First Model A samples off the line!

We’re having a very busy, very mobile couple of days. We’ve been talking to Welsh teachers, spending time at the factory in Pencoed, doing EMC testing on the camera boards, picking up engineering samples of the Model A, visiting suppliers, and generally running up and down the south of England and Wales with our hair on fire. Sorry I wasn’t able to fit in a post here yesterday; I’ll make it up with an extra post over the weekend.

First up, here’s the very first (blurry, cameraphone) picture of a Model A board. I’ll take some more at the weekend with better detail when I’m near a proper camera.

Raspberry Pi Model A. Click to enlarge.

I posted this picture on Twitter when I opened the box, and had some questions from our followers which I suspect some of you guys might be thinking about too, so I’ll deal with them now:

How much RAM does it have?

The Model A has 256MB RAM.

Updated to add: What’s the power consumption like?

Significantly lower than the Model B’s requirement. For all the gory details and exhaustive figures from our tests, visit this thread in the forums.

Isn’t the Model A kind of obsolete now the Model B has twice the RAM? What could I use it for?

We’re anticipating that those of you who buy the Model A will be using it for different applications from Model B owners. Model A has no ethernet and only one USB slot – and importantly, it consumes much less power than a Model B because the ethernet chip’s missing. We’re seeing demand for the Model A from people making industrial control modules, from roboticists, from people doing automation, for a bunch of headless operations – and, significantly, for people who want to use the Pi as a very cheap media centre. The Model A will only cost $25 (plus tax and shipping).

Wouldn’t it be cheaper for you to use a custom PCB without the existing routing for the ethernet?

Because of the volumes we’re producing, it’s actually less expensive for us to use the existing PCB we use for the Model B, and just not populate the ethernet part of the board, than to lay-out and separately manufacture a new PCB just for the Model A.

Where are you building the Model A?

We’re making the Model A at the Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales. For the foreseeable future, all Model As will be built there – whichever distributor they’re sold by.

We’re pretty excited. The Model A is something we wanted to produce months ago, but the crazy demand for the Model B has meant that we’ve not been able to build them, because to do so would mean that we have to cannibalise Model B parts – and that would mean that people who are experiencing the backlog would have to wait even longer. We’re hoping to get them off the line and into the hands of our distributors early in the new year, which will put us in a position where that strap line at the top of the page is actually accurate: you’ll be able to buy a $25 computer, which is what we’ve wanted to give you all along.

Farnell at Electronica

RS weren’t the only people with Pis at Electronica: Farnell were there too, so we had representation from 100% of our core distributors. Pete Lomas (you should know who Pete is by now) and Gert (ditto) were there with them, and took the time to give some interviews to our good Farnell buddy Mike Powell. Here’s Pete:

Gert’s had a haircut! (And has some interesting stuff to say about the pre-built Gertboard…)

There’s more from Gert at Eetimes – it’s in an unembeddable format, so you’ll have to click through.

Andrew Robinson from Manchester University, who is behind the group making the Pi-Face breakout board was in attendance too:

And there was a Pi-powered talking chicken.

I’m *so* going to have to try to make next year’s event.

New T-shirts (and women’s and kids’ sizes) – get them before Christmas!

You asked for more sizes and bigger logos, so we’ve just released the full colour on black and grey t-shirts you’ve been asking for, alongside women’s and kids’ cuts, and XXL and XXXL sizing. If you’re looking for something to wear around the Christmas turkey, you’ve just found it! Click on the pictures to go to an order page.

As always, all profits go to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a UK registered charity. We’ll be spending that money on outreach, education, and development, so your T-shirt won’t just look good; it’ll do good too. Head over to the store to pick one up.

Minecraft: Pi Edition – video demo and more details

We’ve had loads of questions about the upcoming Minecraft: Pi Edition over the last couple of days. We sent Daniel Bates, one of the University of Cambridge PhD candidates who volunteers for Raspberry Pi, to Disneyland Paris to join Mojang for their announcement at MineCon on Saturday. He got back yesterday with some video and more details about what you’re going to see when a download’s available. Over to Daniel!

