

Last year’s Picademy events yielded some wonderful moments. We trained over 540 educators in the UK and the US, so we had lots of highlights to choose from; I certainly witnessed many in person while delivering events in Glasgow. Two of my favourites included the educator who created music by coding DNA into Sonic Pi as note values (amazing!), and the project that used the Sense HAT to input notes to Sonic Pi and then convert them into coloured blocks in Minecraft for a digital disco.

It was so great to see the enthusiasm, the camaraderie, and the willingness of educators to be open to new experiences. You could see the cogs turning as they thought about how they could apply the new ideas to work in their own classrooms. It was also great to hear about things educators found less easy, and to answer questions about aspects of the computing curriculum. We find this feedback particularly useful as we are always looking for ways to improve our content and provide better support.

Below you’ll find details of the Picademy events we’re running across the UK in 2017:

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* While London details are not fully confirmed, you can still apply for these events. We will email details to applicants later in 2017.

Who should apply?

We are looking for inspirational educators who are passionate about computing, enthusiastic about creating awesome learning experiences for their students, and proactive at sharing good practice.

While we’re primarily looking for primary, secondary, FE and HE teachers to apply, we’re also seeking other outstanding educators such as librarians, community educators, trainee teachers, and trainers of teachers.

We’re committed to running free high-quality training, and we invest substantial time (and money) in the educators that attend. Our hope is that our certified educators not only return home with a digital making mindset to inspire students and colleagues, but also have an impact on their wider education community through social media, meetups, or running their own training.

With this in mind, we should point out that Picademy events are often oversubscribed: for this reason, it’s really important that we get a sense of the person behind the application. We would therefore urge you to take your time when answering questions that ask you to reflect on your own experiences and reasons for applying.

A cohort of Picademy graduates in Manchester

How to apply

To apply for any of the events, fill in our Online Application Form. If you have any further questions, you can email picademy@raspberrypi.org or post a message in the Picademy area on our forums.

The post Our full 2017 schedule of UK Picademy events appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Source: Raspberry Pi – Our full 2017 schedule of UK Picademy events

By any measure, the Raspberry Pi Foundation had a fantastic 2016. We ended the year with over 11 million Raspberry Pi computers sold, millions of people using our learning resources, almost 1,000 Certified Educators in the UK and US, 75,000 children regularly attending over 5,000 Code Clubs in the UK, hundreds of Raspberry Jams taking place all over the world, code written by schoolkids running in space (yes, space), and much, much more.

Tim Peake on Twitter

Fantastic to see 5,000 active Code Clubs in the UK, helping over 75,000 young people learn to code. https://t.co/OyShrUzAhI @Raspberry_Pi https://t.co/luFj1qgzvQ

As I’ve said before, what we achieve is only possible thanks to the amazing community of makers, educators, volunteers, and young people all over the world who share our mission and support our work. You’re all awesome: thank you.

So here we are, just over a week into the New Year, and I thought it might be a good time to share with you some of what we’ve got planned for 2017.

Young digital makers

At the core of our mission is getting more young people excited about computing, and learning how to make things with computers. That was the original inspiration for the Raspberry Pi computer and it remains our number-one objective.

One of the ways we do that is through Code Club, a network of after-school clubs for 9- 11-year-olds run by teachers and volunteers. It’s already one of the largest networks of after-school clubs in the world, and this year we’ll be working with our existing partners in Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Ukraine, as well as finding more partners in more countries, to bring Code Club to many more children.

This year also sees the launch of Pioneers, our new programme for teen digital makers. It’s built around a series of challenges that will inspire young people to make things with technology and share their makes with the world. Check out the first challenge here, and keep watching the hashtag #MakeYourIdeas across your favourite social media platforms.

This is Pioneers #MakeYourIdeas

UPDATE – The first challenge is now LIVE. Head here for more information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCUzza7LJog Woohoo! Get together, get inspired, and get thinking. We’re looking for Pioneers to use technology to make something awesome. Get together in a team or on your own, post online to show us how you’re getting on, and then show the world your build when you’re done.

