Eduporium Experiment | Building The pi-top [3]

As the world becomes more and more technology focused, it’s crucial that student experiences reflect this renewed commitment to STEM. Kids already love devices, including laptops, so it isn’t usually challenging to excite them about about building their own. And, the pi-top laptop helps create the perfect opportunity for students to not only engineer their own modular laptop but to also invent, create, and code an endless number of projects along the way.

We decided to put our pi-top [3] together and create our own light and sound shows. Even if your students are using the pi-top and haven't coded before, the instructions guide them through the projects. They also emphasize specific programming skills students will build with this truly hands-on approach to learning.

Building the pi-top laptop took us around 10 minutes. Its instruction booklet contains the steps, including adjusting the cooling bridge, securing our Raspberry Pi, and aligning the hub PCB. We did find ourselves needing a screwdriver at one point, so we recommend having one on hand just in case.

The pi-top keyboard slides forward and backwards easily over the computer components, so students can see and adjust interior pieces. Another great feature of the pi-top [3] is that it's totally reusable, allowing for students and teachers to disassemble and reassemble for use in different class periods. With a click of the power button, the pi-top screen lights up and you have successfully created your own laptop!

Building the pi-top laptop.

We decided to try one of the guided lessons from the box and created our own sound and light show. You can search for project ideas within the pi-top coder application. Be sure to connect to Wi-Fi before opening your coder application. When you open this application, you'll see a search and filter page, where kids can search by title and filter by programming language, spoken languages, difficulty, and estimated completion time. We decided to choose a beginner Python lesson and created our own flashing, buzzing light show!

During the lesson, we also explored the inventor’s kit, which contains the pi-topPROTO+, LED lights, some jumper cables, and resistors, and is part of the pi-top package. The pi-topPROTO+ is pi-top’s version of a prototyping board—a surface students can construct inventions on. Like the pi-top [3], their pi-topPROTO+ might be intimidating but you can enlarge pictures like this for reference during lessons. It’s key to note the GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins at the top and their uses in programming. 

Not only are these numbers important but only those pins marked in yellow can connect the sensors in this experiment. Inserting the pi-topPROTO+ is simple. You slide it onto the magnetic track and directly into the Raspberry Pi. We also found that we needed a small amount of force to fully connect the two objects. Also, we recommended turning the laptop off before this process but had no problem doing it while it was on.

To create the “light” for our show, we used a green LED, a male-to-male cable, and a 100 Ohm resistor. It doesn’t matter where in the breadboard you plug things in, as long as each vertical row lines up. There are images in your box to show students the exact set-up, reminding them that their LEDs have two legs—one long and one short. The long leg must also be on the same vertical line as their jumper cable and the short leg must be on the same vertical line as the resistor.

Some pi-top [3] hacks for the classroom.

Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to code! There's an included step-by-step tutorial that covers how kids can use the pi-top code library to turn the LED on and keep it on for an extended number of seconds with the sleep function. Using the same skills they learned from turning the LED on, kids will set up a buzzer as well. Setting up the buzzer is a lot less guided, which is helpful for testing their new skills. After completing the light and sound show, they can try programming their setup to respond to the press of a button.

Giving students opportunities to assemble laptops before coding is invaluable in learning how computers work and about the components inside. When using their pi-top [3], students can truly get hands-on with physical computing, seeing firsthand how they can control their creations using code they write. To check out these innovative STEM kits, visit our store. And, follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more info on all of the latest, greatest, and coolest tools for STEM education!