What do you get when you combine Mickey Mouse, some game developers from Sweden, and an inexpensive educational computer? Good news all around! I was at MineCon in Disneyland Paris this weekend where we unveiled an early version of Minecraft: Pi Edition.

This new version is based on the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, which you may have seen running on mobile phones and tablets, but has one key difference: you can program it. All you have to do is set up a network connection to the running game, and then you can send text commands to control the world. This makes is possible to program in any language which supports network connections, and you can access the game from any computer which is connected to the Pi. One possible setup is to have a Python prompt and the Minecraft window side-by-side on the Pi.

Minecraft: Pi Edition has been in development for less than a week, but already Daniel and Aron from Mojang have got it running really smoothly. It runs on all versions of the Raspberry Pi with no overclocking necessary. Liz interjects: Daniel F from Mojang emailed me yesterday to say they’re seeing 40fps with a 256MB Pi, although the development work was done on a set of 512MB boards. (They say they want to optimise it more, but I couldn’t detect any slowness in my time with the game.) There’s currently the ability to place any block at any location, ask what type of block is at any location, and keep track of events such as player movements, with more features planned.

We see this as a very exciting way of drawing children into programming. The game can be played with no programming at all. Then, basic programming can be used to place large numbers of blocks in particular patterns to speed up the building process – the audience burst into applause when Daniel wrote a simple loop which simultaneously changed the position and type of blocks being placed, which soon resulted in lava cascading from mid-air and setting fire to the wood below. The more creative programmer will only be limited by their imagination. Want to build a digital clock into the wall of your house which displays the real time? Easy. Want to get back at a friend who stole your precious diamonds? Remove the floor from underneath their feet and let them fall into a pit of lava. The possibilities are endless.

The goal is to release Minecraft: Pi Edition before the end of the year, free of charge. We hope that this will further advance the Raspberry Pi’s aims of getting children excited about computing.

Sony, the Pi makers – a post from Pete Lomas

Pete Lomas is a trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and designed the final hardware that turned into the Raspberry Pi. We’ve had so many questions from you about the manufacturing process that Pete decided to put this post together – he’s been working on it for a couple of months, and we’re very, very grateful. Thanks Pete – and thank you to everybody at the Sony factory!

The basic idea is simple – Attach components a PCB with solder to make mechanical and electrically conductive joints, test and ship.

But how do Sony manage to make 4000 Raspberry Pi Model B’s a day – or more astoundingly, one every 7.5 seconds? On a recent trip to the facility we had a look at how the team at Pencoed actually do it, and some of the technical wizardry and skill they use to make it happen.

The Raspberry Pi design is what is termed double sided SMT and single sided PTH. Translated, this means it has surface mount components (SMT) mounted on both sides of the PCB and through hole (PTH) components just on the top side, with the pins pushing out of the bottom.

The PCBs are actually mounted in a panel (or plaque) of six, christened after Liz’s earlier post a “six-pack of Pis”. This has several functions: first it reduces handling at both bare PCB manufacture and assembly as the PCBs travel together all the way to final test and pack. It also provides an area (waste edge) around the PCBs that the machines use to clamp the panel firmly in place. When you are whacking components down at 5.5 parts per second, you want to avoid vibration. It also allows Sony to get round the fact that some components on the Raspberry Pi come right over the edges. If you look at the design in the photograph you can see there are also small areas of waste laminate between the board. Ideally the designer (i.e. me) wants to avoid this but it is not always possible.

This shows a partially finished six-pack of Pis. The strips with dots on will be broken away to separate out the Pis just before test. The bottom left Pi is being given a quick-process validation test.

The manufacturing line is actually made up of four key processes, bottom SMT, top SMT, PTH, test and pack, but the skill of the Sony team goes much further back than that into production engineering and component procurement.

This is the surface mount line used to build Pis. The front machine (white dome) is the one used to print the solder paste. On the very front of it is a loader that can be filled with PCBs. The line automatically takes them as required.

Ingredients

Sony have strict policy on component procurement, and this ensures that we only get good quality parts. Vendor assessment is rigorous, and we have spent many months trawling through the BOM with Sony and validating any proposed alternatives or substitutes. Remember the issue with the mag-jack we had early days with the factory we were using in China? The Sony team are dedicated to making sure that sort of thing cannot happen.

