Maker Monday: Some of the best RP2350-based boards

This Maker Monday, Phil King shares some of the newer RP2350-based boards that have come to market since we last looked at similar devices back in issue 148 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine. Just like before, these examples demonstrate the flexibility and versatility of our microcontrollers.

The RP2350 microcontroller is the brains of Raspberry Pi Pico 2, along with a host of third-party boards. RP2350 features dual Arm Cortex-M33 processors running at 150MHz, 520KB of on-chip SRAM, and twelve PIO state machines. So, compared with the RP2040 microcontroller from the original Raspberry Pi Pico, it offers a major performance boost for handling more complex computational tasks. It’s no wonder it’s been used in such a wide range of third-party boards and devices — you can check out the full selection in the Powered by Raspberry Pi product catalogue.

We’ll be taking a look at a few of the most interesting ones here, equipped with a variety of special features such as battery power inputs, extra GPIO pins and connectors, motor/servo controllers, Ethernet ports, IMUs, and even mini LCD touchscreens.

Pico LiPo 2 XL W

Pimoroni | £21 / $23

Did you know that there are actually two main versions of the RP2350 microcontroller chip? There’s the standard RP2350A used in Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and many third-party boards, and RP2350B, which adds 20 more pin connections — including 16 extra GPIO pins and five more ADC channels.

Pimoroni’s Pico LiPo 2 XL W makes full use of RP2350B with an elongated board that breaks out those 20 extra pins. Helpfully, the rest of the pinout is the same as the standard Raspberry Pi Pico one, and all the (unpopulated) pins are labelled on the top of the board, so it’s easy to find the ones you need. Memory and storage have also been super-sized, with 8MB of RAM and 16MB of flash.

A USB-C connector is used for power and programming. You can also power the board from a LiPo or Li-ion battery (not supplied) via a two-pin JST connector; there’s on-board battery management and charging circuitry.

Other features include connectors for Qwiic and STEMMA QT, debug, and SP/CE (SPI/serial), along with boot/user and power buttons. A Raspberry Pi Radio Module 2 provides Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. 

Verdict

Extra GPIOs, battery input/charging, and much more.

Inventor 2350 W

Pimoroni | £35 / $38

With myriad connections and extra features, this versatile board makes it easier for beginners to get started with coding and electronics. It’s powered by a standard Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W (with built-in wireless connectivity) soldered to the top of the board, surrounded by ports, pins, NeoPixels, and buttons — an identical layout to that of the excellent Inventor 2040 W it supersedes.

For robotics, there are headers for up to six servos, along with an on-board motor driver connected to two JST-SH ports. The latter are for connecting encoder-equipped motors, but you can still wire standard ones up to a four-pin connector.

There are also six GPIO headers (including three analogue inputs), two Qwiic/STEMMA QT ports (for sensors), an I2C/Breakout Garden unpopulated header, a JST-PH input for optional battery power, a two-pin connector for 1A at 1.5W audio output, plus handy ‘User’ and ‘Reset’ buttons. Phew!

Software-wise, the Inventor 2350 W is easy to use, thanks to comprehensive libraries and code examples for MicroPython and C/C++.

Verdict

A feature-packed board, ideal for electronics and robotics.

RP2350 1.43-inch AMOLED Round Display Dev Board

Waveshare / The Pi Hut | £23 / $31

Most Pico-style boards lack any form of display, though you can buy add-ons to enable video output. Waveshare, however, produces a range of RP2350-based devices with built-in displays in various shapes and sizes.

This particular model is circular and comes with an optional metal case with cut-outs for the boot and reset buttons, USB-C port, microSD card slot (for extra storage), I2C and UART four-pin headers, and GPIO breakouts on the rear.

With a 466 × 466 pixel resolution, the colour AMOLED screen looks vibrant and has capacitive touch. Combined with the built-in six-axis IMU and an RTC with a battery header, it could easily be used for a wearable or pocket project like a fitness tracker.

