The queue of fans waiting for one has been described as the geeky equivalent to the the Glastonbury ticket scrum and, for a few days following its official launch, more people Googled ‘Raspberry Pi’ than ‘Lady Gaga’. What is it about this $25 computer...
Professor Andy Hopper and Dr Rob Mullins both confess to being slightly surprised – but delighted – by the extraordinary reaction that’s greeted the Raspberry Pi computer.
By the time it was officially launched, and months before the credit card-sized computer began shipping, hundreds of thousands of people had already pre-ordered their Raspberry Pi, and internet forums were buzzing with anticipation.
“Having been a commercial programmer for over 25 years, this is the first device since the inception of the PC that has really thrilled me and made me sit up and beg for a piece of this technology,” one forum member wrote.
As they waited, they speculated on what they might do with their Raspberry Pi, the kind of case they might build for it, and the creativity it could unleash among a new generation of children exposed to accessible computers.
“And people haven’t even got it yet! I can’t even get my hands on one and they’re only in the office down the hall,” says Andy, Head of the University’s Computer Laboratory. “I’m very surprised – long may it last.”
“We planned for 10,000 at this stage, as it’s only supposed to be a developer release, so the number of units that will actually ship exceed our wildest expectations,” admits Rob, one of the six founders and trustees of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The Raspberry Pi was designed and developed by current and former staff of the Computer Laboratory, as well as other notable figures including Pete Lomas, Managing Director of Norcott Technologies Limited and a trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Cambridge-based computer programmer David Braben, and Eben Upton, former Director of Studies for Computer Science at St John’s College. It is a simple solution to a pressing problem: a powerful, low-cost computer that encourages people to experiment with programming and electronics, something missing from many UK schools for more than a decade.
“It’s really important that it is low cost – we would like every child who wants one to have one and, at the price of a textbook, that’s possible,” says Rob. “It’s low power – you can run it off batteries or a solar panel if you want to, and it’s open so you can boot the operating system you want and connect other pieces of electronics to it.”
The reaction that’s greeted Raspberry Pi seems to bear out the belief that something needs to change in how we teach computing at school. In his weekly technology column for The Observer, Wolfson College Vice-President Professor John Naughton described our ICT curriculum as “dysfunctional” and “disabling for most kids”.
“We have to accept that ICT has become a toxic brand in the context of British secondary schools,” he wrote. It’s a view shared by the Royal Society, whose recent report into computing in UK schools concluded that because many pupils find ICT boring, it’s time to press the restart button on this area of the curriculum.
According to Andy: “Kids have become users rather than programmers,” and the Computer Laboratory has witnessed the effect of this dwindling enthusiasm for computing in the number of applicants to undergraduate computer science courses at Cambridge. These changes were the catalyst for Raspberry Pi.
“We noticed that there were fewer people coming in who had already learned to programme by themselves or at after-school clubs,” remembers Rob. “Those who had enjoyed a big advantage, and a lot turned out to be the real stars because they had a lot of technical expertise under their belt.”
It was this generation that had learned to programme thanks to the BBC Micro, the legendary machine that Andy helped develop at the Cambridge-based start-up Acorn.
Acorn was one of the companies that grew into the mighty microprocessor firm ARM, which earlier this year hosted the 30th birthday party for the BBC Micro. “It was direct and approachable, something you could get your hands on and your friends thought was cool,” Andy remembers. “It was a very important thing that brought benefit to the community. It was a watershed moment for the country.”
And its impact was astonishing, says John Naughton. “In addition to launching a thousand careers, the little machine spawned two significant industrial developments. The first was computer gaming, a business in which Britain still punches way above its weight; the second was ARM.”
Could Raspberry Pi be about to do the same again? Together with the Royal Society and other industry reports, it’s already changing the school curriculum.
And the demand for it shows that, freed from the risk of disabling an expensive home computer, both children and their parents still want a chance to experiment with code.
“People want to build and learn and create – they just need to be given the opportunity,” says Rob. “Hopefully what we’ve got with Raspberry Pi is a piece of low-cost hardware that will enable them to get started.”
The best part for Rob has been children’s excitement, evident when school children came recently to the Computer Laboratory to experiment with the Raspberry Pi. “I thought it was way too complicated – 100 lines of code – but they just threw themselves into it! They're completely fearless and we’re really letting them down if we just stick them in front of a word-processor or spreadsheet,” he says.
But fun, nostalgia, price and educational need are only part of the equation adding up to Raspberry Pi’s success. Set up as a charity, and set up in Cambridge, Rob and the team have been able to create a sense of ownership and goodwill that has transformed a good idea into one whose time has come.
“We’ve caught some people’s imagination because of the price, and people want to be part of it because it sounds fun,” Rob says. “But what’s great too is the enormous community that’s built up around the Raspberry Pi.”
“We’ve tried to engage with people who are interested in the project from the start so they feel it’s their project. They’ve contributed ideas already and will continue to contribute,” he says. “The community is a big part of the project and why it’s been so successful.”
Cambridge academics, teachers, businesses and angel investors are a crucial part of the Raspberry Pi story too. Needing to raise a modest £100,000 capital, the Foundation was turned down by national and regional government funders. But Cambridge angels were more than willing. “Even though we looked nationally, in the end it was the Cambridge angels who supported the project and enabled it to happen,” says Rob.
It’s something Cambridge is good at, Andy believes. “Cambridge Plc is yet again seen as an important contributor to the country, in this case not in a conventional commercial or conventional intellectual direction, but through a charitable foundation doing something for a good cause in a timely fashion.”
As well as Cambridge angels, the city’s teachers have been closely involved with the project, and its electronics firms – notably Broadcom – have done generous production deals with Raspberry Pi.
Which is not to say the future’s bright (or raspberry). There are major hurdles to overcome in the medium term, most notably the lack of teachers with computer science qualifications. But both Rob and Andy are confident the community will surmount them.
“There are a lot of things that need to happen for the situation in schools to improve and Raspberry Pi is only one tiny part of that. Hopefully we can work with others to create materials to support the computing at school curriculum and exam boards, and there’s also the issue of teacher training, which is not going to solve itself,” says Rob.
“We can bypass that to some extent by giving them something that’s easy to programme, encouraging them to look at it in their own time, and fostering ambassador programmes whereby local companies send engineers and computer scientists into schools to work with teachers.”
Andy agrees it is teachers who need the most support: “Teachers are good – I’m not critical of teachers – but training teachers is the bottleneck. Changing the curriculum and then assuming everything’s going to be rosy – it’s going to take two or three years.”
But his enthusiasm for the Raspberry Pi seems as unshakable as his belief in computer science. “It’s a serious professional subject and it can change the world – people start companies like Google and whole societies change permanently.”
We just need to take full advantage of it. “Every kid in the country should get a free one, everyone who applies to a university course in computing should get a free one, everybody who applies to a relevant professional society should get a free one. It's a computer for the world!”