The MagPi issue 35 – next month we’re in print!
Issue 35 of The MagPi is here. It’s rammed full of projects, and features some of the most amazing builds and hacks we’ve seen so far this year. We’ve got 22 pages of step-by-step tutorials and the chance to win a beautiful Raspberry Pi robot (thanks to Dawn Robotics).
For me, the absolute highlight this month is Mike Cook’s sprinting game, which will have you building physical controllers you operate with jogging feet. This is something you’ll be able to put together as a fun physical computing project with friends or as part of an after school club or Raspberry Jam. Here’s Mike to demonstrate.
Your feedback on The MagPi has been fantastic, and we’re working to make it better every month. So far, we’ve had 100,000 downloads for issue 31 (we’ve had nearly 300,000 downloads overall since we started the new version of the magazine).
And we’ve got some news: next month, The MagPi goes into print. We are absurdly excited.
Russell “If I’d known you were taking photos I’d have shaved” Barnes
Russell Barnes, editor/Babbage owner, says:
The MagPi magazine has already proved itself to be one of the most successful new technology magazine launches of the year and I couldn’t be happier. It’s not every day that a digital magazine goes to print, but that’s exactly what we’re doing next issue. The Official Raspberry Pi magazine will be available throughout the UK and America, with plans to branch out into other territories and languages as soon as possible.
So here’s a date for your diaries: the print magazine is coming on 30th July.
The magazine will be even bigger and better than ever, with 100 pages of Raspberry Pi projects, tutorials features and reviews. You’ll be able to buy the magazine in store and online; in the UK it’s £5.99 UK. Other territories will vary.
The magazine will be available to buy in store from WHSmith, WHSmith Travel, Barnes & Noble and Micro Center, and all good newsagents. You’ll also be able to order a copy online from the Swag Store from July 30.
Subscriptions are open now! If you want to be among the first people to receive the magazine you can subscribe today. You can get six issues of the magazine from £30 and 12 issues from £55. It’s available online by visiting www.bit.ly/MagPiSubs, by calling +44 (1)20 258 6848, or by printing out the form on pages 28 and 29 of this month’s issue.
Why subscribe?
- Never miss an issue
- Get it delivered to your door
- Get it first (before it hits the shelves)
- Save up to 25% on the cover price.
The MagPi is (and always will be) free to download as a PDF. Russell says:
While we’ve been getting hundreds of requests for the magazine in print over the last six months, The MagPi has always been available as a Creative Commons-licensed PDF, and that’s the way it’s going to stay! You can download every issue of The MagPi from raspberrypi.org/magpi and you’ll soon be able to join a mailing list to get the issue delivered to your inbox every issue.
We hope you enjoy this month’s magazine as much as we enjoyed making it.
33 comments
Raspberry Pi Staff Simon Long
Excellent news – well done to Russell and the team. Looking forward to seeing it in the shops!
Luke Wren
Awesome! Consider me subscribed.
solar3000
eek paper. I guess its good that the money would probably go to education.
Liz Upton
Nothing “probably” about it – it definitely does! We really hope you enjoy the magazine; any money we make goes straight into our charitable work.
solar3000
ok maybe i’ll buy one at B&N in the USA.
Nuex* Luke Castle
Yay! Finally a proper magazine for raspberry pi hitting the shelves.
Andrew Oakley
Published edition sounds great. Have to admit to being a little disapointed by the price. This is supposed to be primarily aimed at children, right? £6 an issue is too expensive for children. Should be closer to £3-4.
For example: National Geographic Kids £3.30; Okido £4; Eco Kids £3.50; etc. etc. Even at £30/6 issues this is an offputting price for children.
It’s great that lots of adult hobbyists like myself have adopted the Raspberry Pi. But I’m worried the foundation is forgetting its core purpose; getting children to program.
There are lots of Raspberry Pi and Linux magazines around the £6 mark aimed at adults, most of which, I have to be honest, are a lot slicker than the MagPi even in its revised form.
I was hoping that the print edition of MagPi would be more accessible to pocket-money.
Maybe reconsider the price in a few months’ time please?
Liz Upton
You can have it for £3 if you want it to be 30 pages long. I’m afraid this is what it costs to produce a magazine of this length; and I’m sorry you don’t think it’s as slick as you’d like.
