RPi use cases explained

Here is my take on this odd situation.  There are several needs and types of stakeholders in the Pi ecosystem:

• Conceptual need in EE.  Eben Upton has many times related the problems he experienced while doing student recruitment  at university, where each year's intake candidates were seemingly  less technically experienced than the last.  I can well believe that, because we saw exactly that same problem in my own engineering department, to the point where we had to provide catch-up courses to bring part of the student intake up to the level where they could  understand basic 1st-year EE lectures.  Making very cheap hardware available that encourages experimentation by inquisitive youngsters does seem to address part of the problem squarely by fostering interest and offering direct experience with hardware.  However, it doesn't address the gap in mathematics and foundational science skills.

• Improving IT education.  The UK has a specific problem in school-level IT education, in that over time it became nothing more than vocational training in office skills.  Clearly there is much room for improvement there, but this is almost entirely unrelated to the skills shortage observed in EE recruitment.  CompSci departments might benefit a little if programming were taught in schools, but not a lot because lack of programming skills is not the bottleneck,  Stronger maths skills would be vastly more useful than programming knowledge, and would help EE as much as every other branch of engineering and the physical sciences.  Also, programming is almost always vocational training with just a smidgeon of CompSci education acquired by osmosis on the side, and very rapidly becomes dated.  To compound matters further, a high-level language with a lot of abstraction would tend to be chosen for programming education, which means that pupils would tend to learn little about computer fundamentals unless they have an awesome teacher who explains the foundations along with the programming.

• Cheap media centre.  Don't laugh, this is a major stakeholder group for Pi.  What's more, RPF have always known this, because they have promoted the very strong media capability of the Broadcom SoC countless times in their blog.  They even went as far as to sell licensed codecs which are about as distant from educational as anything could be.  This area may well be getting the most development effort as well, which is reasonable since it plays to the Pi's biggest strength and makes a very large group of Pi users happy.

• Platform for expansions.  It always did seem odd that the Foundation so often stressed the difficulty of reaching their $25/$35 price point, and yet created a board bearing proprietary MIPI DSI and CSI-2 connectors which raised the board cost and complicated PCB routing.  Even more odd is that these MIPI interfaces would not contribute significantly to the board's educational capabilities since USB cameras and displays with open interfaces were readily available at good prices.  The subsequent high investment by RPF in developing camera and display modules suggests that this was a planned business strategy from the start, and it explains why the extra connector cost was considered justified.  One possible view is that there is business advantage in creating a platform for which expansion modules could be produced using a proprietary interface spec that narrows the competition.  Whether or not that was the thinking, it is the current actuality since RPF has invested time and money in expansions and delivered product.

• Enthusiasts/makers hacking platform.  Quite distinct from the needs of EE and UK IT education, a  large group of stakeholders is the worldwide and ever-growing community of makers and related enthusiasts, which may or may not be technical.  This group is heavily interested in creative projects which typically underpin some other area of interest that isn't itself computing.  The Foundation has from the start shown some interest in supporting this group, as evidenced by the board's P1 interfacing header and the near-miraculous provision of SoC peripheral interfacing information from a SoC manufacturer that has shown very little interest in supplying open documentation.  The enthusiast/maker community is strongly aligned with the open source software and open hardware communities since closed/proprietary devices impede rather than support building things.  Unfortunately RPF has been lukewarm in this area as the board is not open hardware, the SoC has very little open documentation, and not all of the software is open source either.  Undoubtedly most of the blame for this lies with Broadcom, but RPF spokespersons have defended the restriction of information themselves as well.

• Commercial for-profit product.  This stakeholder group is small but obvious.  RPF is a registered non-profit, but Premier Farnell and RS are not, and so the Pi has to justify its place on warehouse shelves.  The typically high profits on accessories probably make this quite easy though.

It's pretty clear from the above that the Pi ecosystem has multiple interested parties and drivers, and proceeds along many roads simultaneously with varying degrees of support from the Foundation.

In other words, the Raspberry Pi's concept, rationale, targets and user base are not correlated.

Getting a single view from anyone (especially RPF) is no more productive than all those blind men feeling different parts of the elephant.  To say that it was designed for IT education is completely wrong if intended literally --- Pi would not have been designed as it was nor targetted so strongly at non-educational stakeholders if that had been the primary intention.  This makes the question of "Why is there still no educational release?" a simple one to answer:  IT education was only one driving force, and clearly not a major one.

