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Tom's Hardware is reporting that Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of its $5 Raspberry Pi Zero to meet demand from ventilator manufacturers which are using the board in their designs. The higher end Raspberry Pi boards are also reasonable desktop units for many typical home office uses, so they are being distributed in place of laptops to many working at home for the NHS. The Raspberry Pi is a low wattage single-board computer with convenient input-output hardware suitable for embedded applications but running a full Debian-based GNU/Linux distro, Raspbian.
As the need for ventilators grows, manufacturers are looking for control boards to serve as the brains of their devices. Recently, Intel was reportedly asked to produce 20,000 Broadwell processors to meet demand from medical companies. Because of its production abilities, Raspberry Pi Foundation is able to provide those orders quickly.
"One of the main challenges with rapidly scaling manufacture of products like this is that you may be able to surge production of the air-handling elements, but you still need to provide the control element: often the components you need are on 20-week lead times and (hopefully) we'll be out of the other side of this pandemic by then," said Eben Upton, CEO and Founder of Raspberry Pi. "Raspberry Pi 'builds to stock' rather than 'building to order,' so we generally have products either on-hand or in the pipeline with short lead times."
Even though Raspberry Pi builds to stock, the organization has still experienced a shortage of Raspberry Pi Zero Units, due to demand from consumers as well as the foundation's desire to hold stock for ventilator manufacturers. Upton says that the organization produced 192,000 Zero-line (Pi Zero / Zero W) products in Q1 but plans to increase that number to 250,000 going forward.
The BBC is reporting that Raspberry Pi-based ventilators are currently being tested in several locations. No word yet on how the certification process is going.
Related:
Raspberry Pi will power ventilators for COVID-19 patients
Raspberry Pi's $5 model is powering ventilators to fight coronavirus
Previously:
(2020) Company Prioritizes $15k Ventilators Over Cheaper Model Specified in Contract
(2020) Professional Ventilator Design "Open Sourced" Today by Medtronic
(2019) Interview with Eben Upton on Studies, the Raspberry Pi and IoT
(2019) Raspberry Pi Opens First High Street Store in Cambridge
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Releases Compute Module 3+, the Last 40nm-Based RasPi
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Announces RISC-V Foundation Membership
(2015) Raspberry Pi's Latest Computer Costs Just $5
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:56PM (19 children)
RasPI runs Linux most commonly. And a few other OSes. I think there is even an OS that is more arduino-like but runs on RasPI.
So what OS is used in this medical application?
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(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:58PM (1 child)
systemdOS, duh.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:43PM
You mean, simply: systemd
The OS part is "absorbed" into systemd. The kernel will be absorbed. And . . .
You know how parking enforcement can put a boot on your car? Well now you can do the same thing to your computer! Introducing systemd-boot. It's better than GRUB, well, because.
Next the hardware will be absorbed and called systemd. Then the manufacturers. Etc.
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:29PM (9 children)
Hopefully an OS that doesn't need the patient to hold his breath while 1 GB of security fixes download.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:41PM (3 children)
I don't think Windows runs on this hardware.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:23PM (2 children)
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-install-windows-10-iot-raspberry-pi-3 [windowscentral.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 14 2020, @10:03PM (1 child)
That's not Windows. It doesn't even have a GUI.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 14 2020, @10:10PM
https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-10-on-arm-is-running-on-raspberry-pi-4-and-so-much-faster-than-pi-3 [techradar.com]
https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/02/09/heres-how-windows-10-runs-on-raspberry-pi-4-and-3/ [windowslatest.com]
Full Windows 10 (not the IoT version) can run on RasPi 3 and 4.
Pi Zero? Nah.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:47PM (4 children)
Hopefully an OS that doesn't need the patient to hold his breath while 1 GB of security fixes download.
I hope they are using the model without networking or bluetooth. The full hardware specifications [raspberrypi.org] are more detailed. However in a nutshell, the most basic model of Raspberry Pi Zero has no networking:
I would expect that is the model they are going with. However, that model is ridiculously hard to get in quantity and the Raspberry Pi Zero W model is afflicted with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Bluetooth Low Energy and is much more common. I hope they are using the Zero and not Zero W. The updates could be managed by turning off the machine and then putting in a new microSD card, which is not a highly-skilled task.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday April 14 2020, @07:51PM
This is based on what I've read on the forums.
