Raspberry Pi badgeware

With a summer of events ahead of us, we’re sharing Phil King’s review of Pimoroni‘s new range of wearable devices — because the maker community is never content with a Sharpie and a sticker for a name badge. Happy Maker Monday!

Pimoroni’s new range of RP2350-based badgeware (priced from £50/$55, lanyard included) offers a major upgrade over the originals. There are three models to choose from: the Badger (with an e-ink screen), Tufty (with a colour LCD screen), and Blinky (with an LED matrix). The first two follow on from their RP2040-powered predecessors, while the Blinky is an interesting new addition to the line.

Tufty is our favourite, featuring a vivid colour LCD screen and more example apps

One of the first things you’ll notice is that these badges are taller than the earlier versions, accommodating larger displays (whose exact size varies slightly between models). The five user buttons are positioned similarly along the bottom and right-hand edges, but are bigger and chunkier than before, making them easier and more comfortable to press.

The badgeware devices feature a slick and sturdy design with an integral translucent, ‘jewel-coloured’ polycarbonate case clipped to the rear — they even have four white LEDs to light the cases up. Inside, there’s a 1000mAh LiPo battery that’s easily recharged via a USB-C port, which is also used to connect the badge to a computer for programming.

The Badger model showing the app launcher menu on its e-ink display

Also on the rear, alongside tiny Home/Boot and Reset/Sleep buttons, you’ll find a Serial Wire Debug (SWD) port and an I2C port for connecting Qwiic/STEMMA QT breakouts or the optional STEM Kit, which features a mini joypad, a multi-sensor stick, and two JST-SH cables.

Take your pick

Of the three models, Tufty catches the eye first with its vibrant colour LCD screen, measuring 2.8 inches with a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels. As with the other two badges, powering Tufty up reveals a launcher menu of apps that you can navigate using the user buttons. Along with mass storage mode, there are 13 pre-installed examples (all written in MicroPython) to play with, including a few simple games, a clock, a Pomodoro timer, ‘Sketchy Sketch’ drawing, impressive graphical demos, and (naturally) an ID badge.

Blinky’s LED matrix display works well for scrolling text or, as shown here, animated clocks

The Badger model features a 2.7-inch (264 × 176 pixel) monochrome e-ink display, which should prove much easier on the battery, although it takes about a second per screen refresh. There are only four pre-installed apps: the ID badge, a clock, a hydration meter, and a fun 3D mini adventure called The Compendium.

Blinky features a bright white LED matrix (872 pixels) that extends around the user buttons. Its pre-installed apps include an ID badge (in the form of scrolling text in a choice of fonts), a clock, graphical demos, a snake game, and a 3D game (as on Tufty) where you steer a spacecraft through gaps in walls.

Make it your own

When a USB cable is inserted into the badge’s USB-C port, there are two ways to connect it to a computer. If you want to reflash the MicroPython firmware (a special Pimoroni flavour), holding the Home/Boot button and tapping Reset puts the badge into mass storage mode. Otherwise, tapping just Reset twice opens a folder with the device name on the computer desktop, allowing you to view the file system and apps. This enables you to alter the secrets.py file to connect to your wireless network, as well as add your own (50 × 50 PNG) avatar and social media details for the ID badge app.

Each badge has a polycarbonate case that covers the rear components, including the built‑in battery

By opening an IDE such as Thonny, you can program the device in MicroPython, just as you would a standard Raspberry Pi Pico. You can adapt an existing app or create a new one from scratch using the comprehensive API, which includes functions for images, text, shapes, vectors, fonts, algorithms, and more — see badgewa.re/docs for detailed documentation.

Whichever model you choose, it’s a sturdy smart badge featuring a powerful RP2350 microcontroller, a built-in battery, wireless connectivity, and an excellent API for coding custom apps.

Specs

Display: 2.7-inch, 264 × 176 pixel e-ink (Badger); 2.8-inch, 320 × 240 pixel colour IPS LCD (Tufty); 39 × 26 pixel (minus islands) white LED matrix (Blinky)

Features: RP2350A microcontroller, 16MB QSPI flash storage, 8MB PSRAM, 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN, Bluetooth, 5× user buttons, Home/Boot and Reset/Sleep buttons, polycarbonate case with LED lighting

Power: 1000mAh LiPo, rechargeable via USB-C port

Dimensions: 84 × 76 × 20mm

Issue 164 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out now!