The only certain position is from objective engineering:  it's an ARM board with specific pros and cons, and it's those pros and cons that determine its effectiveness or otherwise for any given application.  I guess that's more boring than hype-laden official positioning statements by people with vested interests, but in contrast to them, it's accurate.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

• The subsequent high investment by RPF in developing camera and display modules suggests that this was a planned business strategy from the start, and it explains why the extra connector cost was considered justified.  One possible view is that there is business advantage in creating a platform for which expansion modules could be produced using a proprietary interface spec that narrows the competition. 

Actually the proprietary nature of the interface doesn't seem to be much of a problem. The actual camera sensors with the same interface and physical plug appear to be reasonable easily available off ebay and such like as spares for phones.

The roadblock is the bits that are buried inside the GPU.

I'd have to say that I originally thought the camera was a daft idea, but it's cheap enough that I bought one anyway.  If JamesH manages to sort out a couple of software niggles, I can see it having a reasonable future as a very cheap megapixel security camera amongst other things.

I see someone has already produced an aluminium case with a mount for the camera and externally a mount for additional standard lenses.

I think that's where the maker community shines.. by taking these cheap component parts and combining them into all sorts of interesting ideas.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

Hopefully it was just an uncommon blip.

I suggest you don't read the rest of the comments coder27 has been quoting from then. I gave up quite quickly.

I didn't read the GCSE syllabus, or watch the videos, but I find it interesting that they appear to be slavishly following what I'll call a 'specification' and thinking everything's ok... While others are pointing out the spec may well be flawed.

I see similar stuff where people will, to some degree justifiably, close bugs with comments along the lines of 'works as designed' while completely ignoring that the design and the spec it was built from are obviously flawed if not simply wrong.

Shabaz

Thanks for your insight, and yes the little robots help explain easily ( a picture is worth 1000 words)

I agree there needs to be some bigger picture in order to want to get there.

Coder27

Thanks

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that

Here we go to school at age 5, and that is considered year 1 (it had other names back in the days I went, so I still have to work it out)

I forgot about the post, and yes there are some good examples there .... thanks

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

Mark

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that?

about 16.

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

Yes, definitely.   It appears to be completely uninspiring.

I'm surprised the RPF is slavishly following it.

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

If you were to introduce computing/programming to 10-13yr olds, what would you teach?

Difficult question, but I think John's answer of "Logic" is a good place to start.

You have to be careful about getting into a lot of hardware details at that age, it's likely to have changed several times by the time they get to university.

It becomes a bit easier once they're old enough to pick their own subjects, but before that you need to keep it general enough to be interesting and not send 85% of the class to sleep.

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

One question 10th grade ? what year/age is that

lol.. I had to go look it up too. we seem to be spread fairly well around the world so it's sometimes hard to know what's different and what's the same.

Luckily we have no knowledge of GCSE , and it looks like that is a bonus.

funnily enough, although I'm in the UK, here in Scotland we don't have GCSE either.   I did find it rather interesting to have a quick look at how much has changed since I was that age though

selsinork wrote:

 

Difficult question, but I think John's answer of "Logic" is a good place to start.

 

I just had an idea (don't know how feasible with kids) - what if each student had to be one of the robots, so no one person knew what the end program did, until they saw the result.

Or, taking the idea of logic, each student becoming a particular logic gate, and when they are handed (say) two colored balls (or something else to represent 1's and 0's), then they pass the resultant colored ball to the next logic gate.

Maybe that's too dumbed-down and tedious after a few minutes of it though..

The falstad simulator is incredibly flexible, here is an example. It can be totally modified by dragging wires, or right-clicking to add gates.

It covers other topics too, such as this example (might want to turn the volume down a bit first).

I just noticed this PDF from the University of Auckland is using that simulator for some coursework.

I wonder if anyone has written exercises for younger students based on this simulator - it is quite nice since no special software is needed.

shabaz wrote:

 

Or, taking the idea of logic, each student becoming a particular logic gate,

I'm not 100% sure what John had in mind, but I wasn't meaning logic quite so literally.

The falstad simulator is incredibly flexible, here is an example. It can be totally modified by dragging wires, or right-clicking to add gates.

I suspect that's a bit too far for 10-13 year olds, but I could be wrong.

Teach the principles of logic or at best simple single and/or/not operations, leave the descent into boolean algebra for later.

Sorry you're right.. I still had GCSE's in my head.

selsinork wrote:

 

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

Hopefully it was just an uncommon blip.

