These customization services are being launched in partnership with a company called Element 14, which has also handled the distribution of the Raspberry Pi since it first launched.
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The existing models of the Raspberry Pi are all very capable and flexible tiny computers, with a range of connections allowing them to be customized to suit your needs. Element14’s custom Raspberry Pi development projects will be tap its Embest and AVID technology business units, and will be further supported by both Broadcom, whose processor is used on the SBC, and the Raspberry Pi Trading company.
Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton designed the cheap computing board with students in mind, but when announcing the new customisation service on Tuesday, he said an increasing number of customers are putting Pi boards to work in factory automation and consumer products.
The firm revealed that it has 200 engineers ready to start customising orders.
OEMs can now take Raspberry Pi’s advantages of ease of programming and the ability to control and interact with physical devices and use them in commercial-scale devices.
As before, the software of the Pi is open source, but the hardware is proprietary; areas that might be considered for customisation would include configuration of the PCB, adding functions, re-designing interfaces or headers/pinouts, and altering memory configurations.
According to Upton, seven million Pi units have been sold in the last three years.
A handful of unsanctioned Raspberry Pi knock-offs have already appeared over the past couple of years, including various Orange Pi and Banana Pi flavors (shown below).
Just don’t expect to get this perk when you buy a single Raspberry Pi for yourself, or even a few hundred.
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System builders, businesses, retailers and anyone else who wishes to order a bulk of Raspberry Pi PCs can now request to re-configure the board layout.
