…When faced with a challenge, one can back down or double down, and it’s worth doubling down on the beast. So we’re working with industrial designer James Boonzaier on building Beast 2.0, and we’re ambitious about it. Here’s our wishlist:
Open and community-based: The process of building the new beast will be documented here, in weekly blogposts. The design will be open source, and optimised to be replicable with tools that exist in makerspaces. (3d printers, laser cutters, etc). We’re not building another one-off.
Sustainable: The new beast should be durable, and when problems arise, it should be easy to extract and replace parts.
Diverse: It should accommodate different network types (wifi, ethernet, 3g), different device types (no longer just Raspberry Pi), and different types of power (battery? solar?)
Demo-friendly: Since the primary goal of Beast was demoing at conferences, we want the new one to be awesome at that. It must be moldable to different designs (up to 2m high), easy to set up, and be easy to pack in regular suitcases.
Extensible: Thought should be put into leaving room for future experimentation and unexpected use cases. Engineer for serendipity.
Look awesome: Obviously we want this thing to knock people’s socks off!
All this is leading us towards creating not a physical object, but a framework for how to build beast-like objects…
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!