The MagPi Kickstarter

There’s just over a week to go on the MagPi’s Kickstarter. They’ve met their original goal, but they’ve got some stretches to make, and we’d love to see you support them to become even bigger and better in 2013.

Issues 1-8

Regular readers will know that we are big fans of The MagPi, the only magazine in the world dedicated to the Raspberry Pi. It is created each month by a team of volunteers and usually with unique content found nowhere else. You can download each issue for free from the Pi Store or from www.themagpi.com.

Here at the Foundation, we’ve been printing each issue off – which takes time and costs a fortune in ink. (It has been bandied about that perhaps the next world-changing project we need to engage in is an affordable printer ink scheme.) The MagPi folks are often asked to make printed copies of the magazine available. It’s a tricky proposition, as they are volunteers with no capital, so they started a Kickstarter project on 1 December to make all 8 issues available in print. The MagPi team have told me they are blown away by your support. At the time of writing they have ~~nearly 400~~ over 400 (several of you have signed up in the few minutes since this was posted – thank you!) backers and have tripled their financial goal – money which gives them the opportunity to explore the translations into other languages they’ve been exploring, and the ability to make print copies available in the future. They have also seen several schools place orders for the magazine, which we’re very excited about. The money is important for their continued success, but even more important is the number of individuals who support them subscribe to the printed edition: it’s the number of subscriptions which gives them the security to keep doing what they’re doing, so we’d love to see you sign up to their Kickstarter.

What you don’t know is that with every single pledge on their Kickstarter project, The MagPi team is making a donation to the Raspberry Pi Foundation. (We didn’t know this either until they mailed us about it.) The Kickstarter rules do not allow them to mention charitable benefactors – but I can mention it here – and we at the Foundation are really touched and grateful for their support; the MagPi guys already go above and beyond to support this project, and this bit of icing on top of the cake really caught us by surprise. Eben and I are also supporting the MagPi Kickstarter project by making available a limited number of personalised, signed copies of the “Raspberry Pi User Guide” book to people pledging more than £100.

The MagPi stand at the Bristol BCS in a rare quiet moment – spot the floppy-haired interloper.

With only a few days remaining there is still an opportunity to participate in this project. There are a wide range of pledges available and if you want these to be a gift, the MagPi team have created gift certificates that you can download and print at home after you have made a pledge. If you don’t want any magazines or Raspberry Pi hardware, the Fuzzy Glow (£2) and Sticker Madness (£5) pledges will let you show your appreciation for keeping The MagPi free.

We are also very pleased to announce that Pimoroni and Adafruit Industries will be sponsoring The MagPi during 2013. Ian from the magazine mailed me about the news this morning; he says: “We are both humbled and incredibly excited to be supported by these companies. Pimoroni and Adafruit, together with almost 400 other supporters, have all contributed to make our Kickstarter project a huge success for us, our partners and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.”

The MagPi issue 8 is here – support their Kickstarter!

It’s the first of the month again. What better on a cold December evening than settling down on the hearthrug with a paper copy of the MagPi and a glass of mulled wine, and building a Santa-trap with a Raspberry Pi?

Our friends at The MagPi do an incredible job. They’re now working on the ninth issue of the magazine: it’s the only magazine in the world that’s dedicated to our little computer and what you can do with it. It’s produced entirely by volunteers – if you want to get involved, there are details in each issue telling you how to join in. The magazine is published under a Creative Commons licence: every issue is completely free to read online. It’s an amazing educational resource, and for us it’s a monthly reminder of just how totally incredible the community that’s been building up over the last 18 months or so around the Pi is.

Many people have been asking for a printed version of The MagPi. Last month, the MagPi team started to explore print. Many individuals prefer a paper magazine, and schools and colleges in particular find them a very useful way to consume The MagPi. The paper version of last month’s issue was a great success, but there have been a huge number of requests for the whole back catalogue to be made available in print too. Printing a magazine is an expensive undertaking, and volumes bought need to be significant if doing so is to be affordable for the publishers. So the team at The MagPi have launched a Kickstarter, aimed at bringing out the whole back catalogue as a bumper pack, with a swanky binder; the Kickstarter is there partly to raise the necessary funds, and partly so they can assure themselves that the demand is there for printed copies in the future and look into some other plans, like translating the existing magazines into other languages, and exploring new kinds of content and new kinds of distribution.

There’s some valuable content in there, and I challenge you not to be inspired: hardware projects galore, enormous lists of games and other software you can download onto your Pi, along with courses in Scratch, Python and C: with only the MagPi and no other Pi experience, you can go from knowing nothing about computing to building a robot or automating your house if you work through all the exercises and articles.

