Raspberry Pi Founder Interview: How do we make everyone a DIY hacker

Original source: linux.cn

Keep in mind that it is for those who like to toss a computer for as long as 35 dollars

I'll never forget the first time I saw the Raspberry Pi. The small, credit-card-sized computer is powerful enough to be used as a general home PC, Media Center, video game console, or anything else you can imagine. With a price of $35, it's a small thing for anyone of any age to have, and can churn hardware and software tests without worrying about damaging expensive home computers.

Eben Upton, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is often hailed as the magician behind this magical machine. At the University of Cambridge's computer lab, he was painstakingly crafting a Raspberry Pi prototype when he studied his PhD in philosophy.

Today, Upton is the CEO of a trading company under the Raspberry Pi Foundation, overseeing the production and sales of Raspberry Pi, which currently sells to 2.5 million units.

The pie in the sky

ReadWrite: What made you so interested in technology at the beginning? How does it accidentally lead you to create a Raspberry Pi project?

Eben Upton: I started to be interested in technology when I was a kid. I have a father who has a great interest in engineering, he is not an engineer, but an English teacher. We often have all kinds of electronic devices piled up in our house, and I started fiddling with them when we didn't know what they were doing. are small things, such as the bedside of a lamp, in the "Turn off the lights" after you can continue reading and so on.

Then I had a computer. In Britain, we call this machine the BBC Micro-computer, which is actually a 8-bit microcontroller for teaching. When we came into contact with the machine at school, I learned how to program it, and I liked it quite a lot.

These machines are not necessarily programmed at school, or they are not intended to be programmed at all, and are generally run by teaching software. But I programmed it, then I bought a home, after I bought this BBC microcomputer, I was in the room, never come out. Laugh

Programming is amazing for kids. When you are a child, there is not much power. Without obedient followers, there are many restrictions on the side. The great thing about programming is that it's a small world that lets you do whatever you want. And that certainly makes me irresistible.

I've always been interested in science and math, and science. I did a lot of computing and programming on my BBC microcomputer, and then I had a Commodore Amiga.

I studied physics, engineering and computer science at university. This is the reason for the idea of the Raspberry Pi project, because when I was in school for 10 years [when I was reading a PhD], I found that the new children did not have a chance to gain experience when they were young. You may still have Lego toys, but it's not the ladder we want.

To a certain extent, we removed the ladder behind us. We built these very complex and user-friendly computers for children, or not just computers, but also video game consoles, telephones and tablets, and some home appliances. However, people do not have a chance to change their own. So in fact, the Raspberry Pi is back to the original attempt, of course, not too primitive, hoping to find in the past 25 years computer development lost that feeling.

RW: What are the biggest obstacles you need to overcome?

EU: Well, we don't have any investors, and of course it's a good thing. We've been trying to do this since 2006, and you can see it took us a long time to turn the Raspberry Pi from an idea into something to sell. It is important to find a balance between price and performance, or between price and programmability.

Another trouble is raising money. We're nonprofit organizations, so we've got to get someone to sponsor, and that ends up being a few of the board's own pockets. We have $250,000 of start-up money borrowed from me and a few other members. So I think it was quite courageous to do so.

From East to west

In order to find the right way to produce the price, we chose an unusual route. Often when people produce more traditional products, they choose to produce them locally when the equivalent is small, and then the [manufacturers] make higher prices. Most can get a bigger profit than raspberry pie.

So they start producing in the West. Then, in order to pursue higher profits, when the product has a certain amount will want to reduce production costs, so transfer to the Far East region.

Our problem is that we made the first batch of products in China because we did not have enough profit to support the order of this model. Of course there is a bad feeling at first. I don't know anything about Chinese manufacturing, and finally, we hand over $50,000 worth of chips and $50,000 in cash to a Hong Kong person who needs to give us 2000 pieces of Raspberry Pi that we can work on.

After the delivery period there was a delay, we even began to believe that they were cheated. Then one day, 2.5 million of the first 2000 of Raspberry Pi were placed on the pallet to the door.

The UPS courier dragged a pallet from the truck and pulled it into our garage. There are 2000 Raspberry Pi on the board, each of which is much stronger than the one I used when I was a child. We randomly check a few units, can work perfectly.

So I think it's kind of lucky, China, you know. Then our product finally began to have quantity, we chose to be different from all other people's direction. I think this is another defining moment in this project, and we recognize that with the current order volume, we can use the same costs in China as in the west to produce. So we can go back and move all the manufacturing to Wales, where I was born. It's like a wonderful circle.

RW: are there any Raspberry Pi predecessors that were not made?

EU: Yes, we do a lot of different prototypes. We want to make something that can be programmed and interesting to the children. "Attracting children's interests" means being strong enough in some ways. For example, play videos, play games, and surf the internet.

We have many prototypes that can meet price targets and programmable targets, but by the end of 2010 2011, when we decided on a suitable solution, it was strong enough to attract the children's enthusiasm.

