The world of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem has been enriched by an interesting component: the Pi Top Kit, which is now available from distributor RS Components. The kit was crowdfunded under the motto "Build your own laptop". The concept essentially consists of a laptop powered by a Raspberry Pi. It includes:

• a 13.3-inch HD LCD screen with an eDP interface and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.
• a Smart Battery with more than 10 hours of runtime,
• a two-wire SMBus interface V2.0,
• a trackpad and a fully programmable keyboard,
• an 8 GB SD card with pre-installed Pi-TopOS,
• power supply and an illustrated assembly manual.

The pi-Top is bundled with Pi-TopOS - an operating system based on Raspbian Wheezy. Pi-TopOS differs from Raspbian by a slightly different selection of software installed by default and, above all, by a modified desktop, which is based on OS X vibe in its appearance. Regardless of this, users have access to the usual Raspbian package sources and can install any application from them.

The operating system makes it easy to connect the Pi-Top to the WLAN, monitor the battery life and personalize the operating system. CEEDUniverse is also included in the Pi-TopOS. This is a game that teaches users programming as well as how to build electronic circuits and hardware with their Raspberry Pi. Other features include the Pi-Top Dashboard, a real-time program code editor and lesson plan, which is expected to have over 100 hours of tutorial content by summer 2016. There is also a "Kit Component Guide" and a Microsoft Office-compatible software suite (Minecraft, Libre Office, Chrome browser and 3D Slash).

The Pi-Top has been designed to be upgradeable and will be compatible with all current and future versions of the Raspberry Pi. It is currently supplied with the Raspberry Pi 2. Older boards can easily be exchanged for newer ones as soon as they come onto the market. This means that in future users will be able to upgrade their existing Pi-Top laptop for the price of just one new Pi board. The design for the Pi-Top laptop was initially developed using the RS tools DesignSpark PCB and DesignSpark Mechanical. In particular, the use of Designspark PCB helped overcome the challenge of integrating a 13.3-inch high-definition laptop screen into the Pi-Top. The Pi-Top is available in a gray and green case variant.