May | 2012 | Raspberry Pi

Next week…

Eben and I are taking a week off from this evening. (“But you went skiing in January!”, I hear you howl through my monitor. Yes, we did; but I only did two days actually enjoying myself before twisting a knee and then spent the rest of the time working, so a period of time with the laptop lid closed is something I’m feeling quiveringly excited about. It’s also probably necessary in the long term for my continued sanity.)

My time online will be very limited this week; you may see a couple of blog posts, but don’t hold your breath. And unless it’s incredibly urgent, I will not be responding to email; by “urgent”, I am talking about things in the class of haemorrhages and plagues of frogs.

Things round here won’t stop entirely, though. The forums are really lively at the moment, while so many of you are receiving your Raspberry Pis. There are now tens of thousands out there in the hands of users, with more are arriving every day. Please head over and join in the conversation, whether you’re a veteran programmer or a newbie owner; there’s stuff there for everyone, and the community is very friendly and helpful. The mods will be keeping an eye on things here in the comments section and on the forums while we’re away. Thank you guys; I really appreciate it!

Vote for Raspberry Pi in the T3 awards. (And watch Eben on telly.)

The Raspberry Pi has been nominated for a T3 Gadget Award, in the innovation of the year category. We’d love it if you could spend a minute voting for us. We are up against a £6690 electric quad bike/tortoise hybrid with rentable batteries and a Nike wristband that uses blinky lights to make you feel guilty if you sit down too much (and, somewhat closer to our hearts, the MakerBot 3d printer), among other 2012 gadgets.

If you are the sort of UK person who believes that Sunday has a morning, and you also believe that that morning is best spent in front of the TV, Eben’s on Channel 4′s Sunday Brunch programme tomorrow, which starts at 10am. I shall be watching from my Mum and Dad’s house, with a bacon sandwich and a bad attitude; he seems to have neatly avoided being on in the same week as either Rufus Wainwright or Marina and the Diamonds, both of whom were recent guests. Fun fact: Marina made my little (not so little: he’s 30 next month) brother a carrot cake this Christmas. We are a super-glamorous family, what with all this breakfast TV and celebrity cake.

You asked, Eben answered!

You might be one of the people who took part in the #AskEben questions on Twitter and YouTube last week. Here are Eben’s answers, kindly filmed and edited in a rock-and-roll style by the muscly George from element14.

These are worth a watch. They’re not the questions we usually get asked around here, a few of them had me choking on my glass of water with either horror or laughter, and some of you (UKScone, Romilly) might recognise your questions on the list.

Google, Teach First, and Raspberry Pi

We had some pretty fantastic news yesterday. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, visited London’s Science Museum to give a talk on Why Science Matters, as part of the Alan Turing 100th birthday events which are taking place around the country this year. And he made an announcement which has had us jumping around the office with glee.

As part of Google’s very non-evil drive to improve science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) provision in schools, the company will be sponsoring the charity Teach First to take on more than a hundred “exceptional” graduates for training and subsequent mentoring. These new teachers will also be given bursaries by Google with which to buy classroom equipment. Schmidt used his speech to mention Raspberry Pi as relevant, cost-appropriate classroom hardware for the scheme.

“The success of the BBC Micro in the 1980s shows what’s possible. There’s no reason why Raspberry Pi shouldn’t have the same impact, with the right support,” he said. ”It’s vital to expose kids to this early if they’re to have the chance of a career in computing. Only 2% of Google engineers say they weren’t exposed to computer science at high school. While not every child is going to become a programmer, those with aptitude shouldn’t be denied the chance.”

Obviously, we’re chuffed to bits. Teach First estimates that 20,000 children in deprived areas will be reached by this scheme, and we’re really excited to see how the project develops. Read more about the speech here, here and here.

The Punnet – a card case for you to print (for free)

E, who surely has the least Googlable name of all our forum members, has made a really excellent little card case for the Raspberry Pi. (Please let me know what your real name is, E, if you’d like me to credit you properly!) It’s something you can print at home; if your printer won’t take card that’s heavy enough, just print it on paper and trace it onto the card.

The Punnet. Click for a PDF to print, cut out and fold.

E says in his associated forum post that this is an alpha version of the Punnet; he’s not been able to test it with a Raspberry Pi because he’s one of the poor souls who’s still waiting for his, and people have reported that a couple of the ports are a little off. You can download a final version, with ports in the right place, from SquareItRound – there is also a zipped SVG version you can edit yourselves for modding purposes. Have a go and let us know how you get on!

Maker Faire: Raspberry Pi panel with Eben, Matt Richardson and Ben Heck

The first of this weekend’s talks is now available online: here’s Eben in a panel discussion about Raspberry Pi with the most excellent Matt Richardson from Make, and Ben Heck, the modder king. There’s more material from the Faire to come, so watch this space!