While the MicroPython firmware is limited to a handful of code examples, the C/C++ firmware is far more comprehensive, including the use of LVGL (Light and Versatile Graphics Library) to render text, images, and an example GUI complete with animated graphs and a tiny pop-up keyboard.

Verdict

A very slick RP2350-based touch display with a built-in IMU.

Plasma 2350 W

Pimoroni | £17 / $18

We reviewed the original Plasma 2350 back in issue 148, and now there’s a version with built-in wireless connectivity, opening up extra possibilities for controlling a connected strip of WS2812/NeoPixel or APA102/DotStar RGB LEDs. The optional starter kit includes a 10m string of 66 frosted LED stars.

It’s dead easy to get started. Just connect your LED string’s three or four wires to the board’s screw terminals, then use its USB-C port to access the MicroPython firmware, library, and numerous code examples on a computer. Impressive effects include falling snowflakes, alternating/random blinks, sparkles, fire, pulsing, and a sweeping rainbow. More can be found in some community resources, including an impressive demo with 77 effects.

To give the board access to your wireless network, you’ll need to add your Wi-Fi details to a secrets.py file. You can then try out web-based examples, such as setting the colour of the LEDs via the CheerLights IoT system on social media, or running a lighting effect that responds to the weather from Open-Meteo.

Verdict

An easy and fun way to control a string of addressable LEDs.

Tiny 2350

Pimoroni | £8 / $9

If you need a really small RP2350-based board for a project where space is very limited, the Tiny 2350 is ideal. Measuring a mere 22.9 × 18mm, it really is tiny — around the same size as a standard UK postage stamp.

Along with a boot select button, the board crams in a handy reset button, RGB LED, and 4MB of QSPI flash storage, though there’s no wireless connectivity. A USB-C port is used to power the board, and to connect it to a computer for firmware installation and coding in MicroPython, CircuitPython, or C/C++.

The Tiny 2350 is available with or without pre-soldered pin headers. One obvious downside is that the number of pins is reduced compared to a standard Raspberry Pi Pico 2. There are 16 in total, including 12 GPIOs (plus another couple on the Qwiic/STEMMA QT port). They include four 12-bit ADC channels, though, and encompass two channels each of the I2C, SPI, and UART protocols.

Verdict

A teeny-tiny RP2350 board that’s ideal for smaller projects.

W6300-EVB-Pico2

WIZnet / The Pi Hut | £11 / $15

While many RP2350-based boards boast built-in wireless connectivity, sometimes you may need a wired Ethernet connection for improved reliability, security, and speed. Possible projects include a low-power HTTP web server, network monitoring, IoT data logging, and industrial devices.

WIZnet produces an Ethernet HAT to use with standard Raspberry Pi Pico boards. Alternatively, you can use one of the firm’s range of Ethernet-equipped RP2040 and RP2350 devices. This RP2350 one is based around WIZnet’s own W6300 chip: a 10/100 Ethernet controller with a hardwired TCP/IP stack that supports both IPv4 and IPv6 — as do the W6100 models, while the W5500-based boards are limited to IPv4.

All of them feature an identical pinout to Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico 2, with 40 pins and 26 multi-purpose GPIOs, so it’s all very familiar. The documentation includes C/C++ firmware/code examples for Ethernet, FreeRTOS, AWS, Azure, and chip performance. There’s no MicroPython firmware available for the RP2350 models yet (unlike the RP2040 ones); hopefully that will come soon.

Verdict

Perfect for projects requiring a wired network connection.

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Raspberry Pi Connect: Device tags, required 2FA, and a mobile keyboard

Raspberry Pi Connect lets you access your Raspberry Pi devices remotely from anywhere, straight from a web browser. Since we last wrote about Connect, we’ve shipped three updates that we think will make it noticeably more useful — particularly for the growing number of teams using Connect for Organisations to manage fleets of devices.

Tag and filter your devices

Once you have more than a handful of Raspberry Pi devices in an organisation, finding the right one quickly starts to matter. With these new updates, you can now apply tags to any device — for example, by location (london, cambridge), by environment (production, staging), or by what the device actually does (point-of-sale, kiosk). Tags appear underneath the device name on both the device page and the device list, and any administrator can add or remove them from the device’s Settings page, or when first linking a device to your account.