Production has apparently been low and intermittent for all Zero models. They aren't sold at a loss, but they are closer to break-even than other models. They have tried to keep the supply for individuals in check by enforcing one-per-customer-transaction at the $5/$10 price, but large users could always bulk order them directly from RPi Trading if they needed them. So the ventilator manufacturers will be able to get what they need, and this boost in production is meant to address that.
It is even possible to get customized Raspberry Pis:
https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-76955/l/raspberry-pi-customization-service [element14.com]
Maybe add a real time clock?
Even if these are sold much higher than $5-$15, it should be negligible compared to the rest of the ventilator.
I would be surprised if they get hacked. Just because it has wireless doesn't mean it would be connected to the internet, and I doubt anybody would risk approaching or entering a coronavirus-filled hospital to try to hack these at short range with the intention of killing patients. Go ahead, build a ventilator with Zero W in it.
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(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 15 2020, @06:20AM (1 child)
The article specifically says that it is a Raspberry Pi Zero that is being used
The current version of Raspberry Pi Zero claims both Bluetooth and 802.11n WIFI.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 15 2020, @06:22AM
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday April 16 2020, @10:14AM
> I hope they are using the model without networking or bluetooth.
Why would that make a difference? Just because a machine has BT/networking hardware on it, does not mean it has to be used, or even turned on. Indeed I don't think I have ever used the onboard BT of the pi. If I don't configure and enable it, its just dead silicon.
Sure, if you can get the pi without that stuff cheaper for your project, that is great, but if it is urgent you get it quickly, and it is not a pure profit driven motive, I don't see a problem with using whatever meets your minimum specs, even if it has hardware/features you will not use.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:35PM (2 children)
So what OS is used in this medical application?
Interesting question. Maybe that is too political a question these days, or maybe it has too political an answer. It'll likely get you permanently banned from their support forum if you ask there.
That aside, I couldn't find mention of the operating system in any of the articles. Nor could I find any links in the articles to the code which is purportedly under an Open Source license. The code would give a definitive answer. I saw there was something on M$ GitHub about ventilators but that project used both javascript and python, and I figure neither of which would pass an audit for real-time situations.
Thus reduced to making a purely unqualified guess, totally in the dark on many levels, I would guess that the operating system would be something around a Linux kernel modified for real-time operation. That rules out Raspbian. It is also essential that the device start up properly and predictably and then stay running so I would further guess that by necessity that systemd is not part of the equation, so that rules out Raspbian again plus several others. However the operating system could even be QNX since that is supposed to run on the Raspberry Pi. But there are not many choices for real-time kernels.
I'd also worry about the microSD card coming loose or failing. The board has a lot of uses, but the main one is for education. There the whole system is on the microSD card and by swapping out the card you get essentially a new machine. That is unlike other more industrial control oriented single board computers which have onboard flash which cannot be shaken, knocked, or pulled loose accidentally -- at least not in any way the board and its peripherals would be likely to survive.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @03:56AM (1 child)
Why would an application like this need a real time OS? I would think the time latencies between all the necessary sensor measurements can very easily handle many tens of milliseconds.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @04:49AM
That's not what real-time means. The most important part is that the order of execution is completely defined.
(Score: 2) by knarf on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:42PM
It is fairly likely to be a Linux variant, a stable Debian derivative would do fine. Remember that Windows has found its way into a number of medical appliances ranging from CT scanners to X-ray machines. A ventilator is a relatively simple device control-wise, it has a number of sensors which need monitoring at a lowish sample rate and controls a few outputs - pump, heating, oxygen etc. As long as the thing doesn't run a background updater or some extraneous network-connected services which could react negatively to outside input it should do just fine.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday April 14 2020, @07:52PM
Hopefully FreeBSD, FreeRTOS
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 14 2020, @11:38PM
'eh, likely some stripped down version of Linux. Whether it's a modified Rasbian or otherwise.
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(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday April 16 2020, @10:11AM
> So what OS is used in this medical application?
I don't know, but when I have designed pi-based appliances/embedded systems that did not need real-time performance, I don't use a full fat distro (especially not one with systemD). My most common option is tinycore linux (http://www.tinycorelinux.net/) because it runs fully in the pi RAM, so doesn't wear out the SD card, and does all I need of it. If the ventilators don't need real-time performance, I would expect them to use something like this.
If I need something a bit more "full-fat", I tend to run FreeBSD on the Pi.
I have not looked into RTOS that runs on a pi just yet, but I may well do soon for a project. Does anyone know of a OSS RTOS for the pi?