As well as getting the right parts, they also need them in the right packaging. Everything that is required for surface mount operations has to be on a reel, ideally as large a reel as possible. For some small components that will be 10,000 on a single reel, but these will be used up in just a couple of hours, as there are 42 on each PCB. Every time a reel runs out, the line stops and requires operator intervention, so the larger the better.

Reels of components in stores

To keep the wheels turning, all the machines monitor usage and send requests to the stores themselves for replacements! So by the time they are located and booked out of stores and brought to the line, they arrive just in time before the reel runs out. Empty reels are bar-code scanned off the machine, and the new reel is bar-code scanned back on to eliminate the chance of fitting incorrect components.

This shows a screen from the system that shows the usage of each component on the machine and when it is due to run out.

Printing the solder paste

The first physical operation is to “paste” the PCB with solder paste. The paste is made up of tiny spheres of solder approximately 25μm across. The other component in the paste is flux. This is designed not only to bind the paste together but also prevents oxidation during the soldering process and is an important aspect of getting a reliable joint.

The machine uses a thin stainless-steel stencil, and the solder paste is pushed through tiny apertures onto the PCB. When the stencil is removed, you are left with tiny prints of solder. On the BGA pads for the BCM2835 these solder prints are only 300μm in diameter. If any of these prints is missing, then a solder joint will not be formed. Just sometimes, rather than the paste sticking to the PCB, it stays in the stencil. To check for this the machine does an optical check immediately after solder paste print just to make sure it is there. If there is a problem, the paste can be removed and the PCB re-printed.

This is a typical solder paste stencil (before anyone posts a comment – no, it’s not a Pi one, but shows the general idea.) These are made of stainless steel and are just 0.004″ thick.

The solder paste can be seen on top of the gold pads on the PCB. On larger areas the paste is cut into segments. This controls the amount of paste more accurately and also provides an escape route for gasses that can build up during reflow as the solvents evaporate.

Once the paste print is verified, the surface mount components can be added to the PCB using a SMT mounting machine. Sony use their own-brand machines, but there are lots to choose from. In principle they all operate the same way, with only subtle differences.

The parts are in “pockets” on each reel of tape, and they are picked out using a vacuum nozzle that is fitted to a moving chunk of mechanics and sensor electronics (the mounting head). The problem is that the parts move around in their little pockets, so the alignment of the part relative to the nozzle is somewhat inaccurate. So, if you place a part straight onto the PCB from the reel, it would be out of line. In modern placement machines this problem is solved using a small camera that looks at the part on the nozzle, figures out its exact location and rotation, and then applies correction factors to ensure that when the part is actually placed it is within 40μm of the optimum position. This accuracy is vitally important when you are placing parts that are only 0.5 by 1.0mm, or if you have tens of tightly spaced legs or pads. When they are running at full speed, these machines can place 25,000 components per hour. When you watch them, they move so quickly that it is almost impossible to see the parts being placed; they just sort of “appear”.

Some tantalum capacitors, on a reel. The pockets that hold the individual components can be seen in the tape. A secondary “cover tape” is peeled off by the machine just before the component is used.

It is difficult to move the mounting head quickly; to stop the larger parts being ripped off the nozzle by inertia the head has to accelerate and decelerate smoothly, and this all takes time. The guys who design these placement machines are real speed demons. To speed things up even further the machines can have up to 12 nozzles, and in some cases two heads working alternately. Whilst one is picking up parts the other is placing then on the PCB, and then the roles reverse.

These dual headed-machines can place at 60,000 components per hour (cph). As it turns out, they are over-specified to help us with Pi, which only has 173 surface-mount components. A 25,000 cph machine with 12 heads is sufficient. Typically, a pack of six Pis has its SMT components mounted in just 150 seconds.

Time to do some baking

Once the parts are placed on the PCBs they have to be soldered. (OK: I could say baked – it is a big oven – but don’t try this at home). The technical term is reflow. What we want to do is heat up the solder (and components) so that the little balls fuse to the component, the PCB and each other.

The reflow oven consists of a number of zones, each one getting progressively hotter until the solder melts (reflows), whereupon the joint is made. The subsequent stages then cool the PCB in a controlled way.

