NEWS | ALPHA
The future of computing?
Raspberry Pi is a computer the size of a USB stick that its creators believe can change the fortunes of the creative industries. Will Freeman asks Frontier boss David Braben why he’s involved
Frontier’s David Braben holds a tiny prototype build of the soon to be released Raspberry Pi, and below, the BBC Micro educational computer
WHAT’S INSIDE?
A look under the bonnet of the Raspberry Pi developer units
THE FIRST versions of the Raspberry Pi computer available will be the dev units, due for release this December. The base version – the Model A – will
cost just $25, and boasts 128mb of RAM. Meanwhile, the bolstered Model B edition, which is set to sell for between $5 and $10 more, includes an SMSC LAN9512 USB 2.0 hub and offers 256mb of RAM. While some details are still to be
finalised, it is likely that along with the ‘consumer’ Raspberry Pi units, which will see release shortly after the developer boards, Model A and B will feature an ARM CPU core, a SD-HC card slot, and composite and HDMI out. Designed without any casing, Raspberry Pi can also output audio in Dolby 5.1. The final units may in fact feature three USB ports, enabling the connection of more inputs without the need for an external hub. “We’re releasing the developer
version particularly so we can start rolling out software,” explains Raspberry Pi co-creator David Braben. “In fact, the developer version might start going into after school clubs and so on, with time.”
“Today people are just taught to become
consumers – something that will happen anyway,” says Braben of the public’s attitude to computers and software. The vision of he and his Raspberry Pi
colleagues, then, is to change that trend. “People should be able to understand they can be creators,” he insists. “If you can be a bit savvy about computers it means you can make bigger decisions on your own and get more out of things. Just things like writing a little piece of script to saving yourself having to do something 500 times is a skill and mind-set most people don’t have any more.”
TOUGH STUFF “A group of us formed a registered charity and set out to make something as cheaply as possible that would be a tough, robust and open platform that would make it easy for teachers to share software, and allow people to be creative,” says Braben of Raspberry Pi’s early days. “We also wanted to provide a central venue, probably some sort of website – where people could upload stuff as long as they were prepared to put it into the public domain.” The need for a core community – and the public domain ethos – is central to why Raspberry Pi even exists. Previously the
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
efforts to spread interest in computer science training by groups like Computing in Schools were hampered by the fact that the rare examples of educational programming software developed by teachers were hard to distribute. This was partly because of the fragility of modern PC in the classroom, and partly because of the expense and difficulty of installing compilers.
A group of us set out to make
something as cheaply as possible that would be a tough, robust and open platform.
David Braben, Frontier In fact, in the 1980s heyday of computer
science in UK schools another platform was inspired by the same problems. The BBC Micro was robust in terms of both its physicality and digital innards. It offered a standardised platform throughout UK schools, and allowed teachers to deploy simultaneously to an entire classroom.
The iconic form of the BBC Micro will be fused into the memory of anyone who grew up in 1980s Britain, and now it has partly inspired the creation of Raspberry Pi. “One of the things computers like the BBC
Micro, the Spectrum and the C64 did, and hopefully the Raspberry Pi will do, is make people realise that a computer isn’t a hugely complex intractable beast that you need a PHD to understand,” states Braben. “It’s actually no different from so many other devices that appear to be complex but really aren’t.”
LITTLEBIGINSPIRATION Another inspiration came from the success of video games that popularised relatively intricate modding and user generated content creation. Of course, Braben gives a nod to LittleBigPlanet, but it was also Frontier’s own Rollercoaster Tycoon and its ‘Ride Exchange’ that made the industry veteran realise a central depositary for the uploading, downloading and sharing of teaching aids could be the factor in priming a generation to be empowered by computer literacy. “This could create a real snowball effect,”
offers Braben. “The teachers would feel more supported than they are at the moment, and it could make really very complex concepts
NOVEMBER 2011 | 07
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