If you liked this product review, there are many more like it in the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. You can purchase a copy from the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available from our online store, which ships around the world. And you can get a digital version via our app on Android or iOS.

You can also subscribe to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but those who sign up for a six- or twelve-month print subscription will receive a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W!

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Pay what you want for a bundle of books and support the Raspberry Pi Foundation

We’ve teamed up with Humble Bundle once again to let you name your own price for a bundle of Raspberry Pi Press e-books. With this bundle, you’ll receive DRM-free electronic copies of a selection of our titles, and your purchase will support the Raspberry Pi Foundation‘s work to help young people realise their potential through computing.

Check out the Best of Humble Bundle: Raspberry Pi & Retro Gaming book bundle, an encore of a popular bundle we’ve offered in the past. It’s available from 21 April to 12 May at 7pm BST (11am PT).

Inside this 14-book library, you’ll get The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2025, Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi, plus English, Spanish, German, and French versions of The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, 5th Edition (2023) — and more. The bundle is designed to help deepen your understanding of Raspberry Pi computers, whether you’re new to computing or a seasoned professional.

Pay as little as £0.74. Normally, the total cost of the e-books included in this bundle is as much as £149.55 ($222). We have partnered with Humble Bundle so that you can choose the price you pay and support the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the process. For £11.10 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll receive all 14 titles.

Read them anywhere. The e-books in this bundle are available in PDF and ePub formats, and are provided without restrictive DRM. They’ll work on your computers, e-readers, iPads, smartphones, and a wide array of mobile devices!

Let’s learn more about a few of the Raspberry Pi books available in this bundle…

Code the Classics Volumes I and II

These books not only tell the stories of some of the seminal video games of the 1980s, but also show you how to create your own games inspired by them. You’ll follow examples programmed by Andrew Gillett, ably assisted by Sean M. Tracey and Raspberry Pi co-founder and CEO Eben Upton.

Learn how to run and edit retro-style games, including:

• Avenger: Fly across a scrolling landscape while you save humans from malevolent aliens
• Beat Streets: Fight your way through a level and defeat a notorious crime boss
• Eggzy: Collect gems and survive as long as possible before time runs out
• Leading Edge: Race a car on a pseudo-3D race track
• Kinetix: Break bricks with your paddle and use power-ups to avoid various menaces
• Boing!: Add two bats and a ball to create a digital version of ping-pong
• Cavern: Move from platform to platform while warding off enemy robots
• Infinite Bunner: Hop along a scrolling landscape while avoiding cars, trains, and rivers
• Myriapod: Fire rocks at the segments of a falling myriapod until it is destroyed
• Substitute Soccer: Tackle your opponents in a pinball-style soccer match

The Computers that Made Britain

The home computer boom of the 1980s brought with it some now-iconic machines that inspired a generation, including the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Commodore 64. In The Computers that Made Britain, Tim Danton tells the story of 19 of those computers — and what happened behind the scenes.

Best-selling author and journalist Stuart Turton says: ‘The Computers that Made Britain’ is one of the best things I’ve read this year. It’s an incredible story of eccentrics and oddballs, geniuses and madmen, and one that will have you pining for a future that could have been. It’s utterly astonishing.

Book of Making 2025

Step into the wonderful world of making with this book from the makers of HackSpace, now part of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. Filled with all the best projects, tutorials, and articles for makers and hackers, Book of Making 2025 distils the essence of HackSpace down to our favourite projects. Whether you want to build a rocket or a hot air balloon, learn 3D-printed mechanical engineering, or control the world around you with a Raspberry Pi Pico, there’s something for everyone in these pages. 

This book is full of projects that are perfect for an hour, an afternoon, or a weekend; be inspired by the selection of amazing community projects and make your own creations using the step-by-step guides. 

Design an RP2040 board with KiCad

This book provides a gentle introduction to PCB design using the RP2040 microcontroller chip (the same chip that’s at the heart of Raspberry Pi Pico). You’ll learn how to create a schematic for a microcontroller board using RP2040, from assigning schematic symbols to creating a footprint for individual components. You’ll quickly move on to laying out the PCB design and preparing it for manufacture!

