Season’s greetings! I set this up to auto-publish while I’m off sipping breakfast champagne, so don’t yell at me in the comments — I’m not really here.

I hope you’re having the best day, and if you unwrapped something made by Raspberry Pi for Christmas, I hope the following helps you navigate the first few hours with your shiny new device.

Power and peripherals

If you’ve received, say, a Raspberry Pi 5 or 500 on its own and have no idea what you need to plug it in, the product pages on raspberrypi.com often feature sensible suggestions for additional items you might need.

Scroll to the bottom of the Raspberry Pi 5 product page, for example, and you’ll find a whole ‘Accessories’ section featuring affordable things specially designed to help you get the best possible performance from your computer.

You can find all our hardware here, so have a scroll to find your particular Christmas gift.

Dedicated documentation

There are full instructions on how everything works if you know where to look. Our fancy documentation site holds the keys to all of your computing dreams.

For beginners, I recommend our ‘Getting started’ guide as your entry point.

I need a book

If, like me, you prefer to scoot through a printed book, then Raspberry Pi Press has you covered.

The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide 5th Edition is a good idea if you’re a newbie. If you already know what you’re doing but are in need of some inspiration, then the Book of Making 2025 and The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2025 are packed with suggestions for Pi projects to fill the year ahead.

We’ve also published bespoke titles to help with Raspberry Pi Camera projects or to fulfil your classic games coding desires.

Your one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi questions

If all the suggestions above aren’t working out for you, there are approx. one bajillion experts eagerly awaiting your questions on the Raspberry Pi forums. Honestly, I’ve barely ever seen a question go unanswered. You can throw the most esoteric, convoluted problem out there and someone will have experienced the same issue and be able to help. Lots of our engineers hang out in the forums too, so you may even get an answer direct from Pi Towers.

Be social

Outside of our official forums, you’ve all cultivated an excellent microcosm of Raspberry Pi goodwill on social media. Why not throw out a question or a call for project inspiration on our official Facebook, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, or “Twitter” account? There’s every chance someone who knows what they’re talking about will give you a hand.

Also, tag us in photos of your festive Raspberry Pi gifts! I will definitely log on to see and share those.

Again, we’re not really here, it’s Christmas!

I’m off again now to catch the new Wallace and Gromit that’s dropping on Christmas Day (BIG news here in the UK), but we’ll be back in early January to hang out with you all in the blog comments and on social.

Glad tidings, joy, and efficient digestion wished on you all.

The post Did you dream of a Raspberry Pi Christmas? appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Ah, the WOPR — or “War Operation Plan Response” for those who enjoy abbreviations that sound like a robot from the future, only less like a friend and more like an overzealous maths teacher.

The WOPR is the supercomputer from the 1983 movie WarGames. It doesn’t understand sarcasm, it can’t sense when it’s being pranked, and it certainly doesn’t know when it’s been told to “play a game” — much like our Maker in Residence, Toby, who built it to delight and entertain all visitors to the Pi Towers Maker Lab.

What’s inside?

• Raspberry Pi 4
• Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2
• 5V power supply
• 615 AdaFruit NeoPixels
• Bluetooth speaker

A script runs on boot, which twinkles the NeoPixels in the traditional 1980s supercomputer colours, yellow and red.

Another script can be run to play a short clip from the film WarGames on the Touch Display 2 screen, explaining the WOPR. At the press of a button on the Touch Display, our faux WOPR also parrots famous lines from the film, such as: “Shall we play a game?” and “How about a nice game of chess?”

For those who wish to linger a little longer in the Maker Lab, Toby devised a game in which clips from 1980s films and music videos flash (a little too fast, in my opinion) up on the screen, with your job being to enthusiastically shout out where each clip is from.

Authentic enclosure

The body of the WOPR is a combination of 3D-printed plastics and laser-cut MDF painted in industrial grey, with Cricut silver lettering on the side. Everything is glued together, and a lot of sanding was required to make it appear as though it’s a sleek, fancy contraption from the future.

The post We made our own WOPR for Pi Towers appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

After a bumper autumn of product launches, we thought why not go full Santa as we head towards our winter break and give you all another double product launch? On Monday, we released Raspberry Pi 500 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor into the world. Here’s what some of your favourite YouTubers did with them.

VEEB Projects

VEEB get major points for their impossibly simple yet genius idea, leaving us at Pi Towers wondering “why didn’t I think of that?” They mounted an SD card holder on the back of the Raspberry Pi Monitor’s kickstand, making it super easy to switch them out and giving them access to three different PC systems at their fingertips — a desktop PC, a retro gaming centre, and a music streamer.

NetworkChuck

Chuck asks the question that Mad Men‘s Don Draper — actually, no, copywriter extraordinaire Peggy — would begin with: “who is this for?” Adorable cameos from The Littles in his review answer it for him, with the very littlest ably assisting in the plug-and-play set up of her new desktop PC before settling in to play some Roblox.

He also gives us a handy side-by-side comparison with his Raspberry Pi 400.

Jeff Geerling

Jeff gets straight to the point: “the keyboard is the computer”. He also wins the prize for most avant-garde presentation of the Monitor and Pi 500 side by side in the above video thumbnail.

And while Jeff proper has decorum and self restraint, Level 2 Jeff couldn’t help himself, going right ahead and cracking his Pi 500 open to see what’s inside.

Kevin McAleer

Kevin could not wait until his usual Sunday night livestream, and went live with a detailed demo of Raspberry Pi 500 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor the day after launch. If deep dives are your bag, grab snacks and settle in for this hour-long opus.

Kev’s a professional YouTuber, though, so if you haven’t the time, he obviously also rolled out a succinct six-minute video on our latest creations.

leepspvideo

And if you can’t get enough destruction, leepspvideo also did a nice teardown of Raspberry Pi 500, and tested the audio output on the Raspberry Pi Monitor, checking that it works great with his Raspberry Pi 5. Furthermore, he is accompanied by an excellent cat for the majority of the review.

Gary Explains

We really liked Gary’s straightforward “what is it, what does it do, how much does it cost?” approach. He too pops the hood to give you a nice clear look inside Raspberry Pi 500.

ETA Prime

We know where ETA Prime’s heart lies when they proclaim Raspberry Pi 500’s gaming possibilities right at the start of their review and teardown. In preparation for their gaming bonanza, a little overclocking is tested and some benchmarks run, but you’ll need to subscribe to ETA Prime’s channel to keep up with the promised gaming videos.

Did we miss anyone? These were all the videos we’d seen at the time of writing, but we’re 89% sure we’re horribly behind the times already. Drop a link to more reviews and leave a comment if you have an idea for a Raspberry Pi 500 project you’d like to see.

The post New Raspberry Pi 500 and Monitor: reviews, teardowns, builds appeared first on Raspberry Pi.