The search bar at the top of the device list now combines free-text search with structured filters. Type a qualifier followed by a colon — model:5, memory:4gb, os:raspios-13, or tag:production — and Connect will narrow the list as you type. You can even stack filters in a single query: model:5 tag:production dashboard will find every Raspberry Pi 5 tagged with production that has “dashboard” in its name. Selecting any tag in the device list adds it to your search instantly.

Tags are also exposed through the Management API, meaning you can apply them when you create an authentication key during provisioning — handy if you’re scripting the roll-out of a new batch of devices.

Require two-factor authentication for your organisation

Connect for Organisations now lets administrators require all members to use two-factor authentication (2FA) on their Raspberry Pi ID. It’s a single switch in the new Authentication section of the organisation’s Settings tab, and it adds a meaningful layer of protection against compromised member accounts being used to reach your devices.

Turning it on starts a 14-day grace period. During that window, members without 2FA see a banner showing how long they have left and a link to enable it on their Raspberry Pi ID; everyone else carries on as normal. When the grace period ends, any member still without 2FA is blocked from the organisation until they enable it. They won’t be able to access devices or other organisation resources in the meantime.

If you ever want to relax the requirement, you can turn off 2FA in your organisation settings. (Disabling and re-enabling 2FA resets the grace period, so you can give members another two weeks if you need to.)

Use a mobile keyboard while screen sharing

Connect’s screen-sharing interface works on phones and tablets as well as desktops, but typing on a touch device was previously only possible if you attached a physical keyboard. The screen-sharing toolbar now includes a dedicated Keyboard toggle alongside the existing buttons for Ctrl, Alt, Esc, and Tab, allowing you to use an on-screen keyboard on mobile devices without any extra hardware attached.

Try it out

Connect is free for personal use. Connect for Organisations comes with a four-week free trial, after which you’re billed monthly in arrears for the peak number of registered devices. You can find full instructions for tagging and filtering devices, enabling 2FA, and everything else in the Raspberry Pi Connect documentation, or sign in at connect.raspberrypi.com to get started.

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Typeframe PS-85 cyberdeck

The latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine has landed. Since our socials are still alight with Raspberry Pi–powered cyberdeck builds, we thought you’d enjoy this article by David Crookes, who seems to have a prophetic sense for what readers want. Please share links to some of the new cyberdecks you’ve seen online in the comments section. We love that this retro tech is enjoying a new lease of life thanks to the cool kids on TikTok.

Maker Jeff Merrick didn’t originally set out to create a cyberdeck inspired by the Alien movie universe. Instead, he sought to modify Penk Chen’s Penkesu retro-style handheld PC by fitting a hot-swap keyboard PCB, but his attempts to produce a writerdeck hit a wall. “I quickly discovered that a 40 percent keyboard isn’t ideal for typing, and a Raspberry Pi Zero isn’t ideal for browser-based text editors,” he says.

The 40 percent mechanical keyboard is fitted with Alien-inspired keycaps

Scrapping the idea, he turned his attention to a new build, which he named the Typeframe PX-88. Inspired by the Epson PX-4 computer from 1985 and built around a Raspberry Pi 4, it featured a 65 percent mechanical keyboard and a touchscreen. It worked so well that Jeff decided he wanted to develop more projects with Raspberry Pi. “I had not worked with any single-board computers before (or Linux in years), but found Raspberry Pi’s large and established ecosystem made figuring things out easier,” he tells us.

System ready

Jeff had purchased a set of keycaps imprinted with the Semiotic Standard — futuristic symbols created by Ron Cobb for the Alien films. “I didn’t have a clear plan for how I was going to use them, but my wife and I are Alien fans,” he says. “We’ve built some cosplay and props, including the Incinerator Unit from Alien, the pulse rifle from Alien: Romulus, and a Facehugger mask.”

