Future plans, thoughts on OLPC, and immigration upwards the Canonical misunderstanding

TS: Are yous working on new models of the Pi or just focusing on the ii that are already out?

I think it's very of import to have a stable platform and at present that we've picked our platform we're sticking with it -- we're non going to brand significant changes. Where we are doing tweaks is in manufacturability. Making it easy to manufacture, and reducing the defect rate. These are well-nigh invisible tweaks and is a very common procedure with new technology: you lot start out with a version and so you lot do very small-scale revisions to it in order to improve the DFM (design for manufacturability). As we build tens of thousands of units we acquire what is and what isn't working at the factory, and nosotros just do these little tweaks just to improve them.

But actually doing functionality changes or launching a new product, we don't want to do that because we would so upset those who've already committed to the Raspberry Pi. I don't think that would really be off-white.

Canonical made the decision non to support AMRv6 anymore. That'due south a commercial determination. It was an inconvenient decision for united states of america because we did all of our development using Ubuntu 9.04.

TS: Out-of-the-box the Raspberry Pi comes with no software whatsoever then users currently take to load the Os on an SD card themselves. Taking this into account, when you call back about intended audience, who comes to mind? Practise you have whatsoever plans to improve this out-of-the-box experience?

The current audience is a very technologically savvy 1. You expect at some of the things people post on our forums and you'll discover that some incredibly technically capable users from the Linux community using the Raspberry Pi at the moment. I think that for the current audience what we have is very suitable.

A lot of less technical users are going to desire to buy an SD carte du jour with a pre-installed operating system, they're non going to want that step of doing information technology themselves. Nosotros are working with our partners to provide pre-installed SD cards with the Pi kit for people that are less cost sensitive, but since the focus is on cost we don't want to add another few dollars to the price if we don't have to.

Merely for the educational activity market it's plain going to need to come up with an SD bill of fare. I think a lot of people are going to benefit from having a pre-installed bill of fare, and of course once you lot have that we can preload a load of educational software onto it so they'll get a much smoother out of the box experience.

TS: We know the Raspberry Pi can't run Ubuntu because the Bone doesn't back up the ARM-based processor you are using. Merely we were surprised to hear that non simply Canonical wasn't interested in supporting your flake, they were quite vocal about trying to stop you from even mentioning Ubuntu.

We actually take a proficient human relationship with Canonical. What happened is nosotros had an interaction with a senior community fellow member, not Canonical itself, maybe he didn't phrase what he wanted to say very well and probably I shouldn't have reacted to that.

Approved made the decision non to support AMRv6 anymore. That's a commercial conclusion -- probably a sensible and proficient commercial decision if you await at what Canonical is trying to do with Ubuntu.

It was an inconvenient determination for u.s.a. because we did all of our evolution using Ubuntu 9.04. Until August last year the Pi was all an Ubuntu platform, and so when nosotros beginning appear the machine, nosotros but causeless nosotros were going to apply Ubuntu and were very happy with it. Then all suddenly I knew Ubuntu would cease working for us and we had i person tell us "please stop proverb you're going to utilise Ubuntu." Probably because we were a little naive or inexperienced we assumed that represented the views of Approved.

And then we are very hopeful. We accept no plans to make a new Raspberry Pi yet, but if we ever do a new Raspberry Pi that had a v7 core in it, I remember we probably would go dorsum and try and get Ubuntu. It is one of the more polished and professional person desktop environments. We take a lot of respect for them.

TS: Have you been approached by any other big proper name IT companies to collaborate with yous?

IBM did some actually dainty work with the Raspberry Pi at their Impact briefing in Las Vegas recently. We also have a number of boards out with major IT companies -- zippo specific to announce -- just people who are interested in using it to do a range of stuff from web development to embedded applications.

The level of interest has been great. I retrieve people do capeesh that this is a potentially revolutionary development, non necessarily the Raspberry Pi only the advent of cheap commodity ARM-based hardware. People are interested to understand what that tin can mean for their business organisation.

TS: We noticed that you recently posted schematics for the Model B. Do you plan to open source these designs or in some way encourage other companies, or perhaps governments on developing countries, to imitate the schematic of the Pi and build their own inexpensive computers?

We don't have anything appear at the moment. I judge the limitation is some of the chips that are in the Pi are not currently bachelor in full general distribution. What this means is that even if we did release the hardware designs it wouldn't matter much since people wouldn't be able to go the chips to build the device.

Nosotros are thinking about ways to deal with this and hope to make some progress maybe in the next few months.

TS: We've seen the gertboard, which works as an add-in carte du jour to command and dispense concrete devices like motors or sensors. What other application have yous seen working with the Pi already, and looking frontwards, what kind of tasks do you foresee the Pi performing?

For the moment about of the stuff people have washed with the Pi has been software stuff, because information technology's easy and quick to do. You accept people using it every bit a media center, serving web pages, running graphics applications, and so on. Those are the things that I've seen so far.

