Piper Computer Kit

Christian Cawley weighs up if it’s worth sticking a Raspberry Pi in a wooden box, pretending it’s a laptop and giving it to the kids…

- Christian Cawley

Portable Raspberry Pi solutions seem to come along with alarming regularity – usually with a 3D-printed chassis and an ill-fitting keyboard. Piper has released a kit that not only subverts the idea of a Raspberry Pi laptop, it mocks the idea of a portable system: a portable Raspberry Pi that you might not actually want to move and is made of wood.

Shipping with over 25 laser-cut wooden components, 20+ electronic components, a 7,800 mAh rechargeable battery and even an eight-square-foot laminated blueprint, the Piper Computer Kit is quite unlike anything else you’ve ever seen. Part Raspberry Pi starter kit, part portable computing experience and part electronics beginner hub, the completed experience is unified by a customised Minecraft game. This teaches the young user of the kit the necessary electronics skills to create a dedicated controller and programmable switches to complete missions.