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Raspberry Pi Arrives, With a School Debut In Leeds
hypnosec writes "It seems fitting that the first batch of Raspberry Pi computers landed in the UK in the hands of school children based in Leeds as what many consider as another wave of grass-root computing revolution, another BBC Micro 2.0, begins. The Raspberry Pi has been designed from scratch to get anyone interested in computer programming to do so without forking out much; the base unit can connect to a television like the Commodore C64 or the Sinclair ZX81. According to the BBC, the first batch has been presented [Friday] by Eben Upton, the school project coordinator, in an event held at the Leeds offices of Premier Farnell, one of the official PI distributors."
This is also a great way/price for people to get into building and operating clusters. I plan on dropped 200 and building a 8 system cluster, just for fun.
As people have mentioned before, simply creating the product and making it available isn't going to miraculously rejuvenate computer programming in the UK amongst children. After all, many children already have access to computers capable of running python as it is - and so do schools. If schools want to teach computer programming, it doesn't actually need a raspberry pi.
I think the next step is to create tutorials for the raspberry pi, and to ensure that schools aren't penalised for teaching computer programming (as in it won't detract from teaching time and achieving targets in other subjects), and I think the only way to do that is to make computer programming a new GCSE, with a curriculum, exams, and formal teaching time.
I know about the target price. What is the actual price?
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Lied about import duty? One of the most interesting things about this whole process has been how upfront and transparent they've been. When they discover some new roadblock or detail that they weren't aware of (such as the status of the Pi wrt import duties, or the requirement for CE testing), they've been quick to post to their blog and tell the world about it.
As for "and market them badly"... really? How much do you suppose they've spent on marketing, exactly? Are you aware of how much publicity they're getting, worldwide, for free? Even my local newspaper, which is absolutely dreadful for tech news, has carried very positive (and nearly accurate!) stories on the Raspberry Pi. Seems to me that, if there's one thing they've done extremely well, it's creating a huge buzz around their concept, WITHOUT blowing a huge pile on marketing.
and if it takes off in the US i forsee a plethora of LawSuits alledging patent, copyright and anything else the syhsters can think of just to stop this in its tracks.
If this becomes really successful I have no shadow of a doubt that the likes of Microsoft will see this as a threat to their business and try by whatever means to stifile if not downright kill it.
You really can't have people building a computer now can you? Whatever next? Desiging their own Operating System and giving it away?
On a personal note, this device really takes me back to my Degree project in 1975 where I build a DtoA and AtoD converter board for the NatSemi IMP16 Microcomputer. in the years afterwards I build a number of UniBus devices for the PDP-11.
Interfacting 'kit' to computers has gotten a lot easier these days.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Since when is 20 equal to 50?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That tablet will NEVER be anything but a painful experience to use.
The Rpi can be perfect for a number of projects, and infinitely more configurable.
did you read the reasons behind No. 4 on your list?
Initially the foundation expected the R-Pi would be only picked up by enthusiasts and developers (Like Arduino boards) so EC mark was not a requirement. Since it was being sold as a "Development" board NOT a finished Consumer item.
But when they realised the demand and reached out to the 2 companies to licence it, the companies WANTED the EC mark before they would sell it.
The R-Pi foundation was waiting for the initial surge of orders to pass so they could concentrate on the "Educational Version" of the device which WOULD go through EC testing since it was being sold as a complete consumer product.
But what if your intended use does not include adding a screen or high GHz? And I doubt that with a screen you'll get the low energy consumption. And does that tablet have a comparable form factor?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
One of the most interesting things about this whole process has been how upfront and transparent they've been
Yes, like when they said they are sitting on 10K units ready to ship, or when they announced official launch and started selling nonexistent boards, or when they said that this time around they _really_ have 2K boards and to prove it they posted a picture of a chinese factory :). Or how now, 2 months after official launch, first people to get their hands on the boards are children in UK and not people who paind for the boards 2 months ago thinking they are buying something and not preordering.
