London-based company pi-top has scored a major success this week as its pi-topOS has been endorsed by leading examination-awarding body OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA). pi-top has successfully adapted the standard Raspbian operating system by adding a simplified desktop and additional software: pi-topCODER – a special environment and teaching system for learning programming; and pi-topUNIVERSE – a custom, alien planet-based RPG which focuses on visual programming problems to progress in the game. The company, which has developed both the pi-top (a Raspberry Pi-powered laptop) and pi-topCEED (a screen with a compartment for the Raspberry Pi and accessories, pictured below) are said to be delighted with the endorsement.
Another STEM based Operating system…well,OK
I would like to see a real time OS for the RPi 3 like
RTOS.
Let us have a bit more SW for the needs of Developers & makers.
NT
I agree, but obviously that’s not where pi-top are coming from. 😉 Real-time would be handy.
I have a CEED. The only thing that worries me is that kids have direct access to the GPIO pins with, e.g. paperclips.It would have been better to have provided a HAT to protect those pins. Even without vandalism, it’s quite easy to mix the pins up with jumper cords, and blow something.
I take your point, but it’s a 30 quid machine. A HAT to protect the pins is going to be, what, 15 quid, and a classroom full is, say, twenty Pis? So you’d have to have half the class zapping their machines to break even. In all likelihood it’d be cheaper just to replace the one or two Pis that get zapped. Having said that, the recent exchange rate fluctuations against the dollar are making the Pi more expensive.
Explorer pHAT is £10.
As it happens, my version puts the GPIO into the (undocumented) hub, and I have a proto-board. Wouldn’t it have been a nice idea to have buffered the GPIO lines on the hub? I mean, they might be, but this open system did not see fit to provide any documentation on the hub…
@michael horne My comment was a global one, not related to the pi-top. We keep getting STEM software but the majority seem to be developers. Hence a RTOS would be really good for control applications.