We’re also expanding our space programme Astro Pi, with 250 teams across Europe currently developing code that will be run on the ISS by ESA French Astronaut Thomas Pesquet. And, building on our Weather Station project, we’re excited to be developing new ideas for citizen science programmes that get more young people involved in computing.

European Astro Pi Challenge – Code your experiment

British ESA astronaut Tim Peake is safely back on Earth now, but French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is onboard the ISS, keen to see what students from all over Europe can do with the Astro Pi units too.

Supporting educators

Another big part of our work is supporting educators who are bringing computing and digital making into the classroom, and this year we’re going to be doing even more to help them.

We’ll continue to grow our community of official Raspberry Pi Certified Educators, with Picademy training programmes in the UK and US. Watch out for those dates coming soon. We’re also opening up our educator training to a much wider audience through a series of online courses in partnership with FutureLearn. The first two courses are open for registration now, and we’ve got plans to develop and run more courses throughout the year, so if you’re an educator, let us know what you would find most useful.

We’re also really excited to be launching a brand-new free resource for educators later this month in partnership with CAS, the grass-roots network of computing educators. For now, it’s top-secret, but if you’re in the Bett Arena on 25 January, you’ll be the first to hear all about it.

Free educational resources

One of the most important things we do at Pi Towers is create the free educational resources that are used in Code Clubs, STEM clubs, CoderDojos, classrooms, libraries, makerspaces, and bedrooms by people of all ages learning about computing and digital making. We love making these resources and we know that you love using them. This year, we want to make them even more useful.

As a first step, later this month we will share our digital making curriculum, which explains how we think about learning and progression, and which provides the structure for our educational resources and programmes. We’re publishing it so that we can get feedback to make it better, but we also hope that it will be used by other organisations creating educational resources.

We’re also working hard behind the scenes to improve the content and presentation of our learning resources. We want to include more diverse content like videos, make it easier for users to track their own progress, and generally make the experience more interactive and social. We’re looking forward to sharing that work and getting your feedback over the next few months.

Community

Last, but by no means least, we will continue to support and grow the community around our mission. We’ll be doing even more outreach, with ever more diverse groups, and doing much more to support the Raspberry Jam organisers and others who do so much to involve people in the digital making movement.

The other big community news is that we will be formally establishing ourselves as a charity in the US, which will provide the foundation (see what I did there?) for a serious expansion of our charitable activities and community in North America.

As you can see, we’ve got big plans for the year. Let me know what you think in the comments below and, if you’re excited about the mission, there’s lots of ways to get involved.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – 2017: inspiring young makers and supporting educators

This column is from The MagPi issue 50. You can download a PDF of the full issue for free, or subscribe to receive the print edition in your mailbox or the digital edition on your tablet. All proceeds from the print and digital editions help the Raspberry Pi Foundation achieve its charitable goals.

Tim and Michael

Category: Makers
Day job: Michael is a web developer, while Tim works as a performance architect.
Website

Michael Horne and Tim Richardson have become regular faces within the Raspberry Pi community, and with good reason. For those local to the Cambridge area, the pair are best known for running the city’s Raspberry Jam – The CamJam – as well as events such as the Birthday Bash and the successful Pi Wars, the next instalment of which is due in April 2017. They’re also responsible for many photos and videos you’ll have seen on our blog over the years.

On 8 September, Michael and Tim demonstrated some of their projects and kits at the #10MillionPi House of Commons celebrations

Those further afield may have found themself in possession of a CamJam EduKit from The Pi Hut. Available in several varieties, and accompanied by educational resources on the CamJam website, EduKits provide the components necessary for newcomers to the Raspberry Pi to understand physical computing. From sensors to traffic light LEDs, the affordable kits offer everyone the chance to get to grips with digital making, regardless of their skills or experience.