Since he still had his Penkesu build, Jeff decided to resurrect the project using the new keycaps. “I had most of the internals already working from my Penkesu build, and I just wanted to use them in some way,” he explains. “I also knew I wanted to keep it simple after designing my larger writerdeck, so I went with a slate form factor because hinges complicate everything.” 

A removable LED panel is fitted to the exposed GPIO header in the corner, representing the AI Mother System MU/TH/UR

As such, his Penkesu evolved into the PS-85, with a new 3D-printed case and a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W inside.

The parts and wiring are similar to the Penkesu, but the keycaps set the theme, leading to some fresh ideas. “There’s an exposed GPIO, so I knew I wanted some sort of peripheral that could slot in,” he says. “I found the Adafruit CharliePlex LED Matrix Bonnet, and this led to the addition of a light attachment.”

Creating the look

The build, which includes a Waveshare 7.9-inch touchscreen, wasn’t entirely smooth. “It was a challenge to learn everything on the electronics and hardware side — CAD and soldering,” Jeff says. “But since this was my second project, it went a little smoother than the first.” The results exceeded his expectations. “It’s actually much sturdier than I expected, and it boots up pretty fast,” he adds.

The innards fit neatly within the slate case, and the connections are wired for easy external access

Even so, this build isn’t purely about the internals — a lot of time was spent on the overall look. “The idea of adding a handle came after an initial iteration,” Jeff says. “I also used the same weathering techniques that I had used on some other Alien props: essentially, I painted everything silver, then painted the areas I wanted to look chipped with a liquid mask (I used toothpaste), painted everything white, and finally removed the liquid mask to reveal the silver underneath. Then I added some scratches and an acrylic wash to finish it off.”

The PS-85 looks so good that Jeff hasn’t yet used it for its intended purpose. “My plan was to use it for journalling, and there is a nice command-line application, jrnl (jrnl.sh), that I installed,” he says. “But it’s mostly a display piece right now.”

Issue 165 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine is out now!

If you liked this article, 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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Build a simple quiz game in Python

According to the TIOBE Index, Python is the world’s most popular programming language, and it’s easy to see why. The programs are clutter-free and easy to read, with far fewer brackets to untangle than in some other languages. Issue 163 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine featured beginner-friendly Python projects for those just getting started with Raspberry Pi.

Believing the best way to learn programming is by doing it, author Sean McManus penned this tutorial showing you how to build a simple quiz, talking you through the code at an entry-level pace. Pass this article on to someone who is keen but unsure where to start on their coding journey.

01. Open Thonny

Raspberry Pi OS comes with Thonny, which you can use to write and run Python programs. Find it under ‘Programming’ in the Raspberry Pi desktop menu.

What greets every programmer before they write their next great script

02. Enter your first program

Thonny has two panels. At the bottom is the ‘Shell’. If you enter instructions here, they will be carried out immediately. We’ll focus on the top panel, where you type programs; these are stored sets of instructions that you can save, reuse, and easily edit. Enter the following short program — can you predict what it will do? 

name = input("What is your name?")

print("Hello", name)

In Thonny, you’ll see that "What is your name?" and "Hello" are green, which means they’re chunks of text known as ‘strings’. Strings have quotation marks around them.

03. Run your program

Click the green ‘Run’ button to start the program. If it doesn’t work, double-check your code, particularly the punctuation.

The first line uses Python’s input() function, which tells the user what it wants and then waits for them to type it in. The user’s input goes into a variable called name. A variable is like a box for storing information. A program can change (or vary) the information in a variable.

On the second line, the print() function outputs information in the Shell. Inside the brackets, we put the information we want to display: the string "Hello" and the variable that contains the user’s name. We separate them with a comma. Can you modify the program to say “[name] is awesome”?

Write your program in the top panel and see its output in the Shell

04. Add a quiz question

Let’s extend this program into a guess-the-year quiz, as shown in simple_quiz.py.

The game begins at line 5. We ask the quiz question and put the player’s answer into a variable called guess. The input() function creates string variables, so line 6 converts guess into an integer (whole number) so that we can do number comparisons. The # symbol marks a comment, added to help people understand the code. The computer ignores comments.