WORST product launch ever. I just hope thats the end of rasppi drama and there wont be any more hurdles (for example lack of mpeg4 hardware acceleration, lack of camera interface documentation and so on)
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Although you're making a "glass half full" kind of prediction, it's not hard to imagine that the opposite of your guess might occur in the US: All the other ARM licensees might see this as a fantastic coup for Broadcom, and follow suit with their own competing $25 - $35 boards.
After all, Texas Instruments already has their own $5 SoC available and used in their BeagleBone, so they could quite easily remove features from that board and release something into the Raspberry Pi price niche for education. (The BeagleBone's $89 places it far outside the Raspberry Pi's price niche.)
The Chinese will of course follow suit with boards based on their wildly successful Allwinner A10 ARM device, which is far better than Broadcom's SoC (on specs) and only costs $7 in production volumes. Expect a pile of competitors from that quarter!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The Raspberry Pi has a HDMI port as well, so your claim that you need a CRT is clearly wrong.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
All of those, including the garbage resistive screen and 3hr+ battery are irrelevant for this project.
Why are you bringing up Google Chrome? Do you want to run a desktop on the thing? All that says is that you have NO idea what to use it for. I'd take a debian install with repos ANY day over android for what this thing can be used for.
That's an interesting rewrite of history. The BBC Microcomputer revolution was about entrepeneurs Chris Curry and Herman Hauser bidding against other rivals (Sinclair, Newbury, Dragon) to produce a computer under contract for the BBC. Acorn was already selling the Acorn Atom commercially and the BBC Micro was an upgrade to this. There was no liasing en masse with schools. The academics, inc Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, were working for Acorn not acting out of charity.
The sad thing is you don't recognise the 6502 had nothing to do with British engineering, yet the ARM chip 100% is. This is very much the BBC micro revolution Mark 2, minus the OS.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Re item 1) the tax is on individual components in the EU, but apparently excludes assembled PCBs. Hence (ignore also higher labour rates etc) it is more expensive to assemble the RPIs in the EU then get them made in china and shipped back. They spelled this out clearly on the blog. Its a stupid situation and one they have taken up with the UK minister for business.
Wow, so bitter...did they bugger up a business plan of yours Mr AC?
Actually if you have ever ordered from Farnell and RS, you'll find that the shipping charge is about typical, especially for orders that require airfreight. Our company has accounts with both of them.
In the 80s it was possible to build a computer like the BBC Micro yourself, but now all the parts are surface mount. Often you can't solder them without a some serious equipment, assuming you can order the parts in quantities of less than 1000.
I will be getting one to run from solar.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you wanted a through-and-through british design, development and manufacture you'd have to look at something like a transputer which WAS built in Britain during the mid 80s and would have wiped the floor with an 6502 based machine. Sadly it went the way of most british innovation and withered on the branch.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How many more RPi non-stories are going to appear on /. before the device is actually released to the masses? The device sounds great and all, but this has gone past the point of absurdity.
Initially the foundation expected the R-Pi would be only picked up by enthusiasts and developers (Like Arduino boards) so EC mark was not a requirement. Since it was being sold as a "Development" board NOT a finished Consumer item.
Confirming that "we must manufacture abroad because finished gadgets don't attract import duty" is bunkum.
The Raspi was always going to be sold as a finish board; it's not possible for it to be hand soldered. The original intent was to manufacture in the UK but that proved to be too expensive in part due to the import issues... I believe the duty costs on the parts was greater than the duty costs on a completed board. Which is dumb, but not the fault of the Raspi Foundation.
The original plan was that the Raspi would be sold like Arduino/Beagle boards - i.e. as development boards - and thus would not require CE certification in the first instance. However, either due to the volume of demand and/or the way it was being promoted - i.e. as a board you can just plug straight into your TV for immediate use - the distributors then decided they needed certification from the get-go.
