Interview
metal, stone, cork or wood shares. The finished pieces are confusingly similar in feel and smell to the real materials, allowing for completely new designs.” Developer boards are developing fast and their capabilities are endless. But there is the question of how much further they will be able to develop and if there is room on the market for anymore. Gerwarth explains further: “When the first Raspberry Pi hit the market six years ago, it was aimed at encouraging young people to learn how to programme. Since then, the mini-PC, with its diverse application options, has firmly established itself in the maker scene and we have since seen many competitors try and enter the market to grab a slice of the industry. “Development boards such as Raspberry
control, a replacement can be made easily with a 3D printer, or even a collection of chess pieces.
“For designers, 3D printing makes it much quicker and more cost effective to build prototypes for products or machines as well.”
Gerwarth goes on to say: “There is continuous innovation to enable more complex designs to be printed and print in
multiple colours. But these devices are also becoming increasingly affordable for the private user, bringing a revolution in three- dimensional printing to life.
“Most 3D printers for domestic use
were previously only able to process plastics such as PLA or ABS. Now there are new filaments that offer completely new possibilities with interesting material compositions. For example, filament with
Pi, Arduino or Banana Pi are suitable for use as print servers or Internet radios, for taking photos and live surveillance images transmitted to smartphones or become a HD media player as the basis for the home theatre. This diversity is appealing to many tech enthusiasts. Once you have familiarised yourself with the technology, you always come back to it and develop new ideas with it, for example self-built smart home systems. With multiple applications, there are increasing demands on these mini-PCs so we expect to see more powerful models entering the market this year.” Pannewitz continues: “We’re really supportive of getting more young people into engineering, design and learning skills to be able to fix and create gadgets. Raspberry Pi was originally developed for young people to get them into engineering and programming. With this trend now on
the rise, we can be very optimistic that the younger generation will be hooked by this fascinating technology.”
Pannewitz and Gerwarth concludes with some of the most exciting products we can expect to see this year from the three trends. Gerwarth says: “We are really excited about the new Raspberry Pi 3B+ that was launched in March. The increased CPU of 1.5 GHz, WiFi ac and Power over Ethernet capabilities mean it can be used for an even wider variety of projects and cope with the greater demands from the community. The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ supports transmission of 10,100 and 1,000 Mbit, putting it in the same league as Gigabit LAN development boards, transferring up to 300 Mbit per second via USB 2.0.
“One of Raspberry Pi’s genuine competitors, Banana Pi, will launch its Banana Pi Zero, an equivalent to the Raspberry Pi Zero later this year. It will also be interesting to see if any other competitors enter the market to try and get a slice of the action and establish themselves as a viable alternative to Raspberry Pi.” Pannewitz concludes: “As we saw from Mobile World Congress this year, tech brands are looking at voice activated automation and connectivity. We will see more central home control solutions come onto the market. It’s about being able to control multiple connected devices from your mobile or tablet or via assistants like Alexa – everything from your doorbell, home security to thermostats to showers and fridges.”
www.reichelt.com
www.cieonline.co.uk
Components in Electronics
March 2018 13
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