Where did the pie get baked?

RW: tell us about the creation of the Raspberry Pi story.

EU: We've tried several machines based on so-called microcontroller technology. I wonder if you have ever heard of an [open source electronic prototyping] platform called Arduino? Their performance with Arduino is a level, the advantage is very easy to buy, is a common component, very cheap, but also easy to master.

So we tried it. The final product can only be technically or a computer, and you can connect it to a TV or other display device. However, it is too primitive to attract children's interest. This is a prototype, which is on display in a museum in Ireland called the "Failure" exhibition [laughter]. I'll go and see it next month. It is now loaded in a glass box, as a typical of a brilliant failure.

The good side is that it's handmade, and you can't craft a modern Raspberry Pi. However, this prototype is too primitive, you can actually put all the parts manually welded together, it is my one weeks to do, is a very good small toys.

After almost 10 years in college, I went to work for a company called Broadcom, headquartered in Southern California but had a big office in Cambridge, mainly producing mobile phone chips. Then, I realized that this kind of cell phone chip is very suitable, it is a very suitable platform for the production of devices such as pie, because it has excellent graphics performance.

I created a prototype based on the Broadcom development tool. The prototype is very powerful and has more features, and the price is similar. The problem, however, is that it has a custom development environment rather than a standard platform.

We have to write our own SD card driver, your own file system, your own text editor. You will find that you have to do a lot of basic work, although in the end you can get a powerful programmable platform, but it is completely non-standard [and] and other devices completely different. This makes it impossible to reuse the work that has already been done on desktop systems. This is number second prototype machine.

The real breakthrough is the No. Third prototype machine. We got another chip from Broadcom that uses the ARM processor to run standard Linux directly. We realize that we can finally make a machine that meets all the needs, and that's what we're bringing to market.

Black a black Next generation hack

RW: The eight-year-old started using Raspberry Pi as a project. Did it happen to you, or did you surprise me?

EU: Eight years is a good age. I think everyone will define the age at which they start programming. I was eight years old to start programming. To some extent, what children need is age-old enough to have a relatively complete cognitive skill, or a problem-solving skill. Maybe it's enough to learn a little maths in school.

Old enough to be able to schedule tasks, programming is the ultimate planning task. Still have to have a certain intellectual base to do this thing. At the age of eight, most children are already very mature in their thinking. There is also a need for agility, and the problem for smaller children is that they are not smart enough to use the keyboard.

So, eight years old is a very good age. You have the right body, the right mind, and you are in a life where you can easily learn new knowledge. Your brain also has a very large plasticity that can learn languages ...

I mean, if you want your child to learn French, start teaching him at the age of eight and don't wait until you're 16. Formal computer education has a historic drawback, which is that it's too late to start, and then it's amazing why students have difficulty understanding concepts. So I think the sooner the contact is better, the eight-year-old is a wonderful age. Eight-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 12-year-old may be a little late.

Our foundation's ceo,lance [Howarth] is particularly enthusiastic about primary education. He really thinks it's an actual opportunity to do something very special.

RW: So this is the purpose of the Raspberry Pi project, so that kids program?

EU: I think we've always thought that kids can play programming just for example. But the purpose of the Raspberry Pi is to make this thing out and see who will buy it. We have always believed that at least some young children will find it exciting. Now we have the breadth and scale of knowledge to support children playing with it.

There's a big difference between making a platform like a Raspberry Pi and providing support, and if you just do it, you'll find that 1% of eight-year-olds will love it and play it, no matter how much or less support you provide.

I think a practical opportunity for the foundation now is that we can afford to develop the materials, and we can also advocate training teachers in this field. There is a chance that we can attract more children than 1%. Another opportunity is to attract smart kids who don't have the inclination to deal with complex technical problems alone. If you can provide good tutorials and teaching materials that interest them, you will be able to attract 10%,20%,50% and even more children.

We think the 80 's is the golden age of [learning programming], and in fact, only a few people learn to program and reach a certain depth. Most people may be able to write a few lines, but it is rare to be able to write large programs.

So I think we now have a real chance because we can get involved in the teaching materials and the level of teacher training, we may be able to surpass the 80 's. Now there are more participants and more equality between the sexes. In the 80 's, programming was largely a matter for boys, and this was reflected in the composition of our engineer community. I think there is a good chance for more girls to get in touch with computer programming. This is the lowest hanging fruit on the branches, to do this, the number of people immediately increased by half.

There are plenty of opportunities, and the best thing I can do for Raspberry Pi is that we've got a bit of size to draw attention from some people.

Everyone's pie.

RW: What does it mean for you to have a potential demand for a project like pi? Do we all become DIY hackers someday?

EU: Yes, I mean, that's it. There is a very large demand for this. And I think there's a bond that leads to the community of producers. The American producer community is much more mature than the UK. We did hold producer rallies and hacker space, but almost 5 years behind the United States.

