https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-47143411:
The team behind the pocket-sized Raspberry Pi computer is opening its first high street store in the city where it was invented.
In a move bucking the online retail trend, the company will open an "experimental space" in Cambridge.
The firm will also now offer a new starter kit of parts - to accompany the popular tiny computer.
Founder Eben Upton said he hoped the shop would attract customers who were "curious" about the brand.
The store opens in Cambridge's Grand Arcade shopping centre on Thursday.
It will offer merchandise and advice on the use of the popular computer, which measures 3.4in by 2.1in (8.6cm by 5.3cm) and is designed to encourage people to try coding and programming.
The story does not mention if the street address was 314 something something.
Related Stories
Physics World has a pair of articles on Eben Upton, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. One is an interview about the growing role that Raspberry Pi computers has in industrial activities and the other concentrates on his background, which was originally in physics.
From the interview on the Raspberry Pi in industrial settings:
I'm seeing an increasing focus on communications, making it easier for computers to interact with the real world. There isn't so much excitement anymore in doing lots and lots of maths really fast on one computer in isolation, and we actually see this on the educational side of our business.
When we built the first Raspberry Pi, I didn't want to put input-output pins on it, because I thought kids would be interested in using them to write programs. Of course, what children actually love doing with Raspberry Pi is interacting with the real world, building weather stations and robot controllers and things like that. And maybe that was a harbinger of things to come, or the kids were attuned to the zeitgeist more than we were. The kinds of things they were interested in then are the things we're all interested in now, which is working out what problems computers can solve for you. And now that the era of free returns is coming to an end, I think we can broaden that question out a little bit.
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: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Friday February 08 2019, @07:45AM (1 child)
There's also the official announcement [raspberrypi.org] with a lot more detail than the BBC article. Given the large number of "former" microsofters high up at the BBC, I'm surprised there was an article at all. It is interesting and perhaps tragic to note that the store will be cashless [raspberrypi.org].
The store seems like a good idea and the goal of introducing computing and programming to the British is likely to be furthered by its presence. Good on them.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @10:12AM
They could at least accept crypto, though there are some crypto-backed/denominated cards in Europe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 08 2019, @10:10AM (3 children)
On the topic of Rasberry Pi, I recently learned that RISC OS [wikipedia.org] was open-sourced [riscosopen.org] late last year. Images had been available for the Pi for some time, but the source is now under the Apache license. Peronally, I am more interested in the BeagleBone builds, as I have both an Always Innovating Touch Book and an OpenPandora which are based on the BB.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 08 2019, @04:40PM (2 children)
The Touchbook has been out of production since 2011 and the OpenPandora out of production since 2013. Apparently there's a successor to the OpenPandora, but it's on pre-order currently for $500+ Euros. I can roll my own for significantly less dosh.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by BeaverCleaver on Friday February 08 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)
I assume you mean the Dragonbox Pyra, which I've posted about here before. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ [pyra-handheld.com]
I challenge the assertion that you can make one for cheaper. 3 custom PCBs and all the supporting components? A nice high resolution LCD? Custom case moulds? Supporting software? Even if you're just remixing TI's reference designs you have a significant amount of work there. I'd love to see more competition in this space though. The Cosmo and the Gemini are quite lacking, and the Pyra is, as you say, not available yet. As soon as a decent open-source, clamshell mini computer is released, with a hardware keyboard, I for one will be flinging money at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @08:40AM
If you are okay with Intel and poor linux support, there are also the GPD devices (Win/Pocket) and One Mix Yoga line of what would have been called UMPCs in the past.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 08 2019, @03:29PM (2 children)
If it has a genius bar, do they card people for being a genius in order to be served?
How about an article: Getting Grounded On The Raspberry Pi.
But then you want to be careful not to become a conduction path to ground.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 08 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)
Does it sell raspberry pies and raspberry drinks?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 08 2019, @04:57PM
Only if you turn it into a vending machine. Otherwise, it's just a tiny single board computer.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"