The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s first official USB mouse and keyboard peripherals are available to buy now.
Available to buy individually or as part of a bundle, the USB mouse and keyboard feature the same red and white colour combo of the Pi mini computer.
As you’d expect, the peripherals are nicely priced, aimed, as they are, at young PC users looking to get into coding and how computers work in general.
The keyboards feature a 78-key matrix similar to those found on most laptop keyboards and are available in a number of languages – British and US English, French, Spanish, German and Italian.
Support for more languages is promised (though the Foundation’s mum on which ones just yet) and cleverly, the keyboards have been set up so that your Raspberry Pi mini PC will automatically detect which language the keyboard is configured for, and change the on-screen language accordingly.
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“The PCB for the keyboard and hub was designed by Raspberry Pi, so we control the quality of components and assembly,” the Foundation’s senior principal engineer Simon Martin
“We fitted the best USB hub IC we could find, and we worked with Holtek on custom firmware for the key matrix management. The outcome of this is the ability for the Pi to auto-detect what country the keyboard is configured for.”
The product of several months of R&D work, Martin says attention has been paid to things like light leakage, making sure colours stay consistent as well as the overall ergonomic feel. Featuring three Type-A USB 2.0 ports, the official Raspberry Pi keyboard is also designed to act as a hub, letting you connect more peripherals to your Pi.
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The optical mouse features a scrollwheel, three-buttons, and Omron switches – the same kind of switches you’d see in gaming mice like the Logitech G Pro Wireless and Corsair Dark Core RGB SE, and connects to USB-A ports.
The mouse and keyboard are available to buy now from Raspberry Pi retailers including the Pi Hut, Pimoroni, Mod My Pi and Pi Supply, for around £7.25 and £15.50 respectively, or can be bought as a bundle for around £22. These are likely to not be available forever, so snap up a slice of the Pi while you still can. The latest Raspberry Pi, the 3 Model B+, costs £34, so you can get cracking on coding basics for just over £50.
Yet to dip a toe into the world of coding and are now tempted by these sweet-looking and super cheap peripherals? Let us know @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
