The FUZE has been out for a while now. It is an all-in-one workstation based around the Raspberry Pi and comes with an array of electronic components, a breadboard and a proprietary breakout board. The case is extremely solid and well-made and should take a lot of punishment in the classroom, or at home. The Pi (a model B) has had all it’s ports brought around to the back plate:
The breakout board has recently been updated to version 2 which adds 4 analogue inputs, something which the Pi lacks natively. Here’s the board in close-up, sitting in a trough at the top of the FUZE.
The electronic components (and the SD card required to make the system work) come in a nice bits box. You get tons of jumper wires, resistors, buttons, LEDs included as well as a light-dependent resistor and a seven-segment display.
In terms of documentation, the FUZE comes with a programmer’s reference guide, which lists all the commands available in the BASIC programming language, which the FUZE champions as being the ideal way to teach children programming.
It also comes with a book of ‘project cards’ which are, in fact, tutorials for the user to work through.
Under the hood
Being an inquisitive sort, I decided to see how the Pi was positioned inside the FUZE. I removed the screws from the back cover and then pulled out the innards to see how it all worked. It’s very well put-together and the tiny little USB hub is a great way of getting some extra ports.
The breakout board is very nicely produced, as you can see from this shot of the underside:
So what did I think of it?
The overall feel of the FUZE reminds me of the BBC model B. This is intentional on the part of the creators – the BBC was a workhorse of the classroom for many years and it is clear that they wish to emulate the look-and-feel (and the success) of the earlier computer. In terms of the design, there’s really only one downside: the keyboard, which is great, is mounted at a very unergonomic angle. Ordinarily, you’d want a keyboard to be as flat to the desk as possible. The angle of the FUZE keyboard means that your wrists are angled upwards which any health-and-safety expert will tell you is not ideal. However, the purpose of the FUZE is to be used in classrooms, so at a lesson-length of 1 hour, this is unlikely to be a problem. I would like to see a redesign at a less raised angle in future, though, and there is plenty of space in the case below the keyboard to do this.
The breakout board and included breadboard are of very high quality. The breadboard, once stuck down, is an ideal companion to the breakout board and there is lots of fun to be had using the included electronic components. I would like to see, however, much more attention given to the documentation to use all the included components. The analog inputs are a key feature of the FUZE but these are not yet covered by the included project cards. There are no more to download on the website, but I daresay they are being worked on. In particular, the light-dependent resistor and seven-segment display are crying out for some kind of tutorial to explain some of the more obscure BASIC commands to do with reading inputs and generating outputs.
The documentation itself is nicely presented and well-written for the most part. The project cards do occasionally try to be funny, which is welcome to a certain extent. I wonder, however, if the humour might not be a little obscure for some students of a lower age. The layout of the project cards is okay, although to start with I didn’t quite understand the order things needed to be read in. It uses a very ‘textbooky’ format – there is the main body of the text on the left side of the page and ‘box outs’ on the right hand side. I wonder whether the right hand side might be a little distracting for students, but I expect it has been tested on classes and found to be okay. One thing I did not like was the way that BASIC commands are introduced using mixed-case (e.g. Print) and then 2 or 3 pages later you’re told that you should have been using capitals (e.g. PRINT) all the way through. This was needlessly confusing – there is no reason why capitals couldn’t have been used at the start, and it would be far better to start off the way you mean to go on.
I worked through the project cards and very soon came to the section on electronics. This was great fun, eventually – creating a circuit and then doing sequences of LEDs blinking. I did find the photographs of the circuits, however, to be unhelpful. They’ve been taken at an angle so it’s not always clear what wire is plugged into what hole. The photographs also do not match the description of the circuits in the text – wire colours are incorrect. It’s not insurmountable but I expected it to be a lot easier to get a basic circuit going.
The use of BASIC is okay, for the most part. As a basic (small letters) computing language, it has been used for years to get people going in programming. It’s entirely appropriate that it should be used here to introduce basic programming concepts such as output, loops and control statements. The syntax is tricky at times, however, which I found quite surprising. However, with a lot more project cards, I think it could be a very valuable tool to introduce complex concepts such as data structures and reading digital/analog inputs.
The good thing about the Pi, of course, is that you are not forced to use BASIC if you don’t want to. All the other languages and software packages expected on the Pi, including Python, Scratch and Sonic Pi, are still available for use. It might be a good idea for the FUZE to champion Python as well so that teachers have the choice over whether to use BASIC or a more modern language.
Conclusion
The FUZE is a very attractive package. At around £180 for the package, including the FUZE box itself, all the electronic components, a mouse, power supply, mouse mat and documentation, it’s not that badly priced. The FUZE box (case) itself is clearly where the main value of the product is and it’s pretty much unbreakable due to its metal construction.
I’d like to see a lot more work done on the documentation, and I believe there are a great many more project cards that need to be created to realise the true value of the product. The electronics side could do with sharpening up, and some of the basics (such as capitalisation) could do with tightening up. However, the written material is very good on the whole.
So, I feel I should rate it at 7.5/10. With some more work done on the material, particularly taking into account the additional capabilities of the version 2 (analog) breakout board, I believe it could easily get up to 9/10 very quickly.
You can find out more about FUZE, including where to buy it from, on the FUZE website, fuze.co.uk.
