Today’s Deal: Save up to 80% on select games and celebrate Day of the Girl!*
October 11th marks International Day of the Girl. Children’s charity War Child UK and its US partner Children in Conflict want to celebrate with a collection of awesome games featuring female protagonists where a portion of the proceeds from participating partners will help support children affected by conflict.
*Offer ends October 18 at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Organise your life with the help of a Raspberry Pi, a 3.5″ touchscreen, Google Tasks, and hackster.io user Michal Sporna.
Distracting baby optional, though advised.
There’s a baby in the office today. And, as babies tend to do in places of work, he’s stolen all of our attention away from what we’re meant to be doing (our jobs), and has redirected it for the greater good (keeping him entertained). Oh, baby!
If only I had a to-do list to keep all my day’s tasks in plain sight and constantly remind myself of what I should be doing (writing this blog post) instead of what I’m actually doing (naming all the kittens on my T-shirt with the help of a nine-month-old)!
Hold on…
Sorry, the baby just came over to my desk and stole my attention again. Where was I?
Oh yes…
Michal Sporna‘s interactive to-do list that syncs with Google Tasks consists of a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and a 3.5″ touchscreen encased in a laser-cut wooden housing, though this last element is optional.
“This is yet another web to-do app, but designed for a 3.5″ screen and Raspberry Pi,” says Michal in the introduction to his hackster.io tutorial. “The idea is for this device to serve as task tracking device, replacing a regular notebook and having to write stuff with pen.”
Michal explains that, while he enjoys writing down tasks on paper, editing items on paper isn’t that user-friendly. By replacing pen and paper with stylus and touchscreen, and making use Google Tasks, he improved the process for himself.
The Google Tasks platform allows you to record and edit tasks, and to share them across multiple devices. The app integrates nicely with Gmail and Google Calendar, and its browser functionality allowed Michal to auto-run it on Chromium in Raspbian, so his tasks automatically display on the touchscreen. #NotSponsored
Find full build details for the to-do list device on hackster.io! This is the first project Michal has shared on the website, and we’re looking forward to more makes from him in the future.
Now, where did that baby go?
Website: LINK
One part retro-cyberpunk aesthetic, one part old-school gameplay and all brought together with a great soundtrack: this is GalactaVision’s Trakker. We chatted with Nathan Thorin and Greg Corcoran about their latest project. Questions by Nathan Ortega.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBef4EoLBRU]
Tell us a bit about yourself and the team at GalactaVision.
Nathan Thorin: I founded GalactaVision in 2013 after graduating from game design school in Madison, WI. Since then, our small team have created game software specifically built for Virtual Reality. We have continuously promoted VR by demoing and testing it in public throughout the Midwest over the last 5 years.
My portfolio includes being a team lead, artist/art director and assistant programmer/game designer on three of our published VR titles. Our current project is Trakker.
Greg Corcoran: I’m the kind of person who likes making things. My grandfather built a houseboat in his backyard, my father was a designer at Harley-Davidson and now I’m making VR games. It just feels like the right thing to do.
I previously worked as a software developer at IBM Watson Health Imaging. My department managed most of the business and we would maintain, extend and integrate with many different systems that the department’s needed to function.
Of course, that resulted in working with many different technologies, languages and integrations, all with their own unique quirks. A pretty good grounding for VR development!
Trakker is steeped in retro science fiction and computer aesthetics. What were some of your main influences?
Nathan: I’m a total Sci-fi enthusiast. I read William’s Gibson’s Neuromancer in high-school and never turned back from my affinity for the cyberworlds and metaverses. From the Tron movies to the cartoons, Ghost in the Shell‘s depiction of internal digital landscapes to the influence of the future-retro take in modern Synthwave, aesthetic and glitch art movements. I’ve lived, played and worked in cyberspace and arcades for years. This is us having some fun with it and building the game we’ve wanted to play for the last three decades.
We’re attempting to re-invent, drawing from the things we love and combining the old with the new. It’s a gameified soundtrack in a way. It’s a high-score quarter plunker in another. It’s a VR arcade game from an alternate reality of 1997.
Greg: I love the cyber-punk aesthetic and nearly everything that touches on it draws me in. Some of the largest ethical questions we’ll be facing in the next century will be related to technology, but that’s not a theme we’ve involved in the game yet.
Trakker combines gameplay elements that are reminiscent of several distinct eras of retro arcade games. Were there any particular titles that inspired the core concepts of Trakker?