Getting this part of the process wrong can be a recipe for disaster. Too cold, and some of the joints will not form; too quick and the ends of some parts will not heat up evenly, leading to an embarrassing process defect called tombstoning. Too hot, and you fry some of the more delicate components, not to mention the PCB; too slow and the flux burns off before it does it job leaving poor joints: you get the idea.

Again, this is an area where technical skill and years of experience come into play; what the process engineers need to do is find what is called the “process window”, where all the factors are good enough to get reliable joints, and then aim for the ideal point somewhere in the middle. They do this by sacrificing some boards (poor Pi), and adding thermocouple instrumentation to critical parts of the board. These are connected to a mole that follows the PCBs, recording the temperature/time profile for each point. These can then be passed through the reflow oven as many times as is required to get the result. I’ve learnt after explaining this to a group of students that you need to know that the mole is in fact a piece of electronics that is heavily protected against the heat, and not a small furry animal. It took me a few seconds to figure why one of them had a really horrified expression!

Now the parts are solidly attached to the PCB the next step is AOI (Automatic Optical Inspection). Here the PCBs are inspected with a high resolution cameras, and the resulting images processed and compared with images from golden (known good) PCBs. This allows all the parts to be checked for presence, correct rotation, joint soldering and generally anything else that looks odd. Anything that looks out of kilter is then checked by a skilled operator. Sometimes the AOI can be over-fussy and give a false fail, but once I had just a few chips in a reel of 5000 that had whole corner missing, the AOI picked it up in an instant.

All these quality processes are important as it allows Sony to drive down the defect rates to almost unbelievable low levels. They utilise quality principles like Kaizen and lean along with six sigma quality targets. Six sigma is a challenging defect rate of 3.4 faults per million. Unfortunately, that does not mean that only 3.4 Pis in a million will have a problem (in the factory); it relates to everything that could go wrong. These potential problems are termed “Defect Opportunities”. From an assembly point of view, a typical Pi has 100’s opportunities for things to go wrong, like a paste print defect, a missing component or a defective solder joint. The screening and test programs are designed to ensure that these Pis do not leave the manufacturing floor. Even after the Pis have passed everything, there is a quality team checking the final output, effectively checking the quality of the quality processes! The objective is that zero defects reach the customer.

Sony are proud of their quality, and make sure that everyone working the line knows what is being achieved.

PoP on top

So having gotten the underside SMT mounted, the whole process is repeated on the next SMT line for the top-side SMT components. In principle, this is just the same, but the processor and its package-on-package (PoP) memory are mounted on this side and some additional trickery is required.

Once the bulk of the components are mounted on a couple of SMT machines, the panel of boards is passed to a special placement machine that does the PoP. The BCM2835 is placed as any normal part, but the memory has to be placed on top of it. Remember: every surface mount pad that is used on the board to connect a component has had solder paste printed. So how do they get it printed onto the top of the processor? Turns out they don’t: they have a clever little tray full of solder paste in which they dip the memory chip gently, to coat the solder balls on the underside of the part, and then place that (carefully) atop the processor, job done!

I said “clever little tray” as it is constantly rotating and has a scraper bar that sets the exact depth of the paste. Coupled with that there is an automatic dispenser control system that adds more paste as required. It’s really neat, and as expected from Sony, it is the best solution giving phenomenal yields in the volumes required.

The round disk at the front is the tray that contains the solder paste – we will replace this with a short video as soon as we can.

The boards then go further down the line for topside reflow (soldering) and AOI inspection, and the SMT processes are complete. One really good process check is to have a look at joint quality, in particular finish and shape. You can get a hint from inspecting at this point that the process is wandering before it becomes an issue. The joints on the PoP memory package and BGAs are in general difficult to see, but Sony has an optical arrangement that allows an expert to have a look at least at the edges of the package. Any minor problems with shape and alignment can be observed early and adjusted out of the process. Sony also have X-ray facilities to detect bridges and missing solder balls on the underside of all BGA devices.

