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Raspberry Pi- A name which is now not a new technical buzzword for researchers in the area of Computer Science, Electronics & Embedded Systems engineering worldwide. Till date, 5 million pieces of various generations of Raspberry Pi ranging from Model A to Model B and even the latest Raspberry Pi Zero (Going Out of Stock in First week of Launch) have been sold and thousands of projects ranging from Robotics, Super Computer development, Gaming Consoles, Portable Tablets, Server based Implementations on lines of Linux and Cloud Computing, Drones and even Astro Pi has been proposed and implemented all over the world.
The foundation seed for development for Raspberry Pi journey started in 2006, when researchers named: Eben Upton, Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft at University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory became stunned to see the
decline in the skill level of A Level students and students applying for computer science. The main idea behind their stepping stone development was to give kids tiny and affordable computer in the period where computers were expensive and programming practice among kids was not supported by parents of children in U.K. The team lead by Eben Upton developed several versions of working prototypes from year 2006 to 2008 and the final released version was named as “RASPBERRY Pi”
The Raspberry Pi was officially created in year 2012 (February 2012) and the developing stone was laid by Raspberry Pi Foundation and within 3 years, the model B entered mass level production with Element 14 and RS Electronics and within 2 years of official launch of Pi, 2 million pieces are sold till date.
Raspberry Pi, a complete PC in itself started a new movement of Portable and Low powerful computers. And taking Raspberry Pi into consideration various replica boards like Intel Galileo, Dwengo, Beaglebone, ORCID etc. have come
up with their boards providing somewhat same or little bit more configuration as compared to Pi.
Pros & Cons of Raspberry Pi
The following are the Pros/Advantages of Raspberry Pi usage:
- Raspberry Pi is regarded as a small, powerful and efficient cum compact form factor computer and is very cheap to acquire. Various SME’s can use Raspberry Pi to do small and medium level tasks like Running as Web
Server, Database Server, and Media Server. So, in turn lots of money on purchase of various servers can be saved. - Raspberry Pi can act as single platform for extensive programming experience. Various Programming languages are supported by Pi and users can install the respective compiler for proper execution of code. Python, the main
programming language which is used by Pi, is less complex and easy to understand. It provides better code development, less lines and provides automatic memory management function. - As the product supports open source operating system and open source apps. So, tons of operating systems in various flavors of Linux and millions of apps in that Linux operating system are available at simple disposal of Raspberry Pi.
- Raspberry Pi supports add on hardware like Camera, Component Moduler Kit, Gertboard and HAT board which facilitates to connect thousands of third party hardware like Buttons, LED’s and user can perform various operations on Pi.
- The product is energy efficient and provides greener ethical alternative to small businesses. This small credit card sized product is easy to recycle and saves lots of money on cooling solutions
The following are the Limitations/Cons of Raspberry Pi:
- It cannot act as full-fledged computer because the Ethernet Port and Processing CPU is not so fast to process multitasking computing cycles.
- Not compatible with fully functional Windows Operating System.
- The product is limited to SME’s and not very highly useful and provides huge options of facilities to larger organizations/enterprises.
- Doesn’t have Real Time Clock (RTC) with battery backup. Time can only be work arounded using NTP Server and most of the operating systems does this task automatically.
- Doesn’t support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi out of box and even various USB Based dongles are also not supported for wireless connectivity.
- Doesn’t have built-in ADC Convertor. External charger is used for ADC purpose.
Is Raspberry Pi- Open Source or Commercial?
What is meant by Open Source and GPL?
Open Source may be defined as Hardware or Software which is manufactured and given free of cost along with its respective License to Distribute and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Linux, being an open source operating system allows the end users to download, modify, improve and even release own customized distributed version to any person in the world. Open source technology also brings enhancement in security and defenses against all sorts of vulnerabilities and backdoors as open source community can detect and correct the security loopholes and in turn makes the overall system to work hack-proof and stable. Open source software is released under GNU (GNU’s not UNIX) General Public License coined as “GPL” which gives the power to the end user to download and use the GPL software as per their own requirements.
Is Raspberry Pi Open Source?
The Question: Is Raspberry Pi Open Source is although very difficult to answer. Yet we can say, it is right now “A MYSTRY” As, running Pi requires backbone of Linux operating system which is open source and free to use. But taking into consideration the Raspberry Pi’s hardware- CPU which is from Broadcom Company i.e. BCM2835 System on a Chip (SoC), the Intellectual Property rights of Broadcom SoC is not open source. But in 2012, Broadcom distributed the source code of ARM11 code for Pi to the open world, to facilitate the users to write their own GPU code of various video drivers and improve the processing and video capabilities of PI graphics processing. But it doesn’t mean, that the source code for all hardware core is open to the end user. Which in turn makes the question: Is Raspberry Pi really an Open Source Hardware? More complex to answer. So, in a nutshell, Calling Raspberry Pi as open source hardware right now? Can’t be declared as the proper answer to this is still yet to be answered because software is open source, some cores of hardware is open source but some IPR of hardware is Confidential from Broadcom.
References
Nayyar, Anand & Puri, Vikram. (2015). Raspberry Pi-A Small, Powerful, Cost Effective and Efficient Form Factor Computer: A Review. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering (IJARCSSE). 5. 720-737.
About Author
Vicky Chhetri