Always hungry for Pi, Les Pounder gets hands-on with an education-focused Raspberry Pi laptop kit that promises to make the class green with envy…
Right now the Raspberry Pi sports a plethora of portable options. September 2015 saw the release of the new touch-screen, and other companies such as Kano are working on their own portable setups. Pi-Top started life as a crowd-funded project and combines both hardware and software. The hardware is a sturdy plastic laptop shell (supplied as a kit) and includes a 13.3-inch HD (1,366x768) LCD screen with eDP interface, an 8GB SD card, a battery with a claimed life of 10 hours, and a Wi-Fi dongle. It comes with or without a Pi 2. The kit is fairly simple to assemble but may require adult supervision for a few fiddly bits, such as attaching the LCD screen to the driver board.
The driver board handles connecting the Pi to the built-in battery, recharging the battery via an included external power supply, and sending HDMI video input to the LCD screen. Connecting the GPIO of your Pi to the driver board enables battery management, but will cover all 40 GPIO pins; it can be removed, enabling use of the GPIO. The driver board and the Pi (located to the right of the laptop) are covered by a slide cover, for quick access to the Pi. Access to the Pi’s USB and Ethernet ports is tricky but possible. The keyboard and trackpad are fine for daily use but the keyboard can feel a little spongy and imprecise at times.
On the software side, you get the pi-topOS, built upon Raspbian Wheezy 7.8. Pi-topOS acts as a layer on top of the Raspbian OS. On first boot you are prompted to set up your Pi-Top, which includes creating an online account. This is used to save your learning progress to the Pi-Top cloud-based learning system, which is aligned with the UK Computing curriculum for 13 to 15 year olds.
The Pi-Top comes with a bundle of applications similar to Raspbian. These include Scratch, Libre Writer, Minecraft Pi, Sonic Pi and the Python editor IDLE. We tested IDLE 3, the Python 3 editor, with the RPi.GPIO library, the most popular library for hardware hackers and makers. Being based on Wheezy, IDLE3 was unable to access the GPIO using the default user – it required opening a terminal and running the command via sudo – but we successfully built and tested a simple LED project. This is a step backward for those used to the latest Raspbian Jessie image, but we’d expect this to be fixed in a future release. Of course, since the system is based on Raspbian, you are free to install your favourite applications via the package manager.
During our tests there were a couple of issues. Logging in as an incorrect user prevented us from re-attempting a login with the correct details. A reboot solved this issue, but it did take time. Also, an update bug prevented pi-topOS from connecting to the update server despite constant reminders and using an Ethernet cable to connect to the router.
Pi-Top also has its own software, a game called CEED Universe, which teaches coding and making concepts via an interactive retro game – a great idea that keeps children engaged while learning key skills. It’s reminiscent of Kano OS, which itself uses gamification to teach core concepts. CEED Universe is a lot of fun and provides a great level of interaction for children wanting to learn more. It’s a great idea and provides a portable Pi solution, but the cost of $300 (around £200) is high, with just a 30-day warranty, for the education market.
A great idea but not without issues. The software bugs will doubtless be tackled, but the cost is the main barrier.