If you look at the maths, something does not add up. Taking 150 seconds to mount the 147 SMT parts on six Raspberry Pis does not equate to the production rate of one every 7.5 seconds. In fact there are three machines contributing to this figure, one building the underside and two for the topside. This points up another important aspect of efficient manufacture: load balancing. In the whole of the Sony process, the production engineers have ensured that each process step on average takes the same time. If it is too slow, it governs the production rate and they add additional equipment to resolve it.

Final assembly: the PTH components

The through-hole (PTH) parts are actually inserted by hand. On the Pi there are just five. The panel of PCBs are mounted on a solder- and heat-resistant carrier. This shields all the surface-mount components on the underside of the PCB so they don’t get desoldered and end up in the bottom of the solder bath when they are soldered by the wave (flow) soldering machine.

This shows the six pack of Pis with all their through-hole components added, about to be wave soldered.

So, how does this work? As the PCBs enter, the area on the underside is sprayed with flux. This stops the pins, pads and solder oxidising, and ensures a good joint. The PCBs are then (pre) heated. This is important, as it stops the solder cooling too quickly when it comes into contact with the PCB. Further on in the machine, there is a wave of molten solder (hence the name). This is continuously flowing and is pumped out and back into a heated solder pot. The height and shape of the wave and the amount of preheat, the solder pot temperature plus the speed of the PCBs is carefully controlled to ensure a quality joint. It needs skill and judgement to get this exactly right.

If the wave is too tall, it can cause components to be pushed out of the PCB, and in the worst case can cause the top of the board to be flooded with solder. This then resembles a lava flow – yep, I’ve done it! When I asked the guys at Sony about lava accidents, I just got a wry, knowing smile.

End of the line

That’s it: the six-pack of Pis is fully assembled. The Pis are then moved over to the test and packing stations. Here the individual Pis are broken out of the panel and placed on a test unit. Each station has two test units so that one can be used for loading/unloading, whilst the other is used to run the tests and also program the various setup codes such as the model and where it was made.

Here, the operator has two test rigs. One is being unloaded/reloaded while the other is testing a Pi.

A Raspberry Pi that passes the test is placed into its antistatic bag and straight into the box ready for dispatch. Any Pi that fails is going to be pretty lonely: when we were there to take these pictures the “Fail” boxes were empty bar one. That failed unit will be investigated quickly to find out what the problem is, and the defect analysed to see if a process optimisation would help. [Liz interjects: I visited Sony last week, and was told that fewer than 20 Pis have ended up in the "Fail" box since Sony started manufacture. Not bad!]

Making products in this volume also puts stress on the component parameters and the design. With such a number of boards going through, the chances of a group of parts ganging up on the designer to create a “corner case” that causes the Pi to fail test is very real. We work closely with Sony to help identify and correct those where possible. We have already identified a couple of minor tweaks to the PCB that help. For me, even after 30 years in the business, there is always something to learn and the talented team at Sony make great teachers.

The Sony team who make your Raspberry Pi. And some interlopers. Click for bigness.

After Liz, Eben and I met all the team, we can confidently say that the Raspberry Pi is made with tender, loving care in Pencoed. We know: we’ve watched it happen.

Does it run Minecraft? Well, since you ask…

There’s a question that we’ve been asked almost every day by someone or other – does the Raspberry Pi run Minecraft?

It does now – and you’ll be able to download and play it yourself very soon.

We sent a bunch of boards out to Notch and the guys at Mojang in Stockholm a little while back, and they’ve produced a port of Minecraft: Pocket Edition which they’re calling Minecraft: Pi Edition. It’ll carry a revised feature set and support for several programming languages, so you can code direct into Minecraft before you start playing. (Or you can just – you know – play.) Owen and Daniel from Mojang say:

The possibilities are massive. You could organise the cheapest LAN party of all time, or use the Pi to learn the fundamentals of programming on a minuscule budget. It’s like hacking your way into Minecraft and modifying the game world with code, a bit like being Notch, Jeb, or Nathan, but arguably more fun and less stressful.

Minecraft: Pi Edition was unveiled officially today at Minecon in Paris. When it’s released, which we hope will be very soon, it’ll be a free download – and I’m sure I’m not alone in saying I TOTALLY CAN’T WAIT.

We’re sending Daniel Bates from the Foundation to Minecon to take pictures and chat to the Mojang guys. We’ll post what he comes up with here later next week.

