Pi-Top, a laptop kit based on Raspberry Pi 2 board and a 13.3″ display, and which cost about $299.99 with the board, and had a successful crowdfunding campaign despite the price nearly matching equivalent laptops on the market. CEED is now back on Indiegogo with pi-topCEED desktop computer also based on a Raspberry Pi 2 board and a 13.3″ display, but which much more aggressive pricing, as the kit could be yours for $99 with the board, or $70 without, and shipping was included to the few countries I checked out.
pi-topCEED Specifications:
- SoC – Broadcom BCM2836 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 900MHz with VideoCore IV GPU
- System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2
- Storage – micro SD card slot
- Display – 13.3″ HD LCD screen screen with eDP 1.2 interface; 1366×768 resolution; 262K colors; 60Hz refresh rate; 3W power consumption.
- Video & Audio Output – HDMI (connected to display board driving 13.3″ screen) and AV via 3.5mm jack.
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 ports, 1x micro USB (connected to display board)
- Expansion (on RPi2 board)
- 2×20 pin header for GPIOs
- Camera header
- Display header
- Power – TBD
- Dimensions – N/A
The computer will run Linux based pi-topOS with CEEDuniverse educational MMORPG, Scratch, Raspberry Pi resources, Minecraft, LibreOffice,etc….
The cover on the bottom of the display is easily removable so you can access the Raspberry Pi headers for electronics projects. The four USB ports and Ethernet port of the board can conveniently be connected even if the cover is on. Two rails are used inside the computer to hold the Raspberry Pi board, the display board, and any other board or items such as the pi-topSpeaker which has been added as a stretch goal.
The $99 kit includes a Raspberry Pi 2, the display board, the enclosure and display, and a 8GB micro SD card pre-loaded with pi-topOS. So you’d just need to add your own keyboard and mouse, and maybe a power supply. If you already own a Raspberry Pi 2, you could also consider the $70 kit. If the pictures are any indications, the display board is only connected to the Raspberry Pi’s micro USB port (for power) and HDMI output, so it might also be possible to use other boards such as Orange Pi PC or Banana Pi inside the kit (TBC).
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I love these cases they are making for Pi and wish that someone would cook something like that for 96Boards.
There are two problems to use other SBCs with the $70 kit:
1) size of the board and placement of USB and Ethernet ports (both Banana/Orange Pi won’t fit but ODROID C1+, Lemon/Roseapple Pi or the upcoming “UP board” would)
2) the resolutions tablet/OTT SoCs provide when using HDMI: 1366×768 is not that common. The S500 and the ODROID’s S805 do not support this resolution via HDMI (just 720p instead) as well as older Allwinner SoCs used in Orange/Banana Pi — they use 1360×768 instead. Newer Allwinner SoCs support 1366×768 only using LVDS but not HDMI.
@tkaiser
Will they make the green bezel 6 lines taller?? 🙂
So, this is a kind of no-go… next iteration, please.
@JotaMG
It’s all about whether the displayboard will crop the image in such cases or upscale. And 1360 pixels upscaled to 1368 will look blurry.
@tkaiser
And the voltage must be 5V. 96boards (CE) use a higher voltage.
@peter
Erratum: what I wrote, accounts for the Pi-top. Dont know right now, if that Ceed works differently. Probably not, when it does not have a battery.
@tkaiser
“Newer Allwinner SoCs support 1366×768 only using LVDS but not HDMI.”
A10, A20 also support 1366×768 in LVDS mode! And 1366×768 it is very often found in LVDS/LCD panels but not in HDMI.
I wonder how it would look like, seems to be HDMI to LVDS, so 1280×720 upscaled to 1366×768, or it would display 1280×720 only to get better result.