Greg: I spent some time thinking about what has worked well in VR and what hasn’t. One of the design concepts that is pretty nailed down is the wave shooter. Outside of that, it’s less obvious and less consistently well done. I thought trying to get back to the arcade basics would be a good start to seeing how things would play out in VR.
Pac-Man, obviously being one of the more iconic classics, is an inspiration for the game. When you think of games like that you may not have a lot of options as a player, but those options are massively important. Trying to make simple actions feel important is one of the things the classic arcade games did best, and that’s what the aim was from the start for Trakker.
Trakker uses a very clear way of handling navigation, having players shake their Vive controllers as if they are taking each step to frantically run around the labyrinth. What inspired that?
Greg: There have been other games that have worked with the arm swinging mechanism, but I wanted to try to really hone in on it. I was looking at anything and everything other than teleportation or some of the other movement methods I’ve found that often break the immersion for me. Then, after it felt right, it was a matter of what I thought would be the most satisfying game for it. Slowly it was becoming a game of running down corridors and maze like environments, and Trakker was born.
The music in Trakker is funky as heck! How important was an era specific soundtrack to your team in order to create the perfect 80s cyberpunk experience?
Nathan: As a producer with a large background in the 80s arcade scene, general media fanatic, music and film buff, music has been heavily integrated as a lead character in every project.
Greg: Music is absolutely critical, especially in VR. Every VR environment is a sensory experience and without the right music and audio nothing will feel right. We are so lucky that Dashcam was willing to help us out here. He’s been absolutely incredible to work with.
Were there any particular design challenges you and the team ran in the process of bringing an immersive, retro arcade style experience to VR?
Nathan: We built it as large as we could, with as much animation on the maze walls as older GPUs would allow for, then found where we had to adjust and scale it back with the addition of static walls to optimize performance. Using the simplified graphics as a style choice allowed us to push other elements and focus on the fun of the game with a lot of public feedback.
Greg: We did a ton of public testing to see how people would respond to Trakker and made alterations from there. Trying to make things as intuitive as possible but not explicitly putting the user through a tutorial to see how well people caught on to game mechanisms. We’d need to make sure people who have never used VR could figure it out, so there were numerous little tweaks to make it more obvious.
For example, we have portals to the levels. And while most people would eventually figure it out and run straight to them, others were confused and asked how to start the game. As a result of that playtesting, we added in a trail to the first level if nothing was unlocked yet.
Simple concepts in other games suddenly become entirely new problems without obvious solutions in the VR world. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy the medium. It’s fun trying to come up with the answer.
Were there any cool enemies or design concepts that you wanted to include in Trakker but just couldn’t find the right place for them?
Nathan: Definitely! We have several additional enemy types that we’ve been throwing around, as well as a new blaster and increased environment features. Will this show up in the final version of Trakker? Not sure yet.
Greg: Nathan made a few other awesome enemies, and I was playing around with a few other weapon and level designs, but things haven’t quite fit together the way I’d like. We also had thoughts around multiplayer functionality in various different forms, but some design choices that were made very early on have made some of these options difficult to implement.
Are there any exciting updates planned for Trakker that you’d like to share?
Greg: We’re going to do an official arcade release, work out Oculus support and revisit some of the things we wanted to add earlier. If we can make it work, we’ll make it happen.
What’s next for GalactaVision?
Greg: We have some ideas, but we’re currently focused on making Trakker the best VR experience we can. We’ve kicked around some fun ideas and I look forward to seeing which direction we take.
We had some pretty lofty ideas for Trakker and we made something we’re incredibly proud of. Still, can we do it bigger and better? Are we going to be able to resist scratching that itch? We’ll see!
Thanks for talking with us, GalactaVision!
Trakker is available on Viveport, and as part of Viveport Subscription.
Website: LINK
MapleStory 2 is Now Available and Free to Play on Steam!
Explore limitless creative possibilities in this all-new MMORPG adventure set in the colorful MapleStory universe. Adventurers welcome! Website: LINK
Capcom Beat ‚Em Up Bundle / カプコン ベルトアクション コレクション is Now Available on Steam!
Relive the glory days of cooperative arcade games with the Capcom Beat ‚Em Up Bundle! This comprehensive collection includes seven classic titles, each with various multiplayer options and online capabilities! Website: LINK
Summer is coming to a close. The evenings grow darker. So pack away your flip flops, hang up your beach towel, and settle in for the colder months with these fun 3D-printable projects to make at home or in your local makerspace.