From a small room at the Centre of Mathematical Sciences to multiple rooms and hundreds of attendees, the Cambridge Raspberry Jam continues to grow within the birthplace of the Pi. The EduKit range – providing everyone with the necessary components to learn LED coding, sensors, and more – is available via The Pi Hut.

And if that’s not enough, the online presence of Tim and Michael continues to permeate the social platforms of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Both are active within the Twittersphere: you’ll no doubt have shared a joke or received advice from either @Geeky_Tim or @recantha. And if you happen to look for information or updates on Raspberry Pi products, projects, or updates, Michael’s website is most likely to be sitting in your browser history.

Michael’s Music Box is his favourite project: it’s a kit that fits neatly into his hand, allowing for the playback and distortion of notes through various button presses and dial twists.

For the pair, the Raspberry Pi was a subject of interest pre-launch, with both ordering one from the start. Tim, the eager tinkerer, began his Pi journey from delivery day, while Michael admits to letting his collect a little dust before finally diving in.

Tim is most proud of this Weather Clock, a swish-looking display of numbers and icons that indicate the date and time, along with both current and forecast weather conditions

At first, Michael attended the Milton Keynes Raspberry Jam, learning to solder in order to begin work on a project, the Picorder. Having noticed the Cambridge Raspberry Jam would no longer be running in the home town of the Raspberry Pi, and ensuring he wouldn’t step on a few toes in the process, Michael decided to launch his own Jam at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences. “It was so badly organised that I hadn’t even visited and seen the room beforehand”, he admits. “It was just 30 people at that first one!” This lack of organisational skills would soon be remedied by the introduction of Tim Richardson into the mix. Of future events, Tim notes, “With two of us doing the organisation, we were able to do a lot more. I wanted to get vendors to the event so people could buy stuff for their Pis.” They also put together workshops and, later, presentations. The workshops in turn led to the creation of the CamJam EduKit, a means for workshop attendees to take components home and continue their builds there.

Cake, project builds, and merriment: the Raspberry Pi Birthday Bash’s continued success draws people from across the globe to join the team in celebrating the
Raspberry Pi, the community, and the future.

The transition of the kits to The Pi Hut took place in July 2014, allowing for greater variety and fewer nights filling bags on the living room floor. More recently, the pair joined the Raspberry Pi team in celebration of the #10MillionPi milestone, bringing their projects to the Houses of Parliament to help introduce more people to the Raspberry Jam scene. And of their continued future within the community? The much-anticipated Pi Wars will be taking place over the first weekend in April 2017, offering all ages and abilities the chance to put their robotic creations to the test against a series of challenges.

The popular robotics competition allows teams of Raspberry Pi enthusiasts to battle head-to-head in a series of non-destructive challenges. Rolling into its
third year, the next Pi Wars is set to run across the first weekend of April 2017.

The post Community Profile: Tim Richardson and Michael Horne appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Source: Raspberry Pi – Community Profile: Tim Richardson and Michael Horne

After introducing you all to Pioneers back in November, we’ve seen some amazing responses across social media with teams registering, Code Clubs and Jams retweeting and everyone getting themselves pumped up and ready for action.

Nicholas Tollervey on Twitter

This is the best thing I’ve seen in all my years involved in tech related education: https://t.co/5jerR9770r #MakeYourIdeas

Mass excitement all round – including here at Pi Towers! So, without further ado, here’s the delightful Owen to reveal the first challenge.

Pioneers Theme Launch

The eagerly anticipated Pioneers theme launch is here! If you’re yet to register for Pioneers, make sure you head to raspberrypi.org/pioneers And if you’ve no idea what we’re talking about, here’s Owen to explain more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPP3dfTlLOs&t=18s

That’s right: we want you to make us laugh with tech. As well as the great examples that Owen provides, you’ll also find some great starters on the Pioneers website, along with hundreds of projects online.

If you’ve yet to register your team, make sure you do so via this form. And if you’re struggling to find a mentor for your team, or a team to mentor, make sure to use the #MakeYourIdeas tag on social media to keep in the loop. It’s also worth checking organisations such as your local Code Club, CoderDojo, or makerspace for anyone looking to get involved.

