Raspberry Pi #8 First Photoshoot

I came home from work this evening to find a small brown parcel containing a Raspberry Pi beta board that I had won in an ebay auction earlier this week. It was a charity auction with all the proceeds go to supporting the Raspberry Pi foundation whose aim is to promote computer science and electronics at the school level. I think this is an admirable aim – computer science has enabled me to run my own business, and I feel passionately that we should improve the teaching of it in schools.

The production boards should be going on sale in the next few months for £16 / £25 each depending on the model you choose. For those of you who are looking forward to ordering your own, I have taken some photos of it against my iPhone so you can get a better idea of the size for yourselves.

The first thing that strikes you about the Raspberry Pi board is how small it is. I had seen pictures of it online, but I’m sure it looked bigger! It’s great to see how far computing has evolved since I got my first BBC Model B computer approximately 25 years ago.

You can see the full size Raspberry Pi board diagram here.

Although these boards were designed for schools, I think they will transform the world of computing in myriad other ways. A few years ago the OLTP foundation set out to build a $100 laptop. 2012 marks the beginning of the $20 desktop.

What is the Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi board is effectively an entire computer on a credit card size board. Like a cut down Mac Mini, all you need is a keyboard and a monitor and you can run a full Linux desktop operating system like Fedora or Debian. It’ll even play Quake 3 and full 1080p films!

Re-using these photos

I’m releasing all these photos under the Creative commons attribution license:

Creative Commons License
Raspberry Pi Beta Board #8 Photos by Paul Maunders is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

10 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi #8 First Photoshoot”

  1. 1) 25 years ago? Wow you must be as old as me 😉

    2) Your blog count this year has already surpassed last year’s and we’re only in month one!

    3) I’ve been thinking about how we could support a local charity. We don’t want to pluck a charity out of a hat, but rather do something where we can really help in terms of our Internet expertise. I wonder if we could start a London – Aldershot scheme to assist with web design / hosting / accounting for start up businesses for people in underprivileged circumstances wanting to start their own business.

  2. OK, great, but … are already an OS on it (Debian, Arch, or …)? And if so, are you able to browse the web with a webbrowser?

    I really wonder how a 700 Mhz & 256 MB RAM system performs with a GUI and webbrowser …

  3. Thanks *so* much for supporting the Raspberry Pi Foundation by bidding for the board. We’re really pleased it’s gone to such a good home! Your generosity is very much appreciated; we’re looking forward to seeing what you get up to with it.

  4. Send more photos with working device! If it’s possible, try to use Ubuntu, how it’s works.

    P.S. Why you don’t leave the comment in Ebay – for raspberry_pi?

  5. hey paul,

    i am working on a 3d model (in google sketchup) of the raspberry board, and i would like it to make it as accurate as possible, so people can start working on cases etc.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlossen/sets/72157628593845515/

    as you are one of the few people with access to a raspberry — could you do me big favor and take some measurements?

    i am mostly interested in the exact position and dimensions of all connectors (ethernet, usb, micro-usb …)

    thanks
    tim

  10. Pingback: A Monday grab-bag of community cleverness - Raspberry Pi

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *