Fifth Serving: CutiePi FAQs, Communication Channels, and Crowdfunding Campaign

CutiePi started out as a hobby project amongst colleagues and friends. And while it still is, the amount of support and interest we are getting from the tech community, in general, has been a major factor on making this project grow into what it is today.

We can’t say thank you enough to everyone, which is why we decided to do something different for this update.

First, what do you, our readers, want to see on CutiePi?

Any specific app that you want supported? Do you have any specific demonstration videos of CutiePi you want to see? If so, let us hear them on Twitter by mentioning @cutiepi_io and we’ll try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Also, we have a telegram chat group, if you’re interested in chatting with the CutiePi team about the project. We are a chatty bunch.

Join us on Telegram: https://t.me/cutiepi_io

Second, about our crowdfunding campaign.

We are going to use Kickstarter as our platform of choice. The project is almost ready to launch. So close to completion in fact, that we can say that our launch date will be the last week of June, 2020.

Third, what about the price, you ask? Well, that is something that will be announced upon launch of the crowdfunding campaign. However, making profit was never the first priority of this project, so we are trying our very best to acquire a better deal for you, our supporters.

Fourth, as we move closer to our release date, we have been receiving quite a number of questions, and we’ve grouped them accordingly, and will respond here, to set the record straight:

• Is CutiePi board swappable with standard Pis?
  No. CutiePi tablet was custom designed to be thin. Also, we are using Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ Lite, which isn’t swappable with the standard Pi.
• Why use Pi 3 and not Pi 4?
  We are using Compute Module 3+ Lite, which contains “the guts of a Raspberry Pi 3 (the BCM2837 processor and 1GB RAM)”. It has better balance between computing power and power consumption, and, more importantly, we don’t need to worry about active cooling (for example, fan) for the device.
  We are aware of the limitations of the Pi 3 processor, which is why we are continuously optimizing the software, to make it run as smoothly as possible.
• What is the battery life like?
  With 50% display brightness, and with active network connections, the standby battery life is roughly around 5 hours. You can refer the chart we made here, and a time lapse video from one of our tests. We’ll keep working on this to achieve even better results.

Fifth, our team, mostly myself, is always in the mood to do interviews and demos of CutiePi. So if you are press, or someone that can help us spread the CutiePi goodness, feel free to reach us at:

Contact: Penk Chen <hello@cutiepi.io>
Press kit: https://cutiepi.io/assets/CutiePi-MediaKit.zip

And those are the 5 ingredients of this month’s CutiePi. Stay at home and stay safe.