Introducing the Pi-Top

A group of developers has developed a DIY laptop kit, heise reports. All components can be assembled in a way that’s friendly for beginners and without soldering. With the Pi-Top you’ll be learning DIY both for hardware and software.

Jesse Lonzano and Ryan Dunwoody had the idea of developing the Raspberry Pi-based Pi-Top DIY laptop at the start of this year. The pair of British developers want to promote the Maker culture. “We think hardware is great, but we know that complex obstacles must be overcome before you can really start to build things yourself. With the Pi-Top we wanted to make it easier to learn this complex knowledge”, they state.

Until one minute to midnight on 13th November you can support the project and purchase a Pi-Top Kit for US $285. The Indiegogo campaign has already achieved 159% of its target funding, so the production of the DIY laptops is ensured. The Pi-Top team is expecting to ship the kits in May 2015.

In addition to the complete kit, consisting amongst other things of a 3D-printed casing, a Model A Raspberry Pi, a display, a keyboard and a wifi adapter, the kit also contains pre-installed learning software. This comprises various training modules which teach the basics for hardware and software projects. This package will also be available free of charge in the future.