This Pioneers challenge is open to anyone in the UK between the ages of twelve and 15. If you’re soon to turn twelve or have just turned 16, head over to the Pioneers FAQ page – you may still be eligible to enter.

So get making, and make sure to share the process on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat using #MakeYourIdeas!

The post Pioneers: the first challenge is… appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Source: Raspberry Pi – Pioneers: the first challenge is…

Note: The elves at Pi Towers are all taking next week off to spend some time with their families, and this blog will be quiet for the week. We’ll be back at the start of January. Happy holidays!

Happy 25th of December, everybody!

If you’re one of the many who woke up this morning to find some Raspberry Pi goodies under your tree, congratulations.

Now you’ve unpacked the Pi, confirmed it to indeed be roughly the size of a credit card, and confused a less tech-savvy loved one by telling them “This is a computer!”, you may be wondering to do with it next…and that’s where we come in.

The Raspberry Pi can be used to create no end of wonderful things, including robots, musical instruments, virtual pets, stop motion cameras, and much more.

It will also help you to learn programming, allow you to play games, offer the chance to explore space, and automate your home.

Not quite like this…

So many awesome things.

But how do you do any of them!? Well…

1. OS me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.

Awful pun. I’m sorry.

You’ll need to make sure you have the latest Raspbian operating system (OS) on your Pi. You may have been given an SD with Rasbian pre-installed but if not, head to our downloads page to get it.

2. Start me up

ALL THE POWER!

You’ll need to plug your Pi into a monitor (your TV will do), keyboard and mouse in order to get started. You’ll also need a good-quality power supply providing at least 2A.

We’ve some great instructions within our help pages to get you up and running. And if you’re still stuck, our forum has loads of information and is full of helpful people. Feel free to join and ask a question, and search previous topics for advice.

3. So how do I build a robot then?!

With tinsel and tape and bows and…

Excellent question. But if you’ve never tried to code before, you may want to start with something a little smaller…like Scratch or Sonic Pi, or a physical build such as the Parent Detector or a Burping Jelly Baby.

You may also want to check out some great project books such as Carrie Anne’s Adventures in Raspberry Pi or any of The MagPi Magazine Essentials Guides and Project Books.

You’ll find a lot more suggestions in our Christmas Shopping List.

4. More, more, more!

You’ll find more projects on our resources pages, along with some brilliant inspirational builds on our YouTube channel and blog. Or simply search for Raspberry Pi online. We’ve an amazing community of makers who share their code and builds for all to use, and now you’re one of us…WELCOME!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – So you got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas! Now what?

Having recently discovered her through Instagram, we love the videos that have been coming through from Estefannie ‘Explains It All’ De la Garza.

As a “Software Engineer by day, Game Dev and YouTuber by night”, Estefannie is no stranger to digital making. And with her new YouTube channel, she’s started sharing the experience of physical making with the world.

Viewers can watch her as she learns how to solder, or builds a sensor-controller BB-8 pumpkin. And, just in time for Christmas, you can share the experience of building an automated gingerbread house.

The gingerbread house uses LEDs, servos, an Arduino and Raspberry Pi, all powered by a solar panel on the roof, to offer up an app-controlled light show, dancing gingerbread men and a working automatic door.

As far as automated baked goods go, this one definitely…takes the biscuit.

As with all great makers, Estefannie provides the code for her creation on her GitHub page, allowing everyone the chance to pimp up their own gingerbread houses this holiday season. So grab some tech, turn on the oven and lets get making baking making!

SMART GINGERBREAD HOUSE | KITCHEN HACKS

Hey World! I’ve always wanted a smart house, so I made a SMART GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!! Check out my version of an automated gingerbread house using an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, solar panel, servos, and LEDs. I hooked up all the lights and servos to an Arduino which is controlled by a website that is hosted in my Raspberry Pi.