Power Up Props’ replica of the Fallout desktop terminals fits a 3.5″ screen and a Raspberry Pi 3B. Any Fallout fans out there will be pleased to know that you don’t need to raise your Science level to hack into this terminal — you’ll just need access to a 3D printer and these free files from My Mini Factory.
And while you’re waiting for this to print, check out Power Up Props’ wall-mounted terminal!
Fallout 4 – Working Terminal (Raspberry Pi Version) – Power Up Props
Howdy neighbors, grab some fusion cores and put on your power armor because today we’re making a working replica of the wall mounted computer “terminals” from the Fallout series, powered by a Raspberry Pi! Want one of your very own terminals?
Remixing DAKINGINDANORF‘s low-poly Arduino-based design, this 3D-printable night light is a replica of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The replica uses a Raspberry Pi Zero and a Pimoroni Unicorn pHAT to create a rather lovely rocket launch effect. Perfect for the budding space explorer in your home!
Falcon Heavy night light
I 3D printed a SpaceX Falcon Heavy night light, with some nice effects like it’s actually launching. Useful? Hell no. Cool? Hell yes! Blogpost with files and code: https://www.dennisjanssen.be/tutorials/falcon-heavy-night-light/
You can download the files directly from Dennis Janssen’s website.
We’re really excited about this design and already thinking about how we’ll use it for our own projects:
Using an acrylic Christmas bauble and 3D-printed parts, you can set your Raspberry Pi Zero W free in local bodies of water — ideal for nature watching and citizen science experiments.
Channel your inner Jay Gatsby with this Art Deco-effect clock and weather display.
Fitted with a Raspberry Pi Zero W and an Adafruit piTFT display, this build is ideally suited for any late-night cocktail parties you may have planned.
Send four Raspberry Pi Zeros and Camera Modules into the skies with this holder design from Thingiverse user randysteck.
The 3D-printable holder will keep your boards safe and sound while they simultaneously record photos or video of their airborne adventure.
What projects did we miss? Share your favourite 3D-printable designs for Raspberry Pis in the comments so we can see more builds from the internet’s very best community!
Website: LINK
Science fiction legend Philip K. Dick’s work has been adapted many times in many mediums, but none of his original material has appeared in VR form. Considering Dick practically invented the ‘reality is not real’ subgenre of SF, it’s surprising more of his works haven’t debuted in virtual worlds.
That might change with The Great C, developed by Secret Location, and releasing today on Viveport (also launching in Viveport Subscription).
We managed to track down several Secret Location team members to quiz them about the story behind The Great C and why Dick’s work seemed perfect for VR.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf3hlqpB9RI]
Who are Secret Location (if it’s not secret) and where are you based?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: Ha! We actually have two (not so secret) locations. We are based in Toronto, and also have a satellite office in Los Angeles. We were founded in 2009 and acquired by Entertainment One in 2016. We focus on both the creation and distribution of our own and partner VR content. On the content side, we launched the hit bullet hell shooter, Blasters of the Universe, with VR puzzle game Transpose also coming this year. And on the distribution side, the team is getting ready to launch some exciting new features for our VR distribution platform, Vusr, which is currently being used by a number of major publishers.
Tell us about The Great C.
Luke Van Osch, Producer: The Great C is set in a bleak future, where most of humanity was wiped out by a mysterious apocalyptic event called “The Smash.” The remnants of society live in humble tribes and are ruled by an all-powerful supercomputer known as the Great C. Each year, the village is forced to send a young person on a pilgrimage to appease the mysterious machine, a journey from which no one returns.
Dick’s original story follows one man on that pilgrimage. Our story features an original character called Clare. She’s a young woman whose fiancé is summoned for this year’s pilgrimage, and the story details the choices she makes to try to disrupt this vicious cycle.
The Great C was originally published in 1953, making it one of Philip K Dick’s earliest published works. What made you think it would work well in VR?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: There were a number of elements in the short story we liked. We were drawn to the post-apocalyptic setting, which we thought would be a really engaging environment for VR. The story of a youth getting sent off each year to certain doom was a compelling premise, and then there were the interesting themes and motifs; the David and Goliath scenario, Man versus Machine, and the concept of having a ‘duty’ to do something when there’s no chance of success – or even a totally clear idea of why you have to do it.
Surprisingly, your adaptation of The Great C is entirely story-led, rather than interactive. That’s an unusual choice for VR. What led you to that choice?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: As this is the first Philip K Dick property to be adapted into VR, we wanted to deliver a cutting-edge cinematic experience that would help push the medium of VR forward.