Please pledge something to the project via their Kickstarter – and if you can’t afford to do that, please think about volunteering for The MagPi. They’re always looking not only for content creators, but also for designers, educators, administrative support, typesetting and editorial help, and help with all the other less glamorous bits that come with making a magazine.

We at the Raspberry Pi Foundation couldn’t be more grateful to the guys at The MagPi, who have dedicated huge amounts of personal time and effort to making this community what it is. We hope you, like us, will support them in making The MagPi even bigger and better in 2013.

Guest blogs and EVE Alpha

>look
You are at home: a dark cupboard under the stairs of Raspberry Pi Towers. The screen of an Escom P75 glows faintly, warding off grues. To the east, faint cracks of light define an small, unfamiliar door.

>i
You have a sonic screwdriver, a half-eaten packet of Spangles and a Bable Fish.

>open door, e
Hallway
You scuttle crab-like into the hallway, shielding your eyes against the violent glare. To the north, a vast marble staircase sweeps upwards and out of sight. There is a largish machine being operated down the hall to the east. A bust of Clive Sinclair squats purposefully in an alcove to the south.

>examine bust
The bust is beautifully sculpted from snow-white alabaster and has a faint, eerie glow. A ragged sign hangs around its neck by garden twine.

>read sign
Written in red crayon on the back of a Netto cornflake box it says, “Back in two weeks. All passwords are ’123456′. Sort it out.”

And that, dear readers, is the true story of how I found myself looking after the blog for a fortnight. Please bear with me as I’m rather etiolated…

Guest blogs and EVE Alpha

Thanks to everyone who sent in a guest blog: there’s some amazing stuff going on out there and we really are privileged to have such a talented and passionate community. The first guest blog will be posted tomorrow with regular appearances thereafter.

In the meantime, Dominic of Nottingham Hackspace has told us about a wireless development board for the Raspberry Pi called EVE Alpha, developed by some of the Hackspace folk and a tiny local electronics firm CISECO. It’s on Kickstarter if you want further details and/or to support it. I’m posting this now because EVE alpha is being demonstrated at the Nottingham Raspberry Jam tomorrow, Tuesday 6th November. Get down to the Cape Bar on Victoria Street in Nottingham for 6.30pm and say hello! Sorry for the (very) short notice but if you are in the area then this is a chance to be one of the first to see what looks to be a very interesting piece of kit.

Picade – the UK’s first Kickstarter project!

I am driven to blog from Starbucks today, thanks to lousy public transport and awkwardly timed meetings. I am amazingly caffeinated.

A Picade prototype

So. Kickstarter finally launched its UK offering today, and the very first project to get approved (proof of this rather awesome feat is available here at the Kickstarter blog) has a Raspberry Pi at its heart (we notice that those involved with Raspberry Pi seem to be extremely skilled at hitting F5, hence the excellent positioning of this project at the head of the Kickstarter queue). If you’ve been following the news on this site, you may have noticed that it’s a project that’s being run by some familiar people very close to the Foundation’s hearts.

Prototype under development. You may recognise the beardy fella with the hat.

Paul Beech and Jon Williamson run Pimoroni, a company they set up to make the very popular Pibow case. It’s my favourite of the cases out there: I use one myself. It’s now open source and available on Thingiverse, and was acclaimed “the best-looking Raspberry Pi case ever” by Gizmodo. Paul is also the designer of the Raspberry Pi logo. We published a post here about what they’ve been up to over the last few months, in a period where they’ve become employers and business owners on the back of the Pibow, a few weeks ago. They’re both old-school gamers, and they have a plan for a new product, for which they need Kickstarter funding.

Enter the Picade.

Picade! (Prototype model)

The Picade is intended to be a very high-quality, hackable, desktop arcade machine. It’ll come in kit form, with a top-notch screen; a good-looking, solid cabinet; a proper arcade joystick; and handsome microswitch controls: all you need to provide is the Raspberry Pi. We love the idea, and we know that Paul and Jon’s attention to detail, finish and quality is exceptional. The Picade’s going to be quite a special piece of kit when it’s done.

At the moment Picade is in prototyping. I’ll leave the nitty gritty to Paul and Jon, who have loads more information about what the project’s all about on their Kickstarter page, and just leave you with their Kickstarter video for now (watch until the end: there are outtakes). What you see in these pictures and video are rough mockups of what the eventual product will look like, once funding has come in.

It’s a brilliant idea, and we are beyond pleased that it’s the very first UK Kickstarter project out there. I’ll be throwing a few quid their way, and I hope you’ll consider it too!

If you’re setting up your own Kickstarter using a Raspberry Pi, please mail us to let us know about it. We’d love to hear what you’re doing.