magazines | Raspberry Pi

A very happy first birthday to The MagPi!

The MagPi is a free magazine made by Raspberry Pi fans for Raspberry Pi fans. It’s the example of just how remarkable the Raspberry Pi community is that we point to most often: volunteer enthusiasts with no publishing experience have been producing a really tight, entertaining, and educational magazine for twelve months now, and it’s just getting better and better.

The MagPi is a community magazine, which is not produced or otherwise fiddled around with by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. This month’s issue is a little more Foundation-heavy than usual, though, because it’s a celebratory edition: you’ll find an article from me, and (rather more interestingly) a very in-depth interview with Pete Lomas, our Grand Vizier of Hardware.

Most excitingly of all, there’s a birthday competition this month, where you can win £1000 of Pi hardware to play with. You’ll find a really helpful comparison of Raspberry Pi operating systems, a musical tutorial, an exploration of just how the Sweetbox guys went about bringing their case to market, and much more.

I don’t have enough good things to say about the MagPi team, and the crazy amount of work they’ve put in over the last year to help people get to grips with our little computer. All of us at the Foundation are full of admiration for the year’s achievements; running a magazine isn’t trivial, and with a staff of only volunteers it’s near impossible. That the MagPi is now in a position to start offering print copies (we know of many schools which are buying up bound copies of the first few volumes as a teaching resource) is an extraordinary thing, and we couldn’t be prouder to be associated with them.

Thank you so much, all of you: the writers, editors, layout and graphics, production, distribution team, proofreading army and advertising. The Raspberry Pi would not be where it is today, with about 1.3m units sold, without support from people like you showing everybody what can be done with it. We couldn’t be more grateful.

Issue 11 of the MagPi – out now!

April’s MagPi has just been released. As well as all the usual goodies, this month the magazine (free to download, as always) contains features on controlling your house’s heating system using a Pi, a guide to turning your Pi into a wireless access point (I’m thinking of pointing one in the general direction of my village bus stop, where I often find myself standing with only a 2G signal for my phone, waiting impatiently until the bus turns up half an hour late), and some really cute Minecraft pointers. This month’s cover, as you can see, was designed in Minecraft: Pi Edition.

There are competitions in which you can win a Pi and add-ons like a Quick2Wire kit, and, excitingly, an opportunity to win one of the very scarce blue Raspberry Pis which were produced by RS components for our first anniversary. (They’re so scarce we don’t even have one at the Foundation!)

Thanks, as always, to the MagPi team – you guys do an amazing job.

If you’re interested in contributing to the magazine, whether your skill is in writing, designing, typesetting or other production work, give Ash and the team a shout at editor@themagpi.com. At the moment they’re particularly in need of someone to help with testing and other technical editorial work; as well as someone with layout skills.

New issue of The MagPi – and now you can buy a print edition too!

Things have been very busy in The MagPi‘s nesting box this month. We saw Ash in early September, and he mentioned that plans were afoot to do something the MagPi editorial team hadn’t imagined would be possible a few months ago. They were going to attempt to produce a print edition.

And being the well-oiled team they are, they got it done in a month. The MagPi will always be available as a free PDF download, but so many of you had asked for a print magazine version that producing one economically is now possible for Will, Ash, Jason, Meltwater and the rest of the team. You can order via Mod My Pi (there’s a big link to buy at the top of The MagPi homepage too). A copy is a pocket-money-friendly £2.99 (£2.49 ex tax).

As with so many parts of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, The MagPi is a completely independent, volunteer-run, community project. We think they’re doing wonderful things, and encourage you to support them in producing this brilliantly educational, entertaining magazine each month by buying a copy, or helping with the writing and production yourself – the guys are always looking for new volunteers.

This month’s issue features the return of the skutter robot, instructions on making a portable power supply to make your Pi mobile, a Halloween project (for which you will require a pumpkin to go with your Pi), programming tutorials, interviews, competitions and much more. I’ll be ordering my own copy as soon as I’m back in the UK next week.

The MagPi: a Raspberry Pi community magazine

Whenever I’m tasked with chatting up potential donors, partners or volunteers for the Raspberry Pi project, I’m asked what really makes us stand out from other computer companies. There are lots of answers: the charity business model; the unusual price point we’ve picked; the open-source software; the transparency about process; the focus on education.

The MagPi - click to go to the magazine site

But for me, what I consider the biggest thing we have going for us, and the thing I tend to rattle on about most in meetings, is the community that’s grown around the project. The MagPi, a free online magazine dedicated to the Raspberry Pi, whose first issue was released a few days ago, is a perfect example of that. It’s been put together entirely by volunteers, guided by Ash Stone, Jason “Jaseman” Davies, Meltwater and other names you may recognise from the forums and comments on this site. I was broadly aware they were up to something, but I was amazed at the scope of what they sent me to look at earlier in the week, and I’ve been really, really impressed by the first issue. There are Debian and Puppy guides, articles on computing history, ideas for robotics projects, tutorials in Scratch and Python (with code you can type in yourself, just like in the good old days), features about the Raspberry Pi itself, and other goodies to dig into. I really can’t recommend it enough, and if you haven’t been lucky enough to get to the head of the queue, you don’t need a Raspberry Pi to find it useful (you might actually find the magazine good preparation before yours arrives). So go and download a copy, have a flick through, write to the guys if you think you can contribute to future issues, and let us know what you think!