The original story of The Great C is fairly limited in scope, so we focused on creating a rich and substantial narrative for our VR version. The final result has a runtime of 37mins, a variety of characters, and spans over 20 different environments. That scope makes sure it’s a rewarding piece of standalone content.
Along with that, we made it a goal for our version of The Great C to ‘feel’ like a cinematic experience. We focused on adapting film language and techniques, like editing, composition, scene transitions, camera movement, and pacing for VR, to give the piece the tempo and excitement of a big screen movie.
A large part of achieving that goal was working with terrific collaborators, like noted film composer Junkie XL (Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Tomb Raider). The score is a big part of what brings the piece to life.
How does a story-led experience work in VR, practically?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: The Great C is a fully animated, fully volumetric, real-time experience. But it’s also a highly orchestrated, highly authored narrative, where we closely control the presentation of the story, manipulating time and space in the same sort of way as films. Like most films, The Great C is presented in the third person and we use camera cuts to tell the story, moving the viewer quickly through time and space.
In a practical sense, this means The Great C was designed as a passive seated experience, where the viewer is invited to take in the presentation of the story, as opposed to driving the story forward themselves. The viewer is certainly still free to look around the space, taking advantage of that amazing aspect of VR, but we put the emphasis on a higher tempo form of storytelling that focuses the viewer’s attention on following the tightly orchestrated scenes.
Did you always want to adapt The Great C in that way, or did it evolve during development?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: We actually started off developing the project with a lot more interactivity in mind. The very first version of The Great C was a lot more like a game, where you controlled a character the whole time.
After that, we played around with ideas of dividing the piece up into passive and interactive portions, but along the way we started gravitating towards making a more cinematic experience and kept finding that the handoff between the interactive and passive portions was getting in the way of that.
Eventually, we made the decision to go all in on the authored, cinematic approach.
What inherent advantages do you see in VR versus a 2D adaptation?
Steve Miller, Director: Different mediums, be it books, movies, TV shows or live theatre all offer unique opportunities for storytelling.
For us, VR’s strengths of immersion and intimacy between viewer and story were an exciting fit to adapt a narrative with such a fantastical setting and characters whose journey we really wanted the audience to feel a part of.
One of our biggest goals on this project was to find ways to adapt and translate cinematic storytelling principles into VR. We really wanted to push what is possible in terms of editing, shot composition and camera movement. Especially as VR audiences become more accustomed to the medium, we believe evolving these sorts of tools will pave the way for even more sophisticated VR storytelling.
Did you make any specific choices during development to ensure the story of The Great C worked well in VR?
Steve Miller, Director: We were always sensitive to creating an optimal viewing experience throughout the production. We did extensive user testing and refinement of our editing choices.
Initially, we played with allowing the user some control over camera switching, but ultimately concluded that the most rewarding experience was to architect the central action to always play out in the front 180º of a user’s field of view.
Of course we also appreciate that an inherent benefit of the VR medium is it’s replay-ability appeal for discovering all the little details about the world around you!
Tell us about the production of The Great C; how big was the team and how long did it take to put together?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: The production team would fluctuate in size, but on average there were around 12-14 people working on it full time. The production cycle started with a discovery phase that lasted a few months early on, and then a smaller team spent a month or so prepping the build for shipping and distribution. The core production phase lasted 9-10 months.
I have to give huge credit to the team, because I think they accomplished a ton of work in a short amount of time. The production cycle was very similar to the other VR projects we make, like our upcoming puzzle game Transpose. Secret Location just has a knack for getting a lot done in a short amount of time!
The Great C was your first Unreal Engine project. Was that a deliberate goal of the studio, or were there specific things Unreal could do you wanted to exploit?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: We’d always wanted to try making something in Unreal, and with The Great C being an artist heavy team, we thought the engine would be a good fit. We wanted to let the team use the mature and powerful visual and animation tools available there.
Congrats on being selected to the Venice Film Festival. Do you feel there’s more of a future for computer-generated projects, as opposed to 360 video, in film festivals?
Luke Van Osch, Producer: Venice was a great experience. It was really encouraging and rewarding to see how much emphasis they put on the VR section there, totally incorporating it as an equal part of the festival.
The Programmers for Venice VR do an incredible job at showcasing a wide variety of innovative content ranging in format and genre. It was amazing to see and get to experience that breadth of work in one place.