The post Estefannie’s Smart Gingerbread House appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Source: Raspberry Pi – Estefannie’s Smart Gingerbread House

The MagPi 53 is out now. This month’s community magazine comes with a free Debian + PIXEL DVD.

With the DVD, you can run the Debian + PIXEL desktop on a PC or Mac.

Click here to download The MagPi 53.

The MagPi Translated Edition 2

Launching alongside this month’s The MagPi are more international titles. The second edition of our bite-sized version of The MagPi, translated into four languages, is now available.

The MagPi Translated Edition 2 contains the best projects, reviews, and tutorials from The MagPi. These are translated into Italian, French, Spanish, and Hebrew.

Click here to download The MagPi Translated Edition 2.

Inside The MagPi 53: The best projects and guides

Here are some of the incredible projects you will find in this month’s The MagPi:

Inside The MagPi 53: Debian + PIXEL DVD

There’s a huge amount in this month’s magazine. Here are just some of the features in this issue:

• Beginner’s guide to programming: learn to code with our complete starter guide
• Use the Debian + PIXEL DVD: try out our new OS on your computer with your free DVD
• Create a bootable flash drive that can boot a Mac or PC into the PIXEL desktop

There’s also some amazing news this month: the Raspberry Pi has now sold 11 million units, and Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton has been awarded a CBE! We have exclusive interviews with Eben about his CBE and the launch of Debian + PIXEL.

The best community projects

We also cover some of the most fantastic community projects ever built:

• Pegasus and the North American Eagle. Inside the land-speed challenge car, with a Raspberry Pi in the driver’s cockpit
• QBEE social media dress. This wearable tech posts automatically to social media
• Self-playing pipe organ. This giant musical instrument is played by the Raspberry Pi
• Water tank level monitor. This PIoT challenge winning project automates water collection in rural America

It’s one of the most feature-packed editions of The MagPi we’ve ever made. Don’t miss out on the free DVD that can bring an old computer back to life as a coding powerhouse. It really is something special.

You can grab The MagPi 53 in stores today: it’s in WHSmith, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda in the UK, and it will be in Micro Center and selected Barnes & Noble stores when it comes to the US. You can also buy the print edition online from our store, and it’s available digitally on our Android and iOS app.

Get a free Pi Zero

Want to make sure you never miss an issue? Subscribe today and get a Pi Zero bundle featuring the new, camera-enabled Pi Zero, and a cable bundle that includes the camera adapter.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – The MagPi 53 out now! Free Debian + PIXEL DVD

Our vision in establishing the Raspberry Pi Foundation was that everyone should be able to afford their own programmable general-purpose computer. The intention has always been that the Raspberry Pi should be a full-featured desktop computer at a $35 price point. In support of this, and in parallel with our hardware development efforts, we’ve made substantial investments in our software stack. These culminated in the launch of PIXEL in September 2016.

PIXEL represents our best guess as to what the majority of users are looking for in a desktop environment: a clean, modern user interface; a curated suite of productivity software and programming tools, both free and proprietary; and the Chromium web browser with useful plugins, including Adobe Flash, preinstalled. And all of this is built on top of Debian, providing instant access to thousands of free applications.

Put simply, it’s the GNU/Linux we would want to use.

The PIXEL desktop on Raspberry Pi

Back in the summer, we asked ourselves one simple question: if we like PIXEL so much, why ask people to buy Raspberry Pi hardware in order to run it? There is a massive installed base of PC and Mac hardware out there, which can run x86 Debian just fine. Could we do something for the owners of those machines?

So, after three months of hard work from Simon and Serge, we have a Christmas treat for you: an experimental version of Debian+PIXEL for x86 platforms. Simply download the image, burn it onto a DVD or flash it onto a USB stick, and boot straight into the familiar PIXEL desktop environment on your PC or Mac. Or go out and buy this month’s issue of The MagPi magazine, in stores tomorrow, which has this rather stylish bootable DVD on the cover.