Maker Movement Heads to the Classroom with Raspberry Pi from Maker Faire on FORA.tv

Add your Raspberry Pi to the Rastrack map

Ryan Walmsley, a UK school student who is waiting impatiently for his own Raspberry Pi, has been collecting data from those who have already received theirs to create a map showing what the worldwide distribution of Raspberry Pis looks like at the moment. We’d love it if those of you who are already Raspberry Pi owners could fill in their location on Ryan’s Rastrack map (you can anonymise your name and other details) – we’re just as interested to see what the results will look like as you are!

Screengrab of the Rastrack map at 17:30 BST, May 22 - click to go to the real thing.

The map’s only been up for a day, and hasn’t been widely publicised, so it’s not very complete yet – we know there are at least 20,000 out there, with another several hundred thousand still on order. Currently, the northernmost Raspi on the map is in the far north of Norway, and the southernmost is in New Zealand. There’s one in Saudi Arabia, which surprised and pleased us, and we’re noticing that the UK is very heavily represented.

Thanks very much for working on this, Ryan; we’re finding it fascinating. And if you’re lucky enough to have received a Raspberry Pi yourself – go and fill your details in!

Eben interviewed by Engadget at Maker Faire

Here’s the first video so far from this weekend’s Maker Faire. When we first watched this, Eben’s only response was: “Wow. I really don’t have a neck, do I?” He talks about the camera board, third-party add-ons, the weather, university teaching, supply issues and a whole lot more.

I’m having trouble embedding the video, which is a viddler (why are there so many video embed formats out there? Why?) – for now, you can go and watch it on Engadget. I’ll see if I can get a working short code for it later on so we can embed it here too.

Success! Thanks to Jeremy in the comments for suggesting iframes.

Some pictures from Maker Faire Bay Area

The Bay Area Maker Faire is the big daddy of all the Maker Faires, and boy, do my feet hurt after two days running up and down its exhibition halls and fairgrounds. Eben did two presentations on stage (both have been videoed, and we’ll make them available when the editing guys have done their magic); we spoke to a kajillion or so members of the press and recorded some podcasts (links to come) and video (ditto) interviews, and we met a lot of friends old and new from the Raspberry Pi forums – it’s been particularly good to put faces to names like SeanD, Bakul, Simon Monk and Jim Manley. I am missing loads of you out; it was fantastic to meet so many of you.

There are simply no words to describe what a Maker Faire is like. Cross Mad Max with My Little Pony, a flamethrower and a handful of resistors, and you’re part-way there. Here are some pictures.

We don't know what the flaming umbrella thing behind Eben is, but we want one for the office.

Motorised cupcakes. These give you a hell of a shock when they sneak up behind you.

Liz buys some art. (It's from www.unusualcards.com - Francesca also does non-blasphemous subjects. Click the picture to visit her website. This is going in my study.)

One of the guys from Dual Core Music asked Eben to rap with him. Remarkably, he did.

We surprised Joey Hudy, maker and White House Science Fair honouree, with a Raspberry Pi. Can't wait to see what he does with it. (In this photo I appear to have spotted something hilarious in the corner of the ceiling. I go to useless bits when there are cameras and microphones around.)

Eben has spent the whole of the last three days doing interviews (this one with Matt Richardson from Make)...

…and more interviews. This one's with Hak5, who have some interesting plans for their Raspberry Pi. Yes, that's a scrap-metal dragon with a flaming nostril over the interviewer's shoulder.

A rare quiet moment, brainstorming for a panel discussion with Matt, the guys from element14 and Ben Heck, King of the Modders.

And I realised a childhood dream. I was, for the six seconds it took to take this picture, the happiest person in the entire Western Hemisphere.

I’ll be linking to a few of the video and print interviews we did over the last few days when they go live. What a weekend!

Camera module – first pictures!

I was sent this image this morning from Gert (not pictured), Naush (right eye and half-moustache) and JamesH (stripy shirt and chin). It’s not a terribly exciting photo – until you realise that it’s the first picture ever taken from the prototype camera add-on board we’re developing for release later in the year, which will plug into those CSI pins we expose in the middle of the Raspberry Pi. I will ask Gert, Naush and JamesH, who have been working on this in their free evenings, to answer questions in the comments below – they are also very active on our forums, so please come over and have a chat.

We may downgrade the super-duperness of the camera to something with fewer than its current 14 megapixels before release; we need to keep things affordable, and a sensor of that size will end up pricey. Before you ask (I know it’ll be the first question most of you have), we don’t have a price for the camera module yet; we’ll need to finalise exactly what hardware is in it first, but we will, of course, be ensuring that it’s very affordable.

More pictures, including some of the camera module itself with the Raspberry Pi:

Gert (bottom left), JamesH (middle) and Naush (top right) are looking very pleased with themselves. Here's another picture from the camera module, which wishes it had something to photograph besides engineers.

The module is pretty small, which makes it ideal for some of the robotics and home automation applications people have been wanting to build.

The mechanical design still isn't complete, but the final version will attach to the Raspberry Pi with ribbon cable, like this prototype.

View from above.

JamesH now holds the record for the most random body parts (fingertip, chin) used as feature photos on this website. Congratulations James! (There is no prize.)