The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, 3rd Edition

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner's Guide Third EditionThe latest version of my beginner-focused Raspberry Pi book, The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, is now available – and it brings with it a major change to the projects included within.

The Second Edition release of the book concentrated on bringing the popular publication – bundled with all Raspberry Pi Desktop Kits – up-to-date for the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Raspbian ‘Buster’ operating system. This Third Edition, meanwhile, migrates the programming and electronics projects to newer versions of their respective development environments: Scratch 3 and the Thonny IDE.

Thonny, the default integrated development environment for Python programs, is largely just a visual change: the latest version of the software simplifies the user interface compared to earlier releases, so all instructions and screenshots in the book have been updated accordingly.

Scratch 3 is a bigger shift. As well as coming with a refreshed user interface, Scratch 3 changes certain core aspects of its operation compared to Scratch 2 – with the result that Scratch 2 programs aren’t guaranteed to work within Scratch 3 without modification. This Third Edition updates all the Scratch-based projects to ensure they work correctly in Scratch 3, complete with all-new instructions.

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide Third Edition also includes a number of other improvements, from updates for other new and changed software through to a few minor errata from earlier editions.

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide Third Edition is available now from all good bookshops and e-tailers, while a free PDF copy can be downloaded from the MagPi Magazine website –  or you can order a print copy for international delivery.

Custom PC, Issue 188

Custom PC Issue 188This month’s Hobby Tech, my regular five-page column for Custom PC Magazine, takes a look at the Argon One aluminium case for the Raspberry Pi, the now Flash-free Scratch 3 visual programming environment, and Sean McManus’ Mission Python.

First, the case. Created as a single piece of aluminium with a plastic base-plate, the Argon One is more than just a means of protecting a Raspberry Pi: it includes a daughterboard that pulls the HDMI and analogue AV ports to the rear for neater cabling, another that adds a fan for active cooling and a smart power button while also bringing the GPIO header out with colour coding and silk-screened pin references on the case itself, and a magnetic cover to hide said GPIO port when it’s not in use.

More importantly, though, it’s one of only a few cases that actually improves the thermal performance of the Raspberry Pi when installed. Even ignoring the fan, which makes little practical difference to operating temperatures, the difference between uncased and cased is an impressive 24°C thanks to the use of the upper half of the case as a giant heatsink. The only real problem, and it’s one creator Argon Forty claims to be working to resolve, is the hefty voltage drop from the fan-and-power daughterboard: unless you’re using the Argon One 5.25V Power Supply or a similar compatible, expect to see frequent undervoltage throttling.

Scratch 3, meanwhile, has proven itself a worthy upgrade for the popular block-based visual programming environment first created at MIT. While switching the stage and script area around and shuffling a few of the block colours is unnecessary and potentially confusing, new features including integration with translation and text-to-speech APIs and an easy extension manager are definitely welcome – as is the departure from relying on Adobe’s Flash technology. Sadly, though, at the time of writing Scratch 3 still did not support the Raspberry Pi, though work is in progress on that front.

Finally, Mission Python: as the author of a few books myself I know only too well how tricky it is to walk the line between introducing concepts in a friendly and approachable manner and being patronising, as well as trying to aim a publication at a broad age range. Sean McManus, who is no stranger to bookstore shelves, proves it can be done with Mission Python as he walks the reader through creating a game in Python using the Pygame Zero wrapper around the Pygame library. The result is colourful and fun without being in any way condescending, and a definite recommendation for anyone interested in flexing their Python skills.

All this, and the usual selection of articles not written by me, can be found on the shelves of your nearest supermarket, newsagent, or digitally via Zinio and similar services.