And before you say "but they should've known the demand would be high; how would they have delivered it to millions of school kids like this", the original manufacturing volumes were always going to be low, but they had expected the types of people who would pick up the intial Raspi's would be nerds/developers who would help in creating the eco-system for when production ramped up and certification had been completed.
And I guess for RS/Farnell, the problem was that with such huge demand, they'd be legally vulnerable if the product wasn't certified.
But when they realised the demand and reached out to the 2 companies to licence it, the companies WANTED the EC mark before they would sell it.
Huh. Neither Upton nor anyone relevant at Broadcom would have any idea that one of the largest electronics distributors in the UK would expect EMC testing on a finished product?
Think I mostly dealt with this above, but just to reiterate, nope neither Upton nor Broadcom would have expected that *because* they expected it to be treated the same as other "development boards". In that sense, the Raspi was a victim of it's own success... had the launch been lower profile, and the demand lower, CE certification probably would not have been required initial. Indeed, it might be that RS/Farnell would not have been brought on-board so early.
The English are great at feigned ignorance, I must admit.
Casual racism... smooth! You do understand that the people running the show actually have day jobs and that they haven't done this before. They're smart people, but much of this has been a learning experience... albeit, if you've ever started a business yourself, you'd recognise the whole "on-going learning experience" that is running a business. However, since you'd don't appear to understand this, I have to assume that you're just one of these people who coasts along in life whilst snearing at others who *do* make the effort.
You seem to be making a lot of effort poking holes in a product that you apparently feel is worthless, which srikes me as odd.... it's almost as if you're some kind of... I dunno... internet troll or something! If you don't like the product and feel that other products exist and are better, buy those.
But just to get things in some kind of perspective, the Raspi is approx. 6 months late against what the foundation originally said. This seems entirely consistent with the rest of the industry as far as I can tell, but the difference here is that Upton and co. have been entirely up-front with where they are and what the problems are. And for a first effort, and entirely for charity, I'd say they've done fantastically well and should be getting credit they deserve.
**Note: this comment is entirely based on what I know purely by following the Raspi news. I'm not affiliates with the Foundation or anything, and I'm still waits for my Pi!
Re item 1) the tax is on individual components in the EU, but apparently excludes assembled PCBs.
One more time: this fabled "tax" ( technically a duty ) DOES NOT EXIST. There is no evidence of it. None. The Foundation have ignored all requests for information on it. MPs have raised questions about it in the Commons and no-one has the faintest idea what they're talking about.
I thought the first 10k batch had already been sold and they were scrambling to get them certified to be released from customs. All of a sudden they have a batch ready to give to a school. Looks just like more PR to me. Maybe I wouldn't be so suspicious if their didn't already have so much delay delivering the goods to the actual customers.
Do you already have some ideas about what you plan to do with the R-Pi? Aside the teaching programming part, it should be a wonderful platform for all sorts of embedded projects.
From what you are saying regarding the costs of discrete components vs. a finished board, perhaps someone in government should be noticing that the organisation of these regulations is stifling manufacturing in the U.K..
Again you are wrong. Acorn was not a group of academics, it was a company. IBM employes academics and undergraduates but that doesn't make them an educational establishment. I have no intention of revising the fact: Acorn were not philanthopists liasing with all the schools to produce the ideal education computer, they fought for a contract with the BBC who came up with a spec in order to make money.
You fail to see the discrepancy between your "glory days" of the BBC Micro being a bunch of foreign components glued together and the new BBC Micro being a bunch of foreign components glued together. Next you will be trying to warp semantics to justify your argument of what is a "computer". The fact is that the world is now more global. The Pi is a British designed processor, running a kernal designed by a Finnish guy, using memory designed in Asia, viewed via graphic chips designed in America, and assembled in China.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
So could someone explain to me how these $25 circuit boards are "better" than any one of the countless millions of P4 computers that we dump in the cargo holds of contaner ships heading back to China to be "recycled" into a small amount of precious metals and a whole lot of toxic waste???