In these early days of the medium, I think everyone is still figuring out what’s possible, and it’s most important to just bring general awareness to VR and encourage the people that are making it. Eventually, the different sub-formats and genres will divide up and be compared on their own. I’m guessing that will sort of happen naturally, and will be a great sign that the industry has matured.
And finally: anything you can tell us about upcoming projects from Secret Location?
Kathryn Rawson, Head of Content: We are currently in pre-production on a free roam project and are excited to explore the untethered world of VR. We are also developing a slate of additional projects, also focused on the location based entertainment space.
Thanks to everyone at Secret Location for answering our questions!
The Great C is available now on Viveport, and as part of Viveport Subscription.
Website: LINK
Today’s Deal: Save 25% on Worlds Adrift!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Thursday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Save 70% on Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen during this week’s Midweek Madness*!
*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
When Dave shared his Raspberry Pi Zero–powered model of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse on Reddit, we fell a little bit in love.
Dave was getting married inside London’s only lighthouse, situated at Trinity Buoy Wharf across the water from the O2 Arena.
The Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse
The Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse sits at the confluence of the River Thames (the big ol’ river running through London) and Bow Creek, a tidal estuary of the River Lea (the river Adele sings about in her song River Lea*!). When the wharf was closed in 1988, the lighthouse was put out of commission.
On Reddit, Dave goes by the username Lame_Dave, but considering how wonderful and thoughtful his project for his lighthouse wedding is, we hereby rename him Wonderful_Thoughtful_Dave. Don’t put yourself down, Dave. You’re brilliant!
“I knew I wanted to make something involving electronics and 3D printing,” explains Wonderful_Thoughtful_Dave in an imgur post. “So I decided to make working model lighthouses as the table centrepieces.”
Dave designed the 3D model in Autodesk 123D, with a plethora of photographs of the lighthouse as reference points. And many hours later, he began 3D printing ten lighthouse shells using his Prusa MK2.5.
With Samsung 18650 batteries and a 18650 shield for power, Dave hooked up Raspberry Pi Zeros to 6×2 LCD displays, LEDs, and stepper motors. With these components, each lighthouse to gives off a rather lovely light while also showing table number and meal status to guests. Neat!
“Each lighthouse has a JSON file on the Pi that tells it what messages to display when, so each table is personalised.”
The final result is beautiful and would look at home anywhere from a model town to a toy shop, or indeed the entrance of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse itself.
We love how Dave put different maker skills to use here, from 3D design and printing, to constructing and coding. Hopefully, we’ll see more projects from him in the future!
Here in the UK, people have a thing for iconic buildings. And at Pi Towers, we adore it when you recreate historic landmarks like this with the help of our humble board.
Why not try creating your own reimagining, such as the Project Arthur ISS tracker, a papercraft and Pi build that pays homage to Arthur, the first satellite dish at the Cornish Goonhilly Earth Satellite Station?
Or come up with something completely new! We’d love to see, say, a working model of London’s Tower Bridge, or a light-up King’s College Chapel. Whatever landmark makes your day, why not build a scale model using your maker skills and electronics?
*Sadly, we are unable to share the song for copyright issues, so here is the Adele edition of Carpool Karaoke instead.
Website: LINK
We sat down with Bob Tetiva, founder and CEO of Sense Arena, a Czech startup that seeks to bring the ice rink to hockey players’ homes, gyms, and training centers. Catch their virtual-reality-based training platform mid-October 2018.
Where did the idea of using VR for athletic training come from?
Well, for starters, my son plays ice hockey and I’m an amateur coach. (I’m just your typical hockey dad!) But one day, I was thinking about the length of your average training session, which is about 60 minutes. With 20 players on the ice, that means, statistically, each player is only in action for about 10 minutes. Then, the average player only handles the puck for about two! That’s no way to learn how to play.
That’s when—with the help of my son—it hit me. What if we made hockey training virtual? The experience could focus on hard-to-learn, hard-to-train-for skills and drills while making it fun for the players.
What can you tell us about the training and skills players will focus on in this experience?
The player holds a standard hockey stick connected with a VIVE Tracker. They then see the 3D model of the stick in VR and perform all sorts of drills, just as they would on the ice. The player then gets to focus on agility, scoring, teamplay, and develop instincts on their own time.
One of the most unbeatable advantages, when compared to being on the ice, is the ability to setup challenging conditions and situations that you can’t always replicate in real life. It’s the perfect tool for coaches who have been there.