That’s right — after your board is designed, this book will show you how to send it off to be manufactured and assembled. You’ll find out about the various materials (or substrates) you can choose for your board and learn how to pick the right manufacturer. Once you have your board in hand, you’ll also learn what you can do (and make!) with it, including plenty of ideas for adding expansions such as motor drivers.

Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi

Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi shows you how to set up your Raspberry Pi to play a new generation of classic games. Using step-by-step guides, you’ll learn how to:

• Set up a Raspberry Pi for retro gaming
• Emulate classic computers and consoles
• Code retro-style games
• Build a console, a handheld, and a full-size arcade machine

The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2025

Dive into the world of Raspberry Pi with this huge book of tutorials, project showcases, guides, product reviews, and much more from the writers of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

With pages packed full of maker goodness, you’ll also find inspiration for your Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 4, or any other Raspberry Pi model you have.

Enjoy 200 pages of Raspberry Pi content:

• Get started with our guide covering every model of Raspberry Pi
• Learn everything you need to know about Raspberry Pi Pico 2
• Upgrade your emulation with next-gen retro gaming
• Build a universal media player for your entertainment centre
• Take pictures of the stars with our astrophotography guide
• Be inspired by our selection of featured projects

Grab your Humble Bundle deal

Check out the Best of Humble Bundle: Raspberry Pi & Retro Gaming book bundle for more detailed descriptions and previews of the titles included. You can also browse our complete library of books on the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine website, where you can download back issues of the magazine!

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Raspberry Pi reveals songbirds’ favourite sounds

Prateek Sahu, a graduate student from the University of Alberta in Canada, works on the auditory perception of songbirds at the institution’s Songbird Neuroethology Lab. He helped develop a cost-effective way to study songbirds’ auditory preferences using Raspberry Pi, and penned this guest post explaining the project.

Do you enjoy listening to birds chattering while on a walk outside, or to your pet bird singing at home? Do you sometimes admire how beautifully they sing, and at other times wonder why they make so much noise? Songbirds communicate with one another for many different reasons, such as attracting mates, alerting others to food or danger, and simply staying in contact with other birds. But did you know that they also develop preferences for certain vocalisations along the way, much like you might prefer music from a particular singer or band?

Songbird auditory preferences

Since the 1950s, researchers have been studying song learning and preferences in birds, exploring whether they prefer their own songs to others’, their parents’ songs to a stranger’s, or conspecific songs (from the same species) to heterospecific ones (from a different species), among other factors. However, traditional experimental setups — including the ones previously used in our lab — relied on expensive, custom-designed digital I/O hardware, making them relatively inaccessible.

In 2025, a team of us at the Songbird Neuroethology Lab developed a cost-effective way to study songbirds’ auditory preferences using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. We wanted to control various parameters and even add new ones to the experiment, so instead of wrestling around with an old, poorly documented system, we decided to build a DIY setup using a Raspberry Pi as the primary brain.

Visit the Songbird Neuroethology Lab

Making the auditory preference setup

As you might imagine, an auditory preference setup revolves around sound playback — accurate audio reproduction is one of its most critical components. We used a HiFiBerry DAC+ Zero and 8-ohm Dayton Audio full-range speakers set within the frequency range of animal vocalisations, making the setup both small and portable.  

Songbirds like to perch constantly; by installing IR sensors on multiple perches (we opted for Adafruit IR Break Beam sensors), audio playback can be triggered as they move from perch to perch, allowing the bird to select which stimulus plays. Because listening to birdsong is self-reinforcing, birds will seek out and replay the songs they like most. This lets us measure their preference for certain classes of vocalisations.

The experiment is controlled by a simple Python script that can be easily modified to adjust which parameters are measured and how the output is formatted. Because Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W supports Wi-Fi — and because internet access can be extended with Ethernet via a USB hub — the experiment can be monitored remotely through SSH. The data is stored on the Raspberry Pi’s SD card and can be retrieved using a program such as WinSCP.    

Affordable setup

Our DIY setup cost under $200 CAD (approx. $145 USD) to make and delivers functionality similar to traditional systems, with room for expansion through additional components like audio recorders and camera modules. Despite its low cost, the setup matches commercial systems in both response detection and accuracy. On top of that, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W consumes very little power and can run for extended periods without failure. This opens the door for researchers across disciplines to explore songbirds’ auditory preferences with ease.