Last time I looked this system required a power supply, USB keyboard and mouse, case, and a display that can accept a digital signal - in comparison, the Vic-20, Commodore 64, and Sinclair ZX-81 all came with keyboard, case & and power supply, and only required a composite video capable monitor (or a TV modulator).
This is much more like the Apple I - the circuit board that could be bought unpopulated or completed, and was quickly snapped-up by a small community of enthusiasts and then made obvious the need to offer a complete system that included a keyboard, case and power supply.
How long till Raspberry Pi offers their version of the Apple II, a system in a case with a keyboard, mouse, and power supply?
Ken
One more time: this fabled "tax" ( technically a duty ) DOES NOT EXIST. There is no evidence of it. None. The Foundation have ignored all requests for information on it. MPs have raised questions about it in the Commons and no-one has the faintest idea what they're talking about.
That should be an easy statement to back up with a citation.
I can't find one. Can you?
What? are there NO computers in the UK? making a small cheap computer is not automatically going to spark a fire in a child who is surrounded by more powerful machines every moment of their lives capable of doing the exact same thing
The Raspberry Pi charity is trying to improve computer education in British schools. Better education is important for the country.
What have you done to help?
Duty is 15% at most on electronics imported into the EU
You don't know what you're talking about. The situation is very complicated, and varies depending on the type of component and the country of origin, but, for example, the duty on DRAM imported from Korea is 32.9%.
WORST product launch ever. I just hope thats the end of rasppi drama and there wont be any more hurdles (for example lack of mpeg4 hardware acceleration, lack of camera interface documentation and so on)
This is a £16 computer intended for education, I'd be very surprised if it has either initially. If that surprises you or upsets you, perhaps you shouldn't be trying to order a £16 computer.
Has this been marketed so many dilettante geeks who didn't already know about the myriad of options may buy them? Yes
What myriad? Which other products have a multi-hundred-megahertz 32-bit processor, 128 or higher MB of RAM, and respectably powerful DSP and GPU functionality for under $40? For under $80?
The site you link to only appears to have a subset of the import tariffs based on origin country. If you click a specific product code to get to the country list it will show you the countries it has data for. If you select (e.g.) China from the drop down list at the top right, it will tell you it has no data for import tariffs on the product you selected from China. It also doesn't have data for Taiwan. As broadcom's preferred manufacturers are located in these countries, it is highly likely one or the other will be the relevant country.
To get the full list, you apparently have to pay a subscription to HMRC.
WORST product launch ever. I just hope thats the end of rasppi drama and there wont be any more hurdles (for example lack of mpeg4 hardware acceleration, lack of camera interface documentation and so on)
This is a £16 computer intended for education, I'd be very surprised if it has either initially. If that surprises you or upsets you, perhaps you shouldn't be trying to order a £16 computer.
Perhaps if it doesnt have those Rasppi foundation should stop claiming it does? At this point I treat everything they announce as a wishful thinking full of omissions at best and lie at worst.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
As you pointed out, English ignorance is feigned. Others, not so much.
So it's not useless. It's certainly of limited form factor but it has a lot of uses. I suspect the majority of Pi's purchased for home use will end up running XBMC or similar.
An American company provides a chip for a cookie cutter board built in China, surrounded by a hype and no long term plan.
This is not "the BBC micro revolution Mark 2".
Sorry.
It's a bare-bones computer for the cost of a top 10 DVD, with a FOSS OS, available for schools at a time when most state schools can barely afford to keep the lights on, let alone buy consumer grade electronics. Whether you think it's revolutionary or not, it's certainly something most educators will feel excited by.
Computing teaching in school is spotty at best, if not outright depressing. I went to a so-called "technology specialist" secondary school, and did the most computing-y course they offered (a GNVQ in "ICT"), and I don't think I learnt much above how to format a document in MS Word. I think I learnt more from the decrepit Acorn in my primary school's "computer lab" than I did from the main curriculum. My fiancee is a teacher and is computer literate, and when she teaches the kids basic computing (e.g., programming in Scratch), other teachers react as if she's some sort of genius sorcerer. Anything that can be done to bring computing teaching somewhat back to the days of the BBC Micro is a step in the right direction.