What equipment is needed to set up the Sense Arena training?
It’s your standard hardware setup for the VIVE Pro, plus our special hockey stick with an attached VIVE Tracker and Sense Arena haptic feedback technology. A real breakthrough for us was the arrival of the VIVE Wireless Adapter. Our athletes perform workouts typically in a room that is 25 x 25 feet, skating sometimes on synthetic ice. They run all around the room, sweating it up like they would in a gym, all without a tether to hold them back.
What can you tell about player feedback or any results you’ve seen?
After only three months of Sense Arena use at Charles University in Prague, we found a 10-15% improvement in cognitive and physical abilities specific to hockey. Currently, there are five installations of Sense Arena in the U.S. and Europe. However, we expect to see more in the future. We received some good feedback at CES (The International Consumer Electronics Show) in January, albeit from a sport journalist and an ex-player: “This is the first useful application for VR I’ve seen so far.” Talk about high praise.
To find out more about Sense Arena, visit https://www.sensearena.com.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8o90Jf_djM?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]
Website: LINK
Today’s Deal: Save 75% on Stories Untold!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Wednesday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Today’s Deal: Save 40% on Super Mega Baseball 2!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Tuesday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Today’s Deal: Save 70% on Little Nightmares!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Sunday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey is Now Available on Steam!
Choose your fate in Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey.
From outcast to living legend, embark on an odyssey to uncover the secrets of your past and change the fate of Ancient Greece.
Website: LINK
The friendly people at Argon40, one of our Approved Resellers in Hong Kong, have an already-successful Kickstarter on the go for their Argon ONE Raspberry Pi case. I’ve got one of them on my desk at the moment. It’s a very pleasing object. “That’s quite nice,” enthuses Gordon, who isn’t very good at enthusing.
The Argon ONE is a nifty little aluminium-alloy case that offers well thought-through cable, power, and temperature management. We chatted to Joseph from Argon40 about the team’s development process, and he explained:
When we started the project, we initially designed the product to suit our needs based on our experiences of playing around with the Raspberry Pi. We wanted a case that is nice to look and at the same time has all the basic features that we loved about the Raspberry Pi: small footprint, access to GPIO, low power consumption. Then we looked into the nice-to-have stuff like good heat dissipation for better performance, a proper shut-down, and a form factor that is elegant but not extravagant.
What I find particularly satisfying about the Argon ONE is its GPIO access. It has a neat recess with clear pin labels and access to an inbuilt, colour-coded header that connects to your Pi’s GPIO pins. When you’re not using the pins, you probably want to keep them away from dust, spilled coffee, and the gross candy-corn M&Ms that Alex sometimes throws at you for literally no reason. The Argon ONE helps you out here: a cover fits perfectly over the GPIO recess, held in place by magnets that are just exactly strong enough for the job. Being a fidgeter, I find that this lends itself to compulsive clicking.
*click* *click* *click*
We like the build quality here, especially at this price point (it’s HK$157, US$20, or GB£15, and early-bird pledges are cheaper). The Argon40 team was keen to use alumnium for the upper part of the case, for robustness and durability along with good looks; that proved a challenge, given that they wanted to keep the case affordable. “Fortunately, we found a factory that allowed us to do aluminum-alloy injection instead of going for the CNC option,” says Joseph.
The Raspberry Pi doesn’t have a power button, and we hear a lot from people who’d like it to. Happily, our community has come up with lots of ways to add one: this case, for example. Once you install Argon40’s shutdown script in Raspbian, pressing the case’s power button will run the script to shut the Pi down cleanly, then cut the power.
Find out more on Kickstarter — this campaign is well worth a look if you’re after a decent case. Back to Joseph for the last word, with which we heartily agree:
At the end of the day, our goal is for people to have their Raspberry Pis on top of their work desks, study tables, and workstations and in their living rooms, instead of keeping their barebones Pi tucked inside a drawer. Because as the saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind,” which means that if they don’t see their Raspberry Pi, they won’t be able to tinker around with it or play with it to create projects.
Website: LINK
In celebration of the upcoming Total War: WARHAMMER II – Curse of the Vampire Coast, save 25% to 75% off the Total War: WARHAMMER Franchise as part of this week’s Weekend Deal*!
*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
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Save 20% on Dead Cells as part of this week’s Weekend Deal*!
*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
Today’s Deal: Save 80% on Renowned Explorers: International Society!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time Website: LINK