I suggest you don't read the rest of the comments coder27 has been quoting from then. I gave up quite quickly.

No danger of that, I gave up following that site and related links many months ago, and now let coder27 preprocess the whole Pi saga for me.  How he has the stamina and nerves of steel to put up with it I don't know, but rather him than me.

Cheers, coder27.

I gave up following that site and related links many months ago, and now let coder27 preprocess the whole Pi saga for me.

Just so I can't be accused of letting you down by neglecting to report significant RPi news,

or in case anyone's writing a book on the history of RPi, here are some perhaps underreported tidbits.

1)  Eben, who had been described as the Executive Director of the RPF as recently as 23 Jan 2013,

http://lifehacker.com/5978324/im-eben-upton-executive-director-of-the-raspberry-pi-foundation-and-this-is-how-i-work

apparently had his position as Director terminated as of 07 Jan 2013:

     http://opencorporates.com/filings/181509848

or maybe as early as 18 December 2012:

      http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/06758215

He is now described variously as

   "Eben Upton, Co-Founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation"

http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-51657/l/element14-agrees-new-global-distribution-deal-for-raspberry-pi

or "Upton, Technical Director of Broadcom" and RPF founder

https://www.element14.com/community/community/news/blog/2013/06/26/ebon-upton-receives-the-silver-medal-for-bringing-raspberry-pi-to-the-masses

or "creator of the Raspberry Pi"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/10139778/Raspberry-Pi-inventor-joins-silver-medal-table.html

or "chip architect at Broadcom", and RPF founder

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

It isn't known to me who is currently the Executive Director of the RPF, or what if any official

roles Eben or Liz currently have at RPF.

2)  It was widely reported that 10 beta boards were auctioned on eBay in Jan 2012, with serial number No. 01, raising £3,500,

for a total of over £16,000.  For example, Wikipedia currently says:

The ten boards (with a total retail price of £220) together raised over £16,000,^[42] with the last to be auctioned, serial number No. 01, raising £3,500.^[43

But board #01 can be seen in pictures of Eben's desk.  The buyer apparently turned out to be a fraud.

3)  regarding NPOV wikipedia edits:

by liz » Sun Aug 28, 2011 3:03 pm

I'm not able to edit the Raspberry Pi Wikipedia page for NPV reasons, but I've noticed that the name of the processor is wrong, and that the overview section's a bit out of date. If any of you is an editor and fancies having a swing at it, we'd be very grateful!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=517

and

by liz » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:45 pm

We never, ever edit the Raspberry Pi stuff on Wikipedia, because we take NPOV very seriously. But that doesn't mean that we don't check it assiduously.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=25995&p=236920

and

by liz » Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:12 pm

This thread remains locked, but zerxy also appears to be the person who's been busily trying to vandalise the Wikipedia page on Raspberry Pi, which resulted in it being put under protection (which we don't contribute to because of NPOV - doesn't stop us reading the history page, though,

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=45512&start=36

and

by liz » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:13 am

Hearty agree: I wish someone would give the Raspberry Pi article a good old shake-down. I used to be a very enthusiastic Wikipedia editor, but stopped when I started working on Pi (largely because now all I do is Pi and sleeping, with occasional breaks for washing and eating). The current article pains me, but because of NPOV there is bugger all I can do to correct the problem.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=25798&p=236309

followed by:

by mahjongg » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:18 am                                   

Moderator

Posts: 3351

 

well i have more than 10.000 edits to my name on en.wikipedia.org, and have been editing the Raspeberry PI article quite heavily, so im not quite neutral on the subject (LOL), but If there is anything specific in the article that bothers you, maybe I can help.

I gave up following that site and related links many months ago, and now let coder27 preprocess the whole Pi saga for me.

Just so I can't be accused of letting you down by neglecting to report significant RPi news,

or in case anyone's writing a book on the history of RPi, here are some perhaps underreported tidbits.

1)  Eben, who had been described as the Executive Director of the RPF as recently as 23 Jan 2013,

http://lifehacker.com/5978324/im-eben-upton-executive-director-of-the-raspberry-pi-foundation-and-this-is-how-i-work

apparently had his position as Director terminated as of 07 Jan 2013:

     http://opencorporates.com/filings/181509848

or maybe as early as 18 December 2012:

      http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/06758215

He is now described variously as

   "Eben Upton, Co-Founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation"

http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-51657/l/element14-agrees-new-global-distribution-deal-for-raspberry-pi

or "Upton, Technical Director of Broadcom" and RPF founder

https://www.element14.com/community/community/news/blog/2013/06/26/ebon-upton-receives-the-silver-medal-for-bringing-raspberry-pi-to-the-masses

or "creator of the Raspberry Pi"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/10139778/Raspberry-Pi-inventor-joins-silver-medal-table.html

or "chip architect at Broadcom", and RPF founder

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

It isn't known to me who is currently the Executive Director of the RPF, or what if any official

roles Eben or Liz currently have at RPF.