Lines 7 and 8 are a team. Line 7 checks whether the number in the guess variable is equal to 1837, the correct answer. Python uses two equals signs to check for things that are the same. (In lines 1, 5, and 6, you saw one equals sign, which is used to mean “make this variable equal to” something.) The instruction in line 8 is only carried out if the player’s guess is 1837.

You can tell that line 8 belongs with line 7 because it’s indented by four spaces. Python uses indentation to show which instructions belong together without needing additional punctuation, such as brackets. If you get your indentation wrong, your program won’t run. If you remember the colon at the end of line 7 when typing in the program, Thonny will automatically indent the next line. When you don’t need indentation any more, tap the ‘DELETE’ key.

Similarly, lines 9 and 10 check whether the player’s guess is less than 1837 and answer accordingly. Lines 11 and 12 cover guesses higher (or later) than 1837.

Test whether your program works correctly by typing in early, late, and correct dates. Congratulations! You’ve built your first Python game!

This simple quiz game asks the user to guess the correct year for a history question;
download the full code

05. Understanding lists

You could add more questions by copying lines 5 to 12, pasting them at the end of your program, and modifying the code for each question. But there’s a better way. 

Lists are one of the data structures you can use to store information in Python, allowing you to write shorter, clearer, and more sophisticated programs. Click Thonny’s ‘New’ button to open a new tab and enter the tea_menu.py listing.

In this program, line 3 creates a list called tea_menu. It contains four strings. Each list item is separated by a comma, and the whole list is enclosed within square brackets.

Lines 4 and 5 make a for loop. A loop is a portion of code that repeats. Line 4 sets it up so that each time the loop starts, the program takes the next item from the tea_menu list and puts it into a variable called flavour. Line 5 is indented to show it belongs to the loop — it outputs the tea flavour. Try adding more flavours to the list.

We can also access a list item using its position in the list, called its index. The numbers start at zero, so lines 7 and 8 show how to get the first two flavours. The len() function reveals how long a list is, as shown in line 9.

There’s lots more to learn about lists, but that’s all we need to know today.

Curious about \n in the strings we’re printing? It adds a blank line to tidy up the output.

This menu is generated from a list of tea flavours; download the full code

06. Creating a list-based quiz

Let’s combine everything you’ve seen with a couple of new ideas. We’ll make a quiz game with multiple questions: the player guesses until they are right, and then the program moves on to the next question. See longer_quiz.py. 

The first new idea: lists can contain other lists. This program creates a list called question_and_answer_list (lines 3 to 7). Each item in it is a list that contains a single question (a string) and its answer (a number). 

Line 9 sets up a loop that goes through the big question and answer list. It extracts the next question and answer pair and puts them into variables called question and answer.

The second new idea is that you can have loops inside loops, called nested loops. This program introduces the while loop starting at line 12 and ending at line 21. This type of loop repeats a chunk of code while something is true. In this case, we repeat as long as the player’s guess is not equal to (!=) the answer. We indent the lines below by another four spaces to show which lines belong to this loop.

Testing the quiz game with early, late, and right guesses; download the full code

So, we have an outer loop that cycles through the questions, and an inner loop that takes the player’s guess, tells them if they were early, late, or correct, and repeats until they get it right. At that point, the program jumps back to line 9 to pick up the next question and answer pair.

Line 1 makes a variable to remember how many guesses the player makes. It’s increased in line 15. At the end, we give the player their score. In line 13, a space was added to the end of the question to tidy up the display; otherwise, the player’s answer would butt up against the question. 

Customising programs is good practice when you’re learning Python. Try adding your own questions and messages to the quiz.

Find more Raspberry Pi projects in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine

This article appeared in issue 163 of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, which you can access online. You can also subscribe to the print version of our magazine. Not only do we deliver worldwide, but those who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription will receive a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W!

You can find Raspberry Pi Official Magazine on Facebook, X, Threads, LinkedIn, and Mastodon. You can also contact the team via email: magazine@raspberrypi.com

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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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