Camera board – first demo of the final hardware!

Pete Wood at RS sent me this video yesterday. He’s been at Electronica 2012 in Germany with Rob Bishop, where RS have been demoing the Raspberry Pi (the large wall-slapping game you can see being played in the video is driven by a Pi) and, most interestingly for you guys, the camera board.

The camera has a 5 megapixel sensor, and can record 1080p H.264 video at 30 frames per second. This board will plug into the currently unused CSI pins on the Pi, using I²C for control. We’re also working on a display board, which will come to market after the camera board.

Pete has, in the tradition of makers and hackers everywhere, employed sellotape and what appears to be a broom handle in his demo. We’ll be making a little mount for the production camera, so sellotape will not be necessary. Broom handles, however, are almost always useful for something or other.

This camera board is a prototype of the production model; we’ve a (very) little way to go before we’re able to send it out to manufacture. We’ve got some testing chamber time booked in December; we need to be sure that that big ribbon cable doesn’t emit any forbidden electromagnetic radiation. We’re hoping to get these ready for sale in the new year, all being well at a price of $25. Keep watching this space!

Do you have plans for the camera add-on? Let us know what they are in the comments.

Summer Coding Contest results (finally!)

Update, 23/11 – congratulations are in order again for the winners: you’ve made the BBC news website!

Before I get onto the meat of this post, I’d like to say a mahoosivenormous thank you to Clive for babysitting this blog while I was away in Japan, spending my time doing terrible things to live abalone with a sort of ad-hoc bunsen burner. We think he’s done an amazing job – we’d also like to thank UKScone in particular, as well as Abishur and JamesH, for their tender ministrations to the Raspberry Pi Twitter feed. If you don’t follow us on Twitter already you really should; it’s where news gets posted as it happens, and you’ll find loads of links to relevant Pi events and hacks posted daily, alongside necessarily concise discussion.

So then. Summer Coding Contest. We’d hoped to have the results ready weeks ago, but there were so many excellent entries to go through line-by-line that it’s taken us a little while; we were blown away by some of what you did. If you’re a winner, your prize will be on the way soon, just in time for Christmas. And if your winning software is available online somewhere (not all of it was) and we’ve missed it, please drop me a line so I can add a link to this post.

The first prize in both categories is $1000, with runners-up prizes of $200 in each category. Well done to all the winners, and thanks to everybody who entered. We look forward to doing this again!

13 & Under Category

Winner: Aaron Hill – PySnap

Aaron’s entry was a great example of what you can do using Python on a Raspberry Pi. His PySnap program allows you to easily set-up automatic time-lapse photography using a USB webcam. The CLI-based program allows the user to set the periodicity at which photos are taken and was well thought out and designed. You can find a download at Github.

Runner Up: Louis Goessling – SerPint

Louis’s SerPint program allows you to remotely control the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi over a network socket or serial port. It can be used to control the GPIO pins from languages that don’t already have a GPIO library available and helps to make the Raspberry Pi an even better platform for remote automation. A download is available at Github.

Runner Up: Conner Foxley – The Matrix

Connor Foxley impressed us with his text-based world simulator which was written in C# – the programming was quite advanced and even featured an IRC interface. You can download The Matrix at Github.

14-18 Category

Winner: Ashley Newson – SmartSim

SmartSim is a digital logic circuit design and simulation package for the Raspberry Pi. It’s actually been featured on this blog before – and I should point out that this had absolutely no bearing on our decision to award Ashley the first prize – we had a lot to say about it, and you can read more about it here. A download is available on the SmartSim website.

Runner Up: Bradley Pollard – Neutron Craft

Bradley entered a StarCraft-inspired wave based survival game. – the game featured original sound and graphics along with a particularly well thought-out in-game tutorial/help system.

Runner Up: Yussuf Khalil – Pancake

Pancake is a lightweight HTTP server written in PHP. It offers a fast PHP API accelerated with code caching. It has its own website; you can find the sources of Yussuf’s projects at Github.

I appear to have mislaid my screengrab. Here’s a picture of some pancakes.