You can read our open-access paper, A cost-effective Raspberry Pi-based operant playback setup to evaluate auditory preferences in songbirds, to learn more about the setup and how to build your own.

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Maker Monday: Show us your personal Raspberry Pi projects

We had an excellent time scrolling through all of the cyberdeck projects we were tagged in last week, so this Maker Monday, we’re celebrating some of our other Raspberry Pi–based favourites from the maker community, as chosen by the Raspberry Pi Official Magazine team.

Drop a link in the comments to your latest creation, even if it’s only partially finished — you might find someone with a tip to help you over the line.

01. Hacky Racers is making its way back!

02. It really does make for a lovely workstation

03. We feature more projects from the party on page 120 of this issue

04. Stock tickers are easy little web API projects that look good on e-ink

05. Stable voltages can be essential for healthy systems

06. Is this the world’s smallest weather station? Probably not, but it is tiny

07. The GameCube had special miniDVD-size discs, which were its own
proprietary format

08. We do love when a screen can power and display Raspberry
Pi desktops

Issue 164 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out now!

This article appeared in issue 164 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, which you can grab from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, as well as the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available from our online store, which ships around the world. And you can get a digital version via our app on Android or iOS.

You can also subscribe to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W!

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In celebration of cyberdecks

A cyberdeck was the very first thing I blogged about on my first day at Pi Towers back in 2020, so it felt personally serendipitous when CNN reported last week on the rise of cyberdeck projects among the maker community. And it was extra excellent to see Raspberry Pi mentioned as the go-to computer for a lot of these builds.

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In celebration of this latest flurry of internet attention (and in the hopes of inspiring you to build your own), here are some of the finest Raspberry Pi–powered cyberdecks we’ve posted about over the years.

Mega six-screen cyberdeck

Redditor Holistech (aka Sören Gebbert) really leaned into the lesser-known “more is more” idiom when building this big orange cyberdeck with three Raspberry Pis. Why use just one screen to manipulate enemy cyberware and take down your cyberpunk foes when you can have six?

And it gets even better: this whole multi-screen thing is portable. Yes, portable. You can fold it up, pack it away in its suitably steampunk metal box, and carry it around with you.

Amstrad PPC 640 cyberdeck

When faced with a broken Amstrad PPC 640, Mikey Damager had two choices: return the machine to its former glory or tear it apart and rebuild it using modern parts. He decided to do the latter, turning what was Amstrad’s first portable IBM PC-compatible computer, released in 1987, into a cool-looking cyberdeck powered by Raspberry Pi 4. The resulting machine was capable of running an interactive fiction project for Mikey’s master’s degree. 

Super 8 cyberdeck

Cyberdecks tend to have a niche aesthetic, often inspired by post-apocalyptic films or TV shows. This one by VEEB Projects features an analogue Hanimex E300 film viewer from the 1970s, which the makers repurposed after developing serious terminal envy while watching Severance. It uses a Raspberry Pi 4 running Manjaro Linux and ytfzf as the command-line viewing tool.

Clamshell BlackBerry cyberdeck

This teeny-tiny build harks back to the early 2000s, when PDAs were a must-have business accessory and smartphones had yet to launch. It pairs a clamshell BlackBerry with a Raspberry Pi 4 for maximum computing power, which was as powerful as we got back in 2023 when we first saw this project. The rustic wooden surround was designed and laser-cut by the maker, Michael Klements.

Pi-PipBoy cyberdeck

We saw a lot of Raspberry Pi–powered PipBoys pop up around the time Fallout was airing on TV, and this one by Kev’s Robots is especially easy to copy if you want to make your own. All the STL files are readily available, along with assembly images and a video tutorial. A PipBoy is a great build if you want to create something wearable, as it’s basically a big computer bracelet. Kev chose nice bright colours for the 3D-printed parts, making it one of the more whimsical builds in this list.

Next-gen cyberdecks

This new generation of cyberdeck creators seems to be competing over who can put a Raspberry Pi inside the weirdest casing. A few we like but haven’t featured on the blog yet include the P-Sea SeaShell by Evette’s Niche; this build from TikTok tinkerer Goblin, who found an old makeup caboodle and is in the process of turning it into a Raspberry Pi… something (and who also taught us that the word for a retro plastic makeup case is ‘caboodle’); and the bajillion videos from Instagram tech guru unicoleunicron, who explains the new wave of female makers creating cyberdecks and how to go about building your own.

