A new Kickstarter has just launched for a tablet, powered by a Raspberry Pi. With it’s eye firmly on the children’s market, the MakePad features a 10.1″ touchscreen and is battery powered (8000mAh). It has a built-in 3W speaker for audio applications and comes with a 16GB microSD card with MakeOS pre-installed. MakeOS has been developed specifically for the touch capabilities of the device and includes a Blockly programming language as well as access to Python. It’s probably a reskinned Raspbian as it also includes the LibreOffice suite, Minecraft Pi etc.
The MakePad comes as a kit that you assemble and reminds me of a mixture of the Kano kit and HDMIPi. They’ve made the sensible decision to have a cut-out for the GPIO pins, although with the Pi ‘around the back’, using it will probably need a ribbon cable and a cobbler. The case is LEGO-compatible so you/your child can have fun personalising it to your heart’s content.
Estimated delivery for perks is October 2018 (which seems a bit ambitious to me, but we’ll see). The Super Early Bird devices are still available at $164/$199 (with/without a Pi), before rising to $204/$239.
You can see the campaign video below and you can visit the campaign here.
An interesting device and I think it will be a hit.
I would like to see a “grown up” version without the Lego look.
I am a backer and I asked about the stretch goals and it seems they have some prepared for “older kids” too 🙂