element14 has signed a global exclusive agreement with Raspberry Pi Trading to provide design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create modified designs based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform.
This announcement follows a number of customer requests to create customized versions of the Raspberry Pi boards and represents the next phase in the element14 and Raspberry Pi Trading global partnership. Utilizing the proven in house design expertise available through its Embest and AVID technology businesses, together with the comprehensive training provided by Broadcom and Raspberry Pi Trading, element14 has access to more than 200 design engineers to evaluate customers’ needs and provide bespoke Raspberry Pi-based customization designs to meet their requirements.
The agreement opens up the potential for the Raspberry Pi technology platform to be customized to suit specific customer applications across a wide range of industries and sectors from Internet of Things (IoT) technology to energy management, industrial and end consumer devices. Taking the existing advantages of the Raspberry Pi, such as ease of programming and ability to interact with and control physical devices, it’s easy to envisage how changes to the Raspberry Pi hardware will enable it to be designed in to applications on a commercial scale.
Customizations may include reconfiguring the board layout, incorporating additional functionality, redesigning the interfaces, and changing the board and memory configuration. As these will be personalized designs, it is envisaged that order quantities will start in the region of between 3,000 and 5,000 depending upon the nature of the customization.
“This exclusive partnership extends element14’s world class end-to-end design to manufacturing services to OEM customers, giving them the flexibility to customize any Raspberry Pi board in order to optimize it for a particular design,” says Claire Doyle, global head of Raspberry Pi at element14. “This is an incredibly exciting development for Raspberry Pi Trading, Broadcom and the industry as a whole, which will see boards featuring the Broadcom application processors being designed into end user applications and markets in significant volume.”
