Over the last 18 months, the $35, Linux-powered, education-oriented Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized computer has experienced an almost-unabated success story. The 700MHz ARMv6-powered computer has sold tens of thousands of units to beardies and educational establishments alike, is still on back order, and has attracted hundreds of hackers who have contributed alternative operating systems, software packages, supplementary hardware daughterboards, and more. Today, we’re happy to announce that Raspberry Pi has made perhaps the biggest step towards mainstream adoption: Notch and his Mojangstas have unveiled Minecraft: Pi Edition.

“The possibilities are massive. You could organise the cheapest LAN party of all time, or use the Pi to learn the fundamentals of programming on a minuscule budget,” says Mojang. There isn’t an official release date yet, but Mojang has confirmed that the Pi Edition will be free. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the Pi Edition is a port of the Pocket Edition, which was already running on the ARM processors within Android and iOS devices. Considering Android is a Linux-based OS, and Raspberry Pi runs a version of Debian Linux, porting the Android version probably wasn’t very hard.

In other news, RS (one of Raspberry Pi’s distributors) has shown off a camera daughterboard that should go on sale in the new year for around $25. The 5-megapixel camera will plug into the header pins on your Raspberry Pi (it’s a low-level piece of hardware, rather than some USB-connected peripheral), and is capable of capturing 1080p H.264 video at 30 fps. As you can see in the video below, the image quality is rather impressive.

The same Raspberry Pi blog post announcing the camera also mentions that the Foundation is also working on a “display board,” which is presumably an LCD display that will plug directly into the headers. Also on the hardware front, the Raspberry Pi Foundation recently published a blog post detailing the computer’s production process at a Sony factory in the UK.

As always with crazy devices like the Raspberry Pi, an over-excited community has sprung up around the tiny computer to dissect its current potential — and to discuss its future. Originally, the Raspberry Pi didn’t have a case, and so DIY types made their own — sometimes even using 3D printers (see below). Adafruit, of course, has a whole range of breakout boards to empower your hardware hacking needs. On the Raspberry Pi forums, you can find hundreds of thousands of posts, left by some 40,000 community members — some asking newbie questions, while others announce their success in building digital signage or a baby monitor powered by Raspberry Pi.

Ultimately, Raspberry Pi is shaping up to be an ideal, low-cost computer for teaching the basics of computer science (the primary purpose of the Raspberry Pi Foundation), but also the perfect hub for software and hardware hackers. At $50 for a Pi and the camera, and some coding, you have a low-cost security camera. With a touchscreen display and embedded in a wall, a Raspberry Pi might make the perfect interface for your security cameras or smart home setup. Perhaps most importantly, though, as our own Matthew Murray says, the Raspberry Pi’s biggest success is making DIY computing cool again.

For a lot more about the Raspberry Pi and its development, see our sister site Geek.com. For more DIY projects, hit up our DIY category.

[Image credit: Adafruit]