The MagPi | 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.

The MagPi, issue 10

There’s a new MagPi out: download it for free over at www.themagpi.com. This month’s edition has a great mix of hardware and software projects. You can read from the cover what’s on offer: my absolute favourite for this issue is this month’s Scratch Patch, where you’ll be using Scratch to draw Julia Sets.

There’s a competition to win a Pi, too: this one is not blue, but it’s still pretty nifty. Get downloading!

MagPi issue 9

Here’s this month’s MagPi – my favourite Manhattanite, LadyAda, is the cover girl!

The MagPi team, who are all independent, unpaid volunteers, had a month off over Christmas to run their KickStarter and to enjoy the holiday with their families. That KickStarter raised more than four times its target, and means that Team MagPi can now move to print with a safety net, and a guaranteed group of subscribers. (Even if you missed out on the KickStarter, you can still visit www.themagpi.com/shop/ to order a binder of the first year of magazines.)

This month’s issue is packed: there’s a competition where you can win a Gertboard, a review of Quick2Wire (an interfacing board we’re very impressed by), guides to RISC OS and Arch Linux, and a whole bagful of tutorials and programming guides. You’ll learn about Vala, and find out how to write a web controller using it; and this month’s Python Patch will teach you to control your Pi from your mobile phone.

The MagPi just gets better and better. As always, it’s available to download for free at www.themagpi.com or via the Pi Store. It’ll also be available in print soon. Watch this space!

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.

Friday grab bag

MagPi

The November edition of the MagPi is out! The MagPi is a community magazine produced by Raspberry Pi owners, and is now available in print as well as as a free download. If you’d like to see the MagPi have a future in print, please buy a copy. They’re not expensive at £2.49, and if the team are to raise enough cash to be able to offer the back issues in print as well (which I know many schools have expressed an interest in), they need your support.

This month’s issue has an interview with Mike Thompson, the man behind Raspbian, a tutorial on getting your Pi talking to an Arduino, a really nice piece from Jaseman on the evolution of the Pi since February, an introduction to C++, a competition, and plenty of hardware and software projects for you to get your teeth into. Download a PDF at the MagPi’s site, or buy a printed copy at Mod My Pi (not available at the time of posting, but it should be soon – I’ll amend this post when it is).

Picade

After less than two days on Kickstarter, the Picade project, which was set up to build a gorgeous arcade cabinet around the Raspberry Pi, has reached its initial funding goal! There’s still time to jump on the funding wagon so the boys at Pimoroni can reach their stretch goals if you’d like to be part of the UK’s first ever Kickstarter (and happen to like retro games, slammin’ style and Raspberry Pi); head on over if you’d like to take part.

Ken (Jon) and Ryu (Paul) realise that they are perfectly matched. This could be the start of a long session.

Bletchley

If you’re in a pledging mood, we’d also encourage you to take a look at this book by Dr Sue Black, a Friend of Pi and an exceptional educator and advocate for women in tech. It’s on a subject very dear to us – saving Bletchley Park – and we’re really pleased to see it’s reached its funding goals too (like Picade, it got to its goal blisteringly fast). You can still donate, and importantly, a proportion of profits go to Bletchley Park. Sadly, the donation tier that involved Sue knitting a pair of socks for the donor has now sold out. But there’s still some good stuff left.

Stuff

We won another award! Raspberry Pi won Innovation of the Year at the Stuff Gadget Awards last night, and Alex B went along to the ceremony to pick it up. At the moment, our search for offices involves careful consideration of just how much shelving we need for these things.

Adafruit

Adafruit, who carry a lot of Raspberry Pi-related gear as well as selling Raspberry Pis themselves, have been unfortunate enough to find themselves right in the middle of Hurricane Sandy. I had mail from PT and Lady Ada earlier this week and an update this morning: they’re in the part of NYC which was hit the hardest and are still without power. UPS haven’t been sending anything in or out of Manhattan since the storm, but Adafruit hope to be able to start stocking and shipping again this weekend or early next week. It’s a pretty rough time for them; this happened right in the middle of a move to new premises, and we’ve been thinking about them a lot this week. We hope you can support them by ordering some cool Pi stuff from Adafruit the next time you feel like tinkering with something new.

Limor “Lady Ada” Fried in a Manhattan that looks as if it ought to be populated by zombies.

Guest posts

We’ve had a lot of interest from our call for guest posts. We’d like to see even more! If you’d like to write a post for this blog about your adventures with Raspberry Pi, your ideas about computing education, your project ideas, or your thoughts on low-cost computing, please email blog@raspberrypi.org. I’m away for a couple of weeks from Monday, and this blog will be being curated by the lovely Clive, who will be selecting the very best articles and posting them here.

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.

Issue 5 of The MagPi out now!

Another month, another MagPi. This issue has a page from the Raspithon team about their 48-hour coding marathon; a new electronics project from Mike Cook (remember those steady hands games where you’d guide a loop around a bent wire without allowing anything to touch?); a slightly more advanced project where you’ll be hooking up a temperature sensor; information on setting up your Pi as a media centre; comparisons of Debian Squeeze and Wheezy – and all the regular columns, like the C Cave, Scratch Patch and Python Pit.

As always, the MagPi, which is a community project, is free to download. Have a great weekend!

The MagPi issue 4 – out now!

The MagPi’s arrival every month is making me very aware of the weird things that happen to your subjective experience of time when you’re as busy as we are. The days have sort of dilated; from beginning to end, they seem endlessly, impossibly long. But the months are another matter entirely; I can’t quite believe that a whole one has gone past since the last issue of The MagPi, because it really seems only a few moments since I was writing about the last one.

The MagPi, issue 4. Click to visit the downloads page.

The MagPi, for new readers, is a community magazine written, edited and designed by Raspberry Pi fans. It’s available as a free download at www.themagpi.com, and it’s a great way to get to grips with learning how to program your Pi and how to get started on building hardware projects; it’ll also help you find out more about the community around the device and demystify the command line.

This month’s issue has a long interview with Eben and me (hence the cover picture – I’m afraid we don’t make great models), conducted over Skype at the end of a long day. The MagPi team have been kind enough to clean up our language, edit out the frequent “could you fill my glass please” requests we were making of each other, and excise the munching sounds we made over our bowl of Twiglets.

You’ll also learn to build a three-axis accelerometer (far more interesting than my maunderings about Ecco the Dolphin), find out what’s happening in Cornish schools, put together a Frogger-type game in Scratch, do some decluttering in LXDE, and much more.

Thanks for another fantastic issue, MagPi folks. We’re looking forward to the next one!