Our first ever covermount

You’ll find all the applications you’re used to, with the exception of Minecraft and Wolfram Mathematica (we don’t have a licence to put those on any machine that’s not a Raspberry Pi). Because we’re using the venerable i386 architecture variant it should run even on vintage machines like my ThinkPad X40, provided they have at least 512MB of RAM.

The finest laptop ever made, made finer

Why do we think this is worth doing? Two reasons:

• A school can now run PIXEL on its existing installed base of PCs, just as a student can run PIXEL on her Raspberry Pi at home. She can move back and forth between her computing class or after-school club and home, using exactly the same productivity software and programming tools, in exactly the same desktop environment. There is no learning curve, and no need to tweak her schoolwork to run on two subtly different operating systems.
• And bringing PIXEL to the PC and Mac keeps us honest. We don’t just want to create the best desktop environment for the Raspberry Pi: we want to create the best desktop environment, period. We know we’re not there yet, but by running PIXEL alongside Windows, Mac OS, and the established desktop GNU/Linux distros, we can more easily see where our weak points are, and work to fix them.

Remember that this is a prototype rather then a final release version. Due to the wide variety of PC and Mac hardware out there, there are likely to be minor issues on some hardware configurations. If we decide that this is something we want to commit to in the long run, we will do our best to address these as they come up. You can help us here – please let us know how you get on in the comments below!

Instructions

Download the image, and either burn it to a DVD or write it to a USB stick. For the latter, we recommend Etcher.

Etcher from resin.io

Insert the DVD or USB stick into your PC or Mac, and turn it on. On a PC, you will generally need to enable booting from optical drive or USB stick in the BIOS, and you will have to ensure that the optical drive or USB stick is ahead of all other drives in the boot order. On a Mac, you’ll need to hold down C during boot^*.

If you’ve done that correctly, you will be greeted by a boot screen.

Boot screen

Here you can hit escape to access the boot menu, or do nothing to boot through to the desktop.

Spot the difference: the PIXEL desktop on a PC

^* We are aware of an issue on some modern Macs (including, annoyingly, mine – but not Liz’s), where the machine fails to identify the image as bootable. We’ll release an updated image once we’ve got to the bottom of the issue.

Persistence

If you are running from DVD, any files you create, or modifications you make to the system, will of course be lost when you power off the machine. If you are running from a USB stick, the system will by default use any spare space on the device to create a persistence partition, which allows files to persist between sessions. The boot menu provides options to run with or without persistence, or to erase any persistence partition that has been created, allowing you to roll back to a clean install at any time.

Boot menu

Disclaimer

One of the great benefits of the Raspberry Pi is that it is a low-consequence environment for messing about: if you trash your SD card you can just flash another one. This is not always true of your PC or Mac. Consider backing up your system before trying this image.

Raspberry Pi can accept no liability for any loss of data or damage to computer systems from using the image.

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Source: Raspberry Pi – PIXEL for PC and Mac

The Raspberry Pi Foundation and Code Club will soon be five years old, and we want you to join us at the beginning of March to help us celebrate. Tickets are on sale now!

This time we’re shaking things up a bit, with a new venue and a new format for the weekend. We’re still building on the huge successes of previous years’ parties, thanks to the invaluable support of our community members.

The celebration will be held at Cambridge Junction (a five-minute walk from Cambridge train station), on Saturday 4 March from 10:30am to 6:30pm, and on Sunday 5 March from 10:00am to 5:30pm. It will feature talks and workshops for which you can sign up, as well as drop-in sessions that allow you to get hands-on without the need to register, so there’s something for everyone. There will even be cupcakes and free goody bags for all partygoers! Tickets cost just £5 for over-16s, and under-16s go free.

The full exciting schedule for both days will go live in the new year, but in the meantime check out our events page for more details, including a form you can fill in if you’d like to be involved by running a workshop or talk, by volunteering as a marshal, or by helping out in other ways. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Source: Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend 2017