Piper Make

Piper, an award-winning STEAM education company has officially launched Piper Make, the first drag-and-drop coding platform for the new Raspberry Pi Pico. The interface, compatible with Chromebooks and other computers, is free of charge and enables users to interact and build with their Raspberry Pi Pico in a hands-on way. With new project tutorials released every month to accompany the technology shipped with the Monthly Makers Club, the platform is built to let anyone learn the basics of hardware and coding. With visualizations of the microcontroller, translations of block code to text-based MicroPython, and more, Piper Make empowers users to start inventing with technology.

Members of the Piper Monthly Makers Club will receive their starter kits—which includes the Raspberry Pi Pico, an 830-point breadboard, LEDs, resistors, and wires—to use with new pieces of hardware (e.g. sensors, buttons, etc.). New projects are launched each month and Monthly Makers Club members will receive new hardware in the mail along with access to interactive tutorials on make.playpiper.com. Starter kits are available as a one-time $30 purchase, as is membership to the Monthly Makers Club for $20/month or $199 for the year.

“Our mission at Piper has always been to make the process of innovating with technology more accessible,” said Shree Bose, cofounder of Piper. “The reimagined Piper Monthly Makers Club is an exciting step towards realizing this vision, using the power of the Raspberry Pi Pico as a base to build with new pieces of technology shipped to subscribers every month. With the easy drag-and-drop coding interface and projects on our Piper Make platform, the true magic becomes what our users will be able to create and share with the world.”

Piper Monthly Makers Club Overview: New subscribers receive the starter kit (Raspberry Pi Pico, LEDs, resistors, switches and wires) which they can seamlessly use with the projects on the Piper Make platform. New hardware will then be shipped every month, with corresponding tutorials and projects released on Piper Make. The key features include:

Raspberry Pi Pico: The powerful microcontroller from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is the newest on the market. Versatile and tiny, this board uses the new RP2040 microcontroller chip and features a powerful ARM M0 dual-core processor with programmable GPIO pins that make the possible applications endless.

Piper Make Coding Interface: Piper Make is the first drag-and-drop coding platform for the Raspberry Pi Pico. As a reference hub for current and future projects and innovations, it delivers all the information for hardware inputs, outputs, components and sensors to be shipped with theMonthly Makers Club, and how to reuse them for other projects and creations. Access a reference library of user-friendly descriptions for use in new projects and creations, and seamlessly extend the Piper experience. In addition, users can view the Python version of Google Blockly code in real-time while coding and understand the connection between text-based and visual programming.

Piper Monthly Makers Club Technology Subscription: With the Monthly Makers Club, new hardware is shipped to subscribers every month, to correspond with newly released projects on Piper Make. In addition, combinations of technologies from different months, programmed using the Piper Make interface can yield new gadgets and technologies that will be shareable using the Piper Make coding interface.

Chromebook/Classroom Compatibility: The Piper Make coding interface is accessible from your browser, allowing users to plug in their Pico and start prototyping immediately. Piper Make is ideally suited for collaboration and remote learning as well—visible during screen-sharing and with “Build Your Own Project” features to allow students to code projects and share with classmates and teachers.