Well, it certainly isn't an exercise in teaching kids how to merely "program" because - well - we have every single deskop and laptop in the world for that. Nor is it an exercise in teaching kids how to electronically interface to the outside world - a dozen boards already provide that, as does a parallel/serial to USB interface. So what unique property do you think the Pi offers? Why exactly would anyone want a Pi, apart from "it seems hyped a lot so it must be good", please?
Assuming you're the same AC who's been posting similar comments up this thread then you seem to have paid plenty enough attention to Raspberry Pi to know that's not true. The rational of RPi has been pretty clearly laid out:
1) The is not the same supply of students arriving to universities with home programming experience as there were in recent decades.
2) The vast majority of kids no longer have access to devices for them to program:
2a) At home "the computer" is needed to do homework, and frequently for the family to access online services and retailers. It's too important to allow kids to potentially mess up programming. Kids may have access to a games console, but that's a sealed device.
2b) At school computers are reserved for ITC lessons and can't be used for programming as it "might mess up powerpoint".
(whereas in the 80s the home computer was just a recreational device and while you could use it to play games it started up to a BASIC interpretor inviting kids to try programming it).
3) These things are related and by solving (2) you can affect (1).
4) A computer that is priced at less than the cost of a textbook and can plug into a TV as display will be accessible to kids and school classrooms in a way more expensive devices are not.
5) It's possible to design, build and distribute a functioning device for less than $25/35.
You could reasonably argue that one or more of these assumptions don't hold, or that what they propose will fail, either for technical or sociological reasons to solve the problem. But saying that they are trying to do something other than teach kids how to program is silly.
As to why many people beyond educational charity supporters are interested in R-Pi: I guess because it offers a lower price point than the competitor hobbyist ARM boards; a more powerful and familiar option than microcontroller boards such as Arduino; and an easier route into projects using an embedded computer due to the mainstream distribution support.
Personally, it inspired me to want one for the picture viewer/programmable information display panel I've been meaning to build for ages. An R-Pi which runs at less than a watt will be perfect. My previous plan was to use the guts from a defunct netbook; I'd never considered ordering something like a beagle bone -- not only more expensive but needing an expansion board for video out.
Given the enthusiasm I've seen (among some) teachers and children for the device, I'm persuaded that it does serve a need not covered elsewhere. Whether slashdot readers should/should not like it, is only relevant to the degree that slashdot readers become involved in creating the software ecosystem that will be needed for this to be a success.
If you can't see how useful a commodity, tiny form factor computer (with great connectivity) that costs throw away money is then I really pity you.
Not every sentence, requires a comma.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"I reiterate my initial concern that Britain's doing fuck all today."
Mr Upton is a UK based SOC architect, I think it's safe to assume he is on the team that designed the BCM2835 therefore that's designed in the UK
PowerVR's Graphics - Imagination technology - (you know that thing that's in most mobile 3D chips) designed in UK.
Most digital radio is based on Pure's chips which again are designed by imagination technology
CSR - the basis of most bluetooth devices, again UK.
Cytrix, UK based
Symbian - about half of their development was UK - ok bad example perhaps.
ARM - nuff said.
okay I'm biased here being Uk based and see this stuff all around me, I have friends who work for qualcom or ARM or doing wierd stuff with Sonar they can't really talk about or one guy who works on evidence management systems for the police. My ex boss has semi-retired and now designs car stereos, if you have a new BMW chances are you have one of his designs in your car.
That's without mentioning all the bio-tech, or engine design, or architecture based here. The two largest European engineering projects of the last two decades are both currently happening in London right now.
The vast majority of F1 engineering is done in the UK.
Now I won't argue most of these are a fairly niche areas, but there is stuff going on. That's without going into all the silly stuff going on in finance and internet fads. there may be few sucessful UK based companies, but there is no shortage of engineering or science in all its forms.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
What?