Runner Up: Hannes Westermann – BerryBox

BerryBox is a tool that allows you to sync files/folders across computers using a Raspberry Pi as a server. It comes with a server that runs on the Raspberry Pi and a client that runs on Windows, but as both are written in Lua it should be portable and able to run on Linux and OSX.

Runner Up: Aneesh Dogra – RasPod

RasPod is a simple music server for your Raspberry Pi. It allows you to control the playing of music on your Raspberry Pi with a web browser. Aneesh just mailed me with a link to RasPod on Github – get downloading!

Guest post #8: School trip to Sony UK Tec by Lucy Bunce

Since summer 2012 the Raspberry Pi has been produced in the UK, specifically in the Sony factory in Pencoed, South Wales. As the school I teach in (Y Pant Comprehensive) is about 4 miles away I decided to arrange a trip for the GCSE Computing class. Richard Wilkins, Senior Manager thankfully thought this was a great idea so on 13^th November we went for a tour of the facility, including the Raspberry Pi production line.

For most students this was their first visit to a high tech manufacturing facility. Donning anti-static jackets and shoes, we had the full tour. The main Sony product manufactured in Pencoed is their range of broadcast cameras. They have a clean room where dust particles are measured in order to produce high quality optical blocks. Sony also have a repair centre onsite and students were surprised to learn that the PSP one of them had sent back for repair would have been fixed here.

We had to wear anti-static jackets before entering the factory

Utilising the expertise, equipment and space in Pencoed, Sony also offer Contract Electronic Manufacturing – such as the Raspberry Pi. They are now producing around 16,000 Raspberry Pis a week and employing 30 people on the production line.We followed a batch of 6 Raspberry Pis up the production line and saw how the basic boards arrive in the factory 6 to a board.

Raspberry Pi circuit boards at two different stages of production

Students saw the solder paste squeegeed onto the boards through a mask, then the high speed robotic arms attaching the smaller components from tape reels. The larger components are then fitted in a separate machine which moves at a slower pace to avoid knocking them out of position.

The first stage of the construction process – applying the solder paste to the boards using a mask

The small components are bought in on reels and stuck to the solder by a robotic arm

At this point the boards are checked to ensure they have all the correct components before being put into the oven. This carefully controlled environment fixes the solder. The boards are run through a second production line to repeat the process for the underside (SD card mount etc.). As you’d expect, Raspberry Pis are tested for quality control and functionality within the factory and students were interested to see that software has been written to do some of this. Computing is used in the manufacture of computing, something that hadn’t occurred to many of the students.

Checking the finished product – here we can see the stacked RAM and CPU chips

As well as seeing the Raspberry Pi production we also saw some of the other products built there such as LED streetlighting. For fun Sony showed us how some of their broadcast filming and editing kit can be used – with a green-screen allowing them to try out Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak! We also saw some short film clips using the 4K projector which are maintained in Pencoed.

Free office space at Sony has been turned into a Business Incubation Centre hosting many smaller companies and tech startups. One of these, Wales Interactive, gave us a great talk. Their 15 or so employees (in roles as programmers, animators, artists and musicians) have created a number of games and apps for iOS, Android and consoles entirely in house. Many of the staff are graduates of the University of Glamorgan’s BSc in Computer Games Development . For my students, seeing just some of the study and employment options open to them within a few miles of home if they choose to follow a career in Computing was a real eye opener.

Sony are producing 16,000 Raspberry Pis a week

We don’t currently have Raspberry Pis in school (I’ve been making sure one of the IT suites is kitted out with USB keyboards and mice, and screens with DVI inputs first – we’re pretty much there). One of the students has a Raspberry Pi at home and all are now looking forward to getting their hands on some at school.

Quote from a student, Gareth:

“I thought it was really nice to find out finally where my Raspberry Pi was made, and to see all the technology and effort it takes to make one.

I use my Raspberry Pi for many things including watching videos on YouTube and basic web browsing and some small bits of coding. I also like the program scratch which allows me to build fun but basic games in my free time which comes free with the Raspberry Pi. If the school were to get some Raspberry Pi’s I think it would be fun to learn to code, on and to experience a different OS than the standard windows that we are used to.”