If you’re not a TikToker or an Instagrammer, this Reddit thread is alive with recent builds and makers looking for tips on turning incredibly random objects into Raspberry Pi–powered creations.

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What’s the collective noun for a load of cyberdecks? A cluster? A celebration? Anyway, drop a link in the comments to any makers I’ve missed from this list. Cyberdecks for everyone!

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A security update for Raspberry Pi OS

Today we are releasing version 6.2 of Raspberry Pi OS, the second update to the Trixie version we released last year. This update is mostly a round-up of all the small changes and bug fixes we have made over the past few months, but there is one significant change that we’d like to flag up: passwordless sudo is now disabled by default.

Given the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime, we continually review the security of Raspberry Pi OS to ensure it is sufficiently robust to withstand potential attacks. This is always a tricky balance, as anything that makes the operating system more secure will invariably inconvenience legitimate users to some extent, so we try to keep such changes to a minimum. This particular security update is one that many users may not even notice, but it will affect some.

What would superuser do?

All Linux systems have two types of user account: a regular user and an administrator. Administrators are able to access the system in ways that regular users cannot — the most obvious being that they can write files to parts of the file system that are restricted to others.

However, regular users sometimes need to perform administrator-level actions. To enable this without having to log out and then log back in as an administrator, users can employ Linux’s sudo utility. Short for ‘superuser do’, sudo is a command prefix that tells the system to perform an action as if it were requested by an administrator rather than a regular user. It is most commonly used when interacting with the terminal — so while cp file.txt /usr/share/ would not be permitted (as a regular user cannot write to the /usr/share directory), sudo cp file.txt /usr/share/ would.

Raspberry Pi OS has always been set up so that regular user accounts can use sudo in this way. Specifically, it has been configured with passwordless sudo enabled by default — all a regular user needs to do to execute a command as an administrator is prefix it with sudo. However, this creates a potential security hole, as anyone who can access the computer can perform administrator actions from a regular user account, some of which could be malicious.

Password, please

From this release onwards, passwordless sudo is disabled by default. If you use sudo for administrator-level access, you will be prompted to enter the current user’s password. In the terminal, the password prompt will appear as soon as you issue a sudo command. If you enter the correct password, the command will proceed as normal; if you enter an incorrect password, the command will be refused.

Certain actions in the desktop interface also require sudo access, including some operations in Control Centre. In these cases, a dialog box will pop up asking for the password.

Once a password has been entered, you won’t be prompted again for the next five minutes, even if you perform further sudo actions in that period.

If you prefer not to be prompted for sudo passwords, there is an option to revert to the original passwordless behaviour in the ‘System’ tab in Control Centre. By toggling the ‘Admin Password’ switch off, the system will no longer ask for a password before running sudo commands in either the terminal or the desktop interface.

As with all such changes, we are aware that this update may inconvenience some users who have become accustomed to the way things have worked up until now, but we hope you can understand the reasoning behind it.

Please note that this change will not affect updates to existing installations of Raspberry Pi OS — the Admin Password switch will appear in Control Centre as shown above, but passwordless sudo will remain enabled unless you choose to disable it.

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Maker Monday: 10 non-traditional clock projects

We love it when folks get creative with a Raspberry Pi, and Maker Monday is a great time to showcase this. While there are definitely many Raspberry Pi devices out there doing important jobs in factories and industrial settings, it’s nice to see when people do something artistic — or just plain funny — with a Raspberry Pi at home. A great example of this is the many ways people have taken the ancient concept of telling the time and given it a twist. Here are just some of our favourites from the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

01. Counter-rotating clock

Shifted perspective

This is the project that sparked the idea for this list: the hour hand remains stationary while the entire face rotates instead. Editor Lucy does not enjoy it.

02. Falling clock

Manufactured error

When Burke McCabe decided to fix his clock, which was making a screeching noise, he added a camera so that it would know when it was being looked at and then launch itself off the wall.

03. Colourful word clock

Say the time

Word clocks use a word-search-style mixture of words and letters to tell you the time, any time, in the 12-hour format. There are word clocks available in other languages too.

04. Smart Nixie tubes

Retro tech

A striking bit of retro technology updated with a Raspberry Pi 3 to accurately tell the time. The perfect prop for your steampunk movie.