Andrew Oakley
Oh, I agree – I don’t doubt the costs for a moment. And it is a great magazine, and slick enough; please don’t get me wrong on this – I love the MagPi magazine.
My concern is whether the Foundation:
1. Started with an existing great magazine and then priced the print edition from there, or
2. Started with the foundation’s educational remit, priced it to fit children’s pocket money, and then produced the best magazine they could that would fit a child’s budget.
Wouldn’t the foundation be happier with twice the number of children buying it, even if it had half the number of pages?
I mean, we could build an amazing Raspberry Pi 3 for 100 quid; it could have onboard dual-band WiFi N, gigabit ethernet, USB3 and SATA; but it wouldn’t end up in the hands of many children, so it wouldn’t fit the Foundation’s goals. I recall Eben making this point over and over again during the design phase (ooooh, citing the hubby in a discussion with the missus; I am going to make lots of friends today, aren’t I?).
Maybe I’m misunderstanding here. Maybe wiser people than me have done their research, and concluded that children don’t buy dead-tree magazines anyway, and we expect them to read the PDF on their Pi or tablet for free; in which case, the MagPi exists as a fundraiser and £6/issue is spot on for the adult hobbyist market. Was that the plan? If so, great, and sorry for my misunderstanding.
Also maybe I’m underestimating average pocket money and children’s discerning decision-making! Or totally ignoring children’s ability to save up for a discounted subscription. Heck, my argument’s full of holes.
(Crikey, I’ve gone all “just think of the children!” here, haven’t I?)
Stewart Watkiss
I think cost is an important factor when targeting children, but I think it’s also important to have a good quality magazine. Printing a quality magazine costs money.
By coincidence(?) The MagPi is the same price as the other magazine I currently subscribe to which is Linux Voice. But it’s cheaper than other (none educational) titles such as XBox / Playstation magazines which children often buy.
At £6 per month that’s only around £1.50 a week, although I guess that may still be a lot for some children’s pocket money allowances.
The great thing is that for those that can’t afford (or are happy with digital only) then they can just download the PDF for free and if there’s a particular article they are interested in doing then they can print those pages.
I consider this a win win – I’ve already subscribed and can’t wait for the paper copy to drop through my door.
Raspberry Pi Staff Russell Barnes
Thanks for the feedback Andrew – much appreciated! Stewart has hit the nail on the head, though.
The MagPi is growing into a fully-fledged technology magazine designed for budding computer scientists and makers aged 8 to 80. It’s certainly no coincidence that the page count and price is on a par with other leading technology magazines in the market (like the brilliant Linux Voice).
Don’t forget that a one year subscription cuts the price by a quarter, meaning it costs around £4.58 per issue. UK readers can pay £12.99 every three months on Direct Debit too, which makes it an even cheaper (£4.33).
There’s the option to buy it digitally via the App Store and Google Play for £2.99 per issue (£1.66 per issue with a subscription) or simply download the free PDF every month as always.
Creative Commons licensing and an unparalleled breadth of buying options (starting at ‘free’)? I’m 100% biased (and a boring magazine nerd), but it doesn’t get any more exciting than that!
Billy Ebullient
I agree! The average weekly pocket money in the UK for 8 to 15 year olds is a pathetic £6.20. Imagine having to give away 23% of your wages every month just to buy something made entiely of paper! OK, so it’s beautifully produced,full of brilliant projects and tutorials, and a great read but imagine how many Kola Kubes you could buy with that. 615g, that’s how many! That’s twenty three gobfuls.
And for the same price you could get a mag and a pie at a Newcastle “Magpies” United F.C. match and even though the match programme is only A5 it has literally millions of pages full of stuff about footy, not your so-called “fun” or “making” or “learning”. As for the “bargain” yearly subscription you could go and see 90 minutes of end-to-end action at Magpies United. Not such a bargain now is it? Compared to men kicking?
Finally, if you are still tempted to throw the cost of 4.6 Nando’s chicken wings away on what some idiots are calling “the best community-supported tech magazine I’ve seen” then I urge you instead to save up another £1.62 and spend it on the live double album “La Gazza Ladra” by neo-prog soft rock combo “Marillion” from iTunes.
