DOTs Board: on sale now!

DOTs3

Control your Raspberry Pi with paint – perfect for all ages!

The DOTs Board is an official Raspberry Pi product designed by Foundation’s Creative Producer, Rachel Rayns. It’s been used by the Foundation team at events all over the world in 2015 – and now you can buy one yourself.

We are really excited to have been able to work with Jamie Mann from the The Pi Hut to bring the DOTs Board to market. You can now buy them exclusively from The Pi Hut in singles, classroom packs of 30 and conference packs of 100.

It’s a HAT-sized board with a Dot-to-Dot (Connect the Dots for our friends over the pond) activity. You use conductive paint to follow the numbers – the Raspberry Pi will read which dots have been connected and will generate your airplane in Minecraft based on your painting.

DOTs2

DOTs Boards are reusable – simply wash the paint off with a wet wipe or damp kitchen roll, allow to dry and start all over again.

dot2

Big kid? You can hack the code to add extra elements into the Minecraft game or start a new game from scratch.

Software

So you’ve got your hands on a DOTs Board, but before you connect it to your Raspberry Pi (A+, B+ or Pi 2) you need to install the software.

Andrew Mulholland has created an awesome Minecraft activity to use with the Dots boards. With an up-to-date Raspbian image, connect your Pi to the internet.

Open the terminal and enter:

 sudo apt-get install python-pip
 sudo pip install rpi_dots_minecraft

Once that’s finished installing you are ready to go!

Activity

Our friends at Bare Conductive have made a beautiful activity guide for the DOTs Board activity.
dots4

Download the PDF version here: DOTs Board Electric Guide

Make your own game

You’ve tried out our game and now you’re ready to make your own? Awesome!

You’ll find the code you need to get started on GitHub, and you can see our example game at github.com/RPi-Distro/python-rpi-dots.

Be sure to share your own creations with us! We can’t wait to see what you make.

Gallery

7 comments

Avatar

Yey. Bravo Rachel and all involved.

Great we’ll all be able to get our hands on the board now having jealously watched the activities at the various events in past months.

“More power to your conductive paint” ! ;o)

Avatar

not seen one in the wild over here in NYC yet so i’ll have to see if they pop up in stateside suppliers soon.

Avatar

Thanks Alan!

Avatar

Such a cute board. I like the way that even pre-school age kids can do the activity – sure is a step up from finger-painting.

Also, purple silk-screen for the win.

Avatar

Just ordered one of these with a pi zero from the pihut – pile of computing and programming related presents for my boys grows larger :)

Avatar

That looks so amazing, I really want to get a RASPBERRY PI 2 MODEL B. I don’t know where t find one for cheap tho. Vendors on amazon want a ridiculous price for one. I’m in the us so.

Leave a Comment

Comments are closed