2)  It was widely reported that 10 beta boards were auctioned on eBay in Jan 2012, with serial number No. 01, raising £3,500,

for a total of over £16,000.  For example, Wikipedia currently says:

The ten boards (with a total retail price of £220) together raised over £16,000,^[42] with the last to be auctioned, serial number No. 01, raising £3,500.^[43

But board #01 can be seen in pictures of Eben's desk.  The buyer apparently turned out to be a fraud.

3)  regarding NPOV wikipedia edits:

by liz » Sun Aug 28, 2011 3:03 pm

I'm not able to edit the Raspberry Pi Wikipedia page for NPV reasons, but I've noticed that the name of the processor is wrong, and that the overview section's a bit out of date. If any of you is an editor and fancies having a swing at it, we'd be very grateful!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=517

and

by liz » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:45 pm

We never, ever edit the Raspberry Pi stuff on Wikipedia, because we take NPOV very seriously. But that doesn't mean that we don't check it assiduously.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=25995&p=236920

and

by liz » Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:12 pm

This thread remains locked, but zerxy also appears to be the person who's been busily trying to vandalise the Wikipedia page on Raspberry Pi, which resulted in it being put under protection (which we don't contribute to because of NPOV - doesn't stop us reading the history page, though,

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=45512&start=36

and

by liz » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:13 am

Hearty agree: I wish someone would give the Raspberry Pi article a good old shake-down. I used to be a very enthusiastic Wikipedia editor, but stopped when I started working on Pi (largely because now all I do is Pi and sleeping, with occasional breaks for washing and eating). The current article pains me, but because of NPOV there is bugger all I can do to correct the problem.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=25798&p=236309

followed by:

by mahjongg » Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:18 am                                   

Moderator

Posts: 3351

 

well i have more than 10.000 edits to my name on en.wikipedia.org, and have been editing the Raspeberry PI article quite heavily, so im not quite neutral on the subject (LOL), but If there is anything specific in the article that bothers you, maybe I can help.

coder27 wrote:

 

Just so I can't be accused of letting you down by neglecting to report significant RPi news,

or in case anyone's writing a book on the history of RPi, here are some perhaps underreported tidbits.

 

by liz » Wed Jun 26, 2013 5:12 pm

This thread remains locked, but zerxy also appears to be the person who's been busily trying to vandalise the Wikipedia page on Raspberry Pi, which resulted in it being put under protection (which we don't contribute to because of NPOV - doesn't stop us reading the history page, though,

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=45512&start=36

I'm zerxy.  I suggest to anyone interested that they check out my "vandalism" of the Raspberry Pi page on Wikipedia.

Stuart,

   Welcome!  The moderation on this forum is night-and-day different from rpi.org

or wikipedia.  You can make insightful observations here without fear of banning,

outing, thread-locking, reverting, etc.  If your wikipedia edits are something you

would like to discuss here, feel free.

coder27 wrote:

 

Eben [cut] apparently had his position as Director terminated as of 07 Jan 2013:

     http://opencorporates.com/filings/181509848

or maybe as early as 18 December 2012:

      http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/06758215

That seems clear enough, but "Why?" is a more difficult question.  I wonder if there is some kind of rule in UK about directors of non-profits not being allowed to simultaneously be directors of for-profit companies on which the non-profit is dependent?  Or maybe some kind of tax reason?

Maybe someone should simply ask him at his next personal appearance in an RPF role.  I remember from his early days that he used to answer questions quite clearly without the evasion that is typical of politicians and PR people.

With such a large numebr of RPI malcontents runingon this forum I can only say it will be a matter of time before the Fanboi horde finds us and chases us about with torches and pitchforks

Maybe someone should simply ask him at his next personal appearance in an RPF role. 

Maybe RPF should set up a web site with an "About us" page that says who their officers

and directors are.

Maybe RPF should set up a web site with a forum where questions like this can be asked.

Maybe E14 can tell us who signs any recent contracts on behalf of RPF.

lots of maybe's.

