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Introducing The MagPi Magazine

The MagPi Magazine is pretty expensive, but someone times includes some hardware like a Raspberry Pi Zero W and accessories, but the digital PDF version is always free.

If you have any interest in the Raspberry Pi, or you have kids that you think would be enjoy learning and experimenting with one, it is a great resource.

There was a good bonus The MagPi issue that taught kids (or adults) how to program Minecraft on the Pi to interact with real-world objects and how to build games in Python that interact with the Minecraft world. The Raspberry Pi includes a free copy of a unique version of Minecraft made for the Raspberry Pi.

Another cool project I remember is building a 360-degree camera with 8 Raspberry Pi zeros and 2 Raspberry Pi 3s. Not a cheap project but looks super fun.

The projects vary in complexity to some you can do with just a Raspberry Pi, keyboard, mouse, and monitor to some that require quite a bit of additional hardware and can get pretty expensive. I would say the bulk of them are fairly cheap and easy to work on.

The Zero 360 Camera is one of the more expensive projects as it was rather difficult to get multiple Pi Zero's at the time at list price (they were so popular at $5 that the price was inflated due to high demand and low supply). The Pi Zero is a little easier to get at this point and it really a great starting point for embedding in projects and you even get one if you sign up for the physical copy of the magazine.

It is never too early to get kids into STEM and the Raspberry Pi is one of the best innovations to introduce kids to a blend of programming and electronics. I am a firm believer everyone should learn how to program as it teaches you to solve problems.

_{All images come from The MagPi magazine}