But regarding possible uses in the future we've heard from a lot of people wanting to use it for robotics, perchance aslope the Arduino platform. There's a thing called the Arduino Uno, which is an Arduino with a USB interface, and we've seen people connecting the Raspberry Pi to information technology to drive hardware. Arduino already has a well developed ready of software tools. I think nosotros are going to come across a lot of this.

TS: What are your thoughts on other similar initiatives like One-Laptop-Per Child? They struggled to meet their target prices and haven't seen the level of adoption they certainly would have hoped for. Where practice you call back they failed and you were able to succeed?

OLPC was very ambitious. It was trying to provide solutions to a community of people who we could never hope to provide a solution for. Their systems were meant for places often with very limited electric power and people who didn't already accept a monitor to connect the computer to.

Because of this it had to be a laptop. They had to have a bombardment — they came upward with solutions like a hand crevice to accuse them and stuff — and the machines had to be very very robust and then the brandish and hinge wouldn't suspension. Plus, at the time there weren't necessarily the powerful ARM based processors that are available today, then they had to go with x86 hardware which is more expensive.

All of this tends to drive upwardly toll but what information technology also does is increment the minimum economic quantity of the devices -- that is the smallest number of devices that you can make economically.

The netbook marketplace exists because of OLPC. Sometimes a project can't run across its goals but it can nonetheless transform the world, and I would suggest OLPC probably did that.

I tin can brand x,000 Raspberry Pi's for the aforementioned unit of measurement toll I can brand 1 million Raspberry Pis. At that place's a curve, of course, merely that curve for the Raspberry Pi flattens very speedily. You very rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns. In fact, I retrieve the minimum economical quantity for the Raspberry Pi is probably in the 2,000 unit region. This is because we have a very simple slice of hardware. It'south got no moving parts, no display, not fifty-fifty a case, simply a circuit lath with some components. What this means is that we were able to start modest selling to individuals even a unmarried Raspberry Pi and grow from there.

I'm only seeing this from the exterior but I think the chief difficulty that OLPC encountered is that their minimum economic quantity was very high, and so they had to and get these large authorities orders in order to justify building enough units so they could hitting their cost targets. I don't know what the minimum economic quantity for OLPC was but it was probably hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, and they had trouble to achieve that.

I don't think it'due south necessarily about us beingness smarter than the OLPC guys. I call back it's almost trying to practice something that's fundamentally simpler. I mean we provide devices for people who already have electricity and screens and stuff. They were trying to do something much more complicated.

TS: The concept was pretty assuming back then but somehow it was really Asus who popularized the form cistron and then it became a big category that every for-profit visitor wanted a piece of.

That's the affair. Nosotros should give OLPC credit. They created the netbook market. Maybe netbooks are now beingness replaced by tablets but the fact is that netbook market exists because of OLPC. Sometimes a project cannot meet its goals but it tin however transform the world, and I would propose OLPC probably did that.

TS: To close our interview nosotros'd like to ask a question that will become part of a characteristic nosotros're starting at TechSpot with interviewees. Besides a Raspberry Pi, we presume, what else is on your desk-bound? Tell united states of america near the platforms you rely on day in and mean solar day out for desktop computing, mobile and other any other gadgets.

I'grand a ThinkPad guy. Day to 24-hour interval I utilize a ThinkPad X40. I used to piece of work for IBM and I had my outset ThinkPad in 1996 -- it had a 486SX-25 processor I think. And so I've always been a ThinkPad guy.

I accept ane of those and a desktop machine for gaming, which was a very loftier-spec car when I got it but it'due south not really anymore. I retrieve information technology's an Asus P5B Deluxe with an E6400 processor in information technology only quite a nice modern graphics card. I exercise almost of my gaming on my PS3 these days, though.

A lot of the Raspberry Pi success is down to my married woman Liz. She has done all of our marketing communications for the last twelvemonth. She uses a very loftier-cease MacBook Pro and she keeps trying to tempt me across. She keeps saying "Os X is based on UNIX, just give up on Windows and come across use UNIX like existent people!". I don't know, perhaps I'll become a Macbook Air. It's awfully tempting but I'k not fix even so.

For mobile I utilise a corporate BlackBerry. I'm a actually primitive mobile user. I had a Lumia 800 for a while and a Nokia N900 -- they expect identical from the exterior simply the N900 is probably a meliorate telephone, I do similar Meego. But mostly I just employ my BlackBerry.

Thank you Eben, information technology's been a pleasure talking with you. We wish you the all-time of luck on your project!

Make sure you lot check out TechSpot's review and initial how-to guide of the Raspberry Pi. This interview is the starting time on a series of articles we'll be publishing in the coming months, where nosotros talk to some of the tech manufacture'due south leaders and visionaries. Nosotros are calling this special feature THINK Information technology.