With such a large numebr of RPI malcontents runingon this forum I can only say it will be a matter of time before the Fanboi horde finds us and chases us about with torches and pitchforks

Perhaps.  But the Fanboi horde has been told by JamesH that it's worthwhile reading this forum,

and not too many have shown up to cause trouble.  The ones that do, it's pretty obvious who they are.

by jamesh » Mon Sep 24, 2012 12:51 pm

Please take some of what said on that forum with pinch of salt - lots of pie in the sky thinking on there, which tend to gives people the wrong idea. They don't have any more information available than anyone here - less in fact than the mods here. Obviously we cannot make changes to that site when there is wrong information - that's E14's moderators jobs and they don't actually have any as far as I can tell! It also tends to be frequented by people who have been banned from this site for various reasons, so can have some rather bitter and unpleasant commentary. That said, there is also lots of good information there, so worthwhile keeping an eye on it. Just keep the above in mind.

That seems clear enough, but "Why?" is a more difficult question.  I wonder if there is some kind of rule in UK about directors of non-profits not being allowed to simultaneously be directors of for-profit companies on which the non-profit is dependent?  Or maybe some kind of tax reason?

OK, here's what I think Andy has been struggling to explain.

UK charities have rules about for-profit trading: 

  http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc35.aspx#d

A trading subsidiary must be used in any case where there would be a significant risk to the assets of the charity, if it were to carry on non-primary purpose trading itself (see C8). ...

RPF apparently felt the need to spend a few hundred thousand dollars of what would

have likely been scarce charitable funds to buy up 50,000 256MB RAM chips around

the October 2012 launch of the 512MB version.

RPF also apparently felt the need to expand its marketing scope to include non-charitable

industrial applications such as digital signage.

So the RPF set up a trading subsidiary, "Raspberry Pi (Trading) Limited",

Company number: 08207441, on September 10, 2012.

Eben was appointed a director of the subsidiary on Jan 07, 2013,

coinciding with the termination of his directorship of RPF, per RES01

dated December 18, 2012.

http://bizzy.co.uk/uk/08207441/raspberry-pi-trading  (see "documents" tab)

The subsidiary's directors are listed here:

https://www.duedil.com/company/08207441/raspberry-pi-trading-limited/people

with only Eben and Jack Lang in common with the original six RPF directors.

A 30 April 2013 news report explained:

Eben Upton, executive director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation said: “On the basis of guidance received from our professional advisers, we've separated the existing trading activities of the Foundation into a wholly-owned trading subsidiary, Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd, while the Foundation continues to pursue its original educational mission. This is apparently considered best practice for charities which conduct significant commercial activity – charity shops would be a good example.”

http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/hi-tech/15343-california-boost-as-raspberry-pi-takes-new-commercial-view

Maybe now we know what Pete Lomas was hinting at on Sept 25, 2012, when he wrote:

What we learned is that you have to sell out (a little) to sell (a lot).

And it may shed some new light on Eben's comments:

I don't believe that there was any way that we could have done this as a commercial venture. I mean, you see the number of sales and it's easy to think, “Wow, I wish I could make some profit out of that!”. You're generating all this value and none of it is going to your wallet. But in practice actually it's fantastic.

http://www.techspot.com/article/531-eben-upton-interview/

Excellent bit of research, coder27. I was looking forward to seeing RPi's 2012 numbers on the Charity Commission's website, but now they've started carving things up those numbers won't be quite so meaningful on their own...

As Jonathan said, very good research.

I now look forward to the RPF forum users openly discussing the for-profit activities of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd, and quantifying the amounts extracted as profit versus those used for educational goals.  I'm sure the moderators there will be totally happy with letting the discussion proceed.

Jonathan Garrish wrote:

 

but now they've started carving things up those numbers won't be quite so meaningful on their own...

Some kind of lower and upper bounds on profit can  be quantified.  As I wrote back in #14 on this thread,

If the main aim were charitable support of education, the price of Pi would have dropped by now anyway.  Their BOM cost now is just a fraction of what it was in the days of 10k-30k volume costing, so if they wished to lower the barrier further, I bet they could, and very easily.   (Farnell and RS are likely to be making nice profits on accessories anyway.)

At 30k volumes, we know the BOM cost was below $35.  What's the typical level of bulk discount on the main components of a board like the Pi, say for 100k, 200k, 500k, 1m units?  Knowing typical figures for volume component discounts allows us to estimate the ballpark profits from sales of well over a million boards.