05. Moon and tide clock

Alternate time-telling

Less weird and more ‘cool and classy’, this modified vintage carriage clock uses e-ink displays to show the current moon phase and the tide timings. It looks really lovely.

06. Robot arm clock

Automated manual progression

When your clock breaks, how do you fix it? Well, if you’re anything like Hendrik Ohrens, you program a robot arm to manually move the minute hand. Obviously!

07. Pico solar system display

The cosmic ballet

This early but memorable Raspberry Pi Pico project simulates the positions of the planets in our solar system depending on what time it’s set to. You could set it to the future (or past) if you wish to miss work.

08. Flip clock

Got you babe

Flip clocks are retro chic and were memorably featured in Groundhog Day. With modern 3D printing and Raspberry Pi know-how, it’s dead easy to make one yourself. Every day.

09. Self-snoozing alarm

Get more rest

A bit like that box that closes itself, this lovely retro-style alarm clock art piece will go off as usual — only for the robot arm to snooze it for you.

10. Dual-spiral marble clock

Time rolls on

Very simply, the spirals slowly turn, changing the position of each marble so that they accurately line up with the hour on one spiral and the minute on the other. Why? Why not!

Issue 164 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out now!

This article appeared in issue 164 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, which you can grab from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, as well as the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available from our online store, which ships around the world. And you can get a digital version via our app on Android or iOS.

You can also subscribe to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W!

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Hackable history: Clay Interactive and Raspberry Pi at the Young V&A

Going to the museum used to mean “you can look, but you can’t touch.” Finding this model thoroughly boring, Clay Interactive put a bunch of Raspberry Pis inside the new exhibits they were developing at the V&A Museum of Childhood, helping to transform the building into the Young V&A.

The interactive museum installations allow visitors to trigger sounds, videos, lights, and stories simply by moving around or pressing buttons. Much of the new hardware is powered by Raspberry Pi 4 and our High Quality Cameras.

The tech behind the magic

Clay Interactive’s installations are basically embedded systems hiding inside museum exhibits.

A typical setup features a Raspberry Pi 4 running all of the software, as well as any sensors, lights, or screens connected to the GPIO pins. It also powers motion detectors that sense when visitors are approaching, touchscreens and buttons programmed to trigger interactions, and all sorts of gubbins that provide feedback for those interactions, such as LED strips and audio or visual playback. Media is stored on SD cards for reliability and ease of updates.

A number of interactions are triggered by walking close to the exhibits, causing stories to start playing. Others require visitors to pick up headphones to kick-start video playback, while some need physical button presses to activate lights or sounds.

The self-portrait station

A favourite exhibit is essentially a photo booth built on Raspberry Pi hardware. It features a Raspberry Pi 4, one of our cameras, a two-way mirror, LED lighting, and a touchscreen.

When a visitor sits down in front of the two-way mirror, a Raspberry Pi camera snaps their photo, showing the image on the screen in front of them. They are then invited to trace over the image with crayons to create their own self-portrait. Those portraits become part of the museum’s collection, allowing visitors to physically contribute to the history they are experiencing.

Why Raspberry Pi?

Clay Interactive liked our hardware because it allowed them to test lots of ideas quickly and affordably — there was no fear of sinking tonnes of money into something they couldn’t pull off in real life at the museum. It also made it really easy to change and update the exhibits, sometimes just by swapping out the SD card, with no need for complicated installations of new software. The GPIO pins enabled them to plug in and play with all sorts of peripherals, such as LEDs and screens. Also, because everything is open source, the team could mix and match tools freely.

Museum installations go through a lot of testing; prototypes are often installed temporarily so that real visitors can interact with them and accidentally break them. For Clay Interactive, this process made it easier to identify ways to improve their designs, and using Raspberry Pi meant they could implement changes seamlessly with flexible, affordable hardware.

A quick history of the museum

The Young V&A (formerly the V&A Museum of Childhood) is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum designed specifically for children and young people. After decades of mainly displaying the history of toys and childhood, it was redeveloped to become a more interactive “doing museum”, where visitors learn through play, creativity, and hands-on activities.

Clay Interactive played a huge role in this. The museum wanted practical, engaging technology that would encourage visitors to participate directly in storytelling and creative activities, helping turn the space into a more immersive and playful experience. Sounds fun.

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