So after I started talking about Raspberry Pi, I found something that, when it came to international concern, we found that we were sought after by members of some very stable communities who liked all kinds of DIY activities: weaving, or, you know, carpentry.

So this is one of the factors that has led to an unexpected increase in Raspberry Pi. The authors use it as a module for building their own projects. This is great!

RW: What do you think of the mainstream hardware hacker culture now appearing?

EU: I think it's wonderful, isn't it? This is completely impossible in the field of software engineering. I had a software background before I contacted them, so I was amazed that most of the cool things people made with Raspberry Pi were hardware-related. Of course it's not that surprising now, but it was there at first.

I think this is a very positive trend, based on all these factors. Because it brings the relevant experience to the children. In my opinion, it's cool to move a pixel on the screen, but in fact it's not as cool as it was in the 80 's. I think that moving things in the real world, like robots, is really cool for kids today.

When there is more practicality, it attracts more girls. There is a potential trend to try and design science and technology activities for girls. But it's not really about girls, it's about expanding the user's demands.

There's a small section-I've talked about 1% of children who would find abstract computer programming interesting. "Let's start learning variables!" "I was one of them. But that's only a small part, and it looks like much more of a boy. I don't know if it's cultural or otherwise, but it looks like this is the world.

When people talk about the pursuit of practicality to attract girls, it's not about girls at all. But to attract all but the small number of boys. Not only attracts girls, but also other boys.

From an educational point of view, one of the wonderful things is that using computers in the real world to do something practical is more useful than just doing something on the computer itself. So, this provides a way to attract girls into the field, as well as to attract more boys into the field.

No longer is a person very good. Being able to join this wave of interest, along with many people who make real-world things, is also a wonderful thing. I know a guy in Southern California who has two interests in Daoteng and making his chain armor. Someone doing these things is a wonderful thing in itself.

Share your pie.

RW: for a "practical" project that attracts more than 1% people, can you give me an example?

EU: The whole field of robotics is a good example. A lot of people are based on sending small robots to make them run or do something for four weeks. Especially now, we have added the camera module, can realize the computer vision to some extent.

I think other camera-based projects will become more active. Those engaged in field photography, as well as people engaged in time-lapse photography, have a wide range of applications because of the $25 camera module. There is also an infrared version of the module, so you can shoot wild animals at night-write scripts to take photos at night, and then choose to save them with the action. These are very good.

I particularly like any item that is applied to a balloon in the sky. Environmental monitoring-Some British high school students in Indiegogo launched a project called Airpi, a Pollution surveillance defense system, the bottom of which will be used for Raspberry Pi. So there will be many such projects that you can send to deal with physical, or chemical, or biological things. -These are things that I think are practical. It is also easier to prove to children that this is a project that deserves their attention.

RW: When can we see the Raspberry Pi C type?

EU: There are no plans for the time being. We are still working on the software at the moment. I think we have a chance to tweak the software to dramatically improve the performance of the system and then optimize it.

If we start making the C type now, we will discard 2.5 million users who use the current platform. So I think, at least for now, we're determined to continue working on the software because it helps all those who are already in this field. We feel that there is a lot of room for performance improvement through software optimization.

Obviously, we also have to do a little [hardware] thing. I really don't know exactly when. If we get to 2017,2018, we're still selling Raspberry Pi type B, that's pretty bad. But I think we may have to think about what to do later in a year.

RW: Many people's projects use both the pie and Arduino (a DIY Electronic debugging tool kit). Did you consider a tool like Arduino when you were designing the pie?

EU: not really, but we realized early on that the media might be inclined to treat us and Arduino as competitors. We're a little paranoid about this, I think, because I think the pie and Arduino are dealing with different things, and they're doing well.

We didn't design it to work with Arduino, but the Arduino was designed to work with a home PC. So, we actually made a very low-power home pc for Arduino. So all right, it's just a coincidence, I guess.

RW: What do you do at home with Raspberry Pi? What about the job?

EU: at home, I think of it as a media center; this is a very common application of Raspberry Pi. Interestingly, some people who are engaged in consumer electronics use it as consumer electronics. Of course I am one of them.

At work, I always do not have as much time as I want to play Raspberry Pi. Usually at work if you're using pies, that's because I need to test some of the software updates that I just got. Most of the time I use it to check whether the contractor I have paid for has done the job well.

I really hope there will be more rest time next year. Sometimes I feel that besides the media Center, I was involved in making such a magical toy, but because it was so successful, I had no time to play it well.

However, it is also a pleasure to see so many people like it and to see it being found in a variety of different places. I heard that we were mentioned in the Big Bang, and I'm going to find out which episode it is. It appears in all of these incredible places. It was really nice to see so many people take it to heart and start doing something with it.

This article comes from: Raspberry Pi Lab
Link Address: http://shumeipai.nxez.com/2014/08/19/how-we-let-everyone-become-diy-hackers.html

Raspberry Pi Founder interview: How we make everyone a DIY hacker