–Lucy Bunce, Y Pant Comprehensive School

A personal Raspberry Pi retrospective

One year ago I had just joined the Raspberry Pi forum. I’d heard about this little, low cost computer that you could plug into a screen and, well, just do stuff. As a teacher of ICT and Computing this interested me a lot, especially bearing in mind the Foundation’s mission and the state of Computing and ICT in many UK schools.

Back then I was one of 3000 forum members; now I’m one of 42000, many of them actively involved in everything from learning to code to robotics to near space flights to… well, just look at a typical Raspberry Pi Grab Bag. Amazing, inspiring stuff. Despite hiccups along the way—who can forget the server-crashing launch?—the Raspberry Pi is unequivocally a great British success story. In fact it’s great success story full stop (that’s ‘period’ for youse lot elsewhere).

It bears repeating that this time last year the Foundation thought that they might sell just 10000 Raspberry Pis: they are currently well on their way to a million. And whilst the Raspberry Pi itself may not be around in a few years’ time—the Foundation have always encouraged competition—something will fill this vital (important and invigorating) niche. The Raspberry Pi has set something profound in motion, and although we may not see the large scale benefits for some time, we will see them. As Eben says:

We don’t claim to have all the answers. We don’t think that the Raspberry Pi is a fix to all of the world’s computing issues; we do believe that we can be a catalyst.

So here I am on writing a eulogy to the Raspberry Pi on the Foundation’s very own blog. GAK! Doesn’t it make you puke? But I won’t apologise for that. My own site only had three visitors last year (and two of them were the cat stepping on F5) so what would be the point? Yes, I have gone mad for the blogging, just like my doctor warned me. And I’ve changed all the passwords (well, 123456 was rubbish) so that an embarrassed Liz can’t delete this.

There: I’m biased. But I also genuinely think that if you have been part of this then you have been part of computing history, in the same way that us codgers who were around in the 80s were. (Teacher Tip: never try to impress teenagers by gushing, “I had ZX Spectrum you know—I used to spend all night typing hex listings in!”).

So this evening, before the plug is pulled on me, I’d like to raise a glass of Blue Nun to Eben and Liz; the Raspberry Pi Foundation; the volunteers; the developers; the contributors; and most of all you, the community. I hope that you feel a mild urge to do the same (at least toast yourself for flip’s sake: it’s a lovely, warm confidence booster.)

I’m off now. Cheers, and thanks for being around for the past fortnight.

clive

[Disclaimer: this piece is personal opinion and is completely and utterly biased. Anyone commenting that I am completely and utterly biased will be agreeing with me, which I enjoy. No money changed hands in the writing of this panegyric (for that is, of course, what it is.) In fact I only wrote it so I could use the word ‘panegyric’ in a blog. Skills badge!]

—

> e
Your path is blocked by a floor waxer driven by Mooncake the cat

>examine Mooncake
Mooncake gives you the look that only cats can: an oxymoronic glare of pure innocence and deep, predatory malevolence. Around her neck is a curious RFID tag.

>get tag
Mooncake gently bats your hand a way. It’s a casual gesture, but one clearly designed to tell you, “I have razor sharp, retractable claws you know.”

>i
You have That Thing Your Aunt Gave You Which You Don’t Know What It Is, a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, a laser pointer and a lardy cake.

>shine laser pointer at floor
Mooncake leaps down and chases the red dot like a cat chasing a laser pointer. Whilst she is distracted you quickly unclip the curious RFID tag from her neck.

>e
Back door

>say to Thorin “unlock door with curious tag”
Thorin takes the RFID tag from you and waves it at the door. As if by magic a small flap swings open.

>climb through flap
The opening is too small.

>climb through flap
No, really – there’s no way you’ll get through there.

>climb through flap
You stick your head through the hole, followed by one arm. You are now wearing a door. (We did tell you, but you didn’t listen.)

>lubricate flap with lardy cake
You slather the fat-rich dough around the frame and then rub some on yourself for good measure. After some panicked wriggling you manage to squeeze through with only a few scrapes. You find yourself in an overgrown garden. The only exit is east through a small wooden gate.

>e
*** CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE ESCAPED!! ***

Your score is 3 of a possible 100, in 2493 moves. This score gives you the rank of complete and utter dullard.

Would you like to: RESTORE, RESTART or QUIT?