Raspberry Pi Staff Simon Long
Excellent recommendation for Marillion there, the perfect audio accompaniment to programming your Pi. I should know – I am frequently to be found listening to them while in the office tampering with the desktop UI. Although I haven’t played “La Gazza Ladra” for a while, so time to give it a listen tomorrow, I think… :)
Liz Upton
I know a SECRET about Simon and Marillion. Simon, you’re going to have to be SO nice to me tomorrow.
ukscone
Don’t talk about Marillion (especially the Fish years) to John as he hates being reminded that if he’d been born a girl he’d have been named Kayleigh
Raspberry Pi Staff Simon Long
There’s nothing in my past of which I am ashamed, Liz… :)
(Although Alexei Sayle did do a sketch many years ago in which he observed that you could buy concert T-shirts that said “I’ve seen Marillion” on them, to which his reply was “Bloody hell – I’d have thought you’d want to keep that quiet, wouldn’t you?”)
Andrew Mulholland
Another excellent MagPi edition! I personally think the best part is pages 6-7, although I might be slightly biased :)
Looking forward to being able to pick up the MagPi in my local WHSmith at the end of next month.
Zachary Igielman
Great work! Cannot wait to get one.
I will be submitting my wrie up over the summer, sorry for the delay Russell.
Will we be able to buy back issues of MagPi since the relaunch?
Raspberry Pi Staff Russell Barnes
Great stuff – looking forward to seeing it.
We’ve been looking into printing issues 31-35, but such short print runs mean they’re possibly prohibitively expensive to produce.
We might have a slightly different solution up our sleeves, though.
More on that Soon™ :)
Steve Foster
I’m really pleased that the foundation is keeping the free-to-download PDF version. Something about staying true to one’s roots springs to mind. All the best for the new paper-based launch.
Darren
If you made it a thick magazine with plenty of new info for electronic projects I would definitely buy it i am new to Linux and I am not familiar with command lines
Texy
You can download from Issue 1 and follow the learning experience. Don’t consider the first printed edition and your starting point……
Texy
Raspberry Pi Staff Russell Barnes
Yes – we’ve been running a ‘conquer the command line’ style series in the last five issues – it has a few more issues left in it (then we might starting looking at some BASH scripting and so on).
Gary Littlemore
How was the ‘RPi Cam Web Interface’ not listed as one of the ‘Amazing Pi Projects’ The forums biggest viewed and replied topic.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=63276
Raspberry Pi Staff Russell Barnes
/ steeples fingers
We’ve got some rather brilliant, but separate plans for the Camera Module!
/strokes white cat on lap
Ian McAlpine
Eben, Liz, Russel… I’m ecstatically happy and proud that you are taking The MagPi to the High Street, and thank you for keeping your promise.
For those concerned about the price, work out how much it costs in printer ink and paper to print 100 full colour pages and you will realise that the price is very fair, and exceptional value if you subscribe.
Regarding kids, and those on a low income, this is exactly why The MagPi was always available as a free download. Zero cost removes barriers to the availability of curated Raspberry Pi knowledge, with the hope that those who can afford it, and appreciate the level to quality and content, will pay the nominal fee for the magazine.
Kudos to all… and already signed up for my subscription.
Liz Upton
You should be REALLY PROUD – the MagPi wouldn’t exist without you. I hope you know how grateful we are.
Ivan
Sort of unrelated but: How do I know if I won the competition from the last issue?
Raspberry Pi Staff Russell Barnes
Winners will be announced next issue!
Mike Teutsch
Sure do enjoy the magazines, especially the command line tutorials and anything to do with robotics. With that last one in mind, am I missing something or is there a mistake in the placement of pictures on the article about the piplatebot? The “step 2” picture seems to be exactly the same as step 2 in the lifebox article.
Looking forward to more stuff like this though. I’m in the process of gathering parts to make an r/c car into a robot. It’s the first r/c car I ever had and I lost the controller a long time ago. Could I buy a controller for a 30 year old r/c car? Sure, but where’s the fun in that?
tgwaste
$85 for a magazine subscription!!!???
Am I doing the math wrong?
Liz Upton
While we’re great at solving the shortage in kids taking up computer science, we are a little limited in our ability to influence world currency markets.
Anne Carlill
Looking forward to buying my first copy. Don’t suppose I’ll understand much of it at the beginning – but I’m sure if I keep coming back to it I’ll learn a lot.
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