As Raspberry Pi Products are Restocked in Thousands, New Designs Emerge
There's no end to the innovation that can come from a simple Raspberry Pi—from recent wireless communication devices to human-machine interface solutions.
Raspberry Pi is commonly used by hobbyists and makers to create hardware solutions. But Raspberry Pi is also used in professional settings, with its robust embedded system features benefitting use cases spanning the Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial automation.
Raspberry Pi Pico series. Image (modified) used courtesy of Raspberry Pi
With years-long supply chain shortages coming to a close for Raspberry Pi, several companies have announced interesting ways they have turned to Raspberry Pi products for professional designs.
More Raspberry Pi Units in Stock
During the pandemic and ensuing silicon shortage of 2021, Raspberry Pi products were flying off shelves and going out of stock.
To make these products available again, Raspberry Pi CEO, Eben Upton, announced that Sony will help to stockpile the non-silicon parts of Raspberry Pi. It is expected that this new development will increase the stock level of Raspberry Pi products to eight hundred thousand units in June and one million units starting in July.
Kickstarter’s IR Transceiver PiBeam
Based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, PiBeam is an IR transceiver that allows users to control their electronic gadgets, such as TVs and computers, wirelessly. As a plug-and-play product, PiBeam allows users to control their electronic devices in a seamless wireless communication interface without the use of the internet.
Close-up view of PiBeam. Image used courtesy of Kickstarter
The product features a dual-core Arm Cortex M0+ processor with a processing speed of up to 133 MHz. This makes it suitable to handle complex remote control tasks. In addition, the IR transceiver product comes with a 1.14" TFT LCD display, three programmable buttons, one boot button, and one microSD card slot for external storage. According to Kickstarter, the product is suitable to function in human-controlled devices such as keyboards, mice, remotes, and controllers.
Kickstarter has made PiBeam open-source. This enables users to tinker with the hardware components and software architecture of the device. The product also supports general-purpose programming languages such as Python. This enables software developers to write programs with the device.
Seeed Studio Puts Raspberry Pi in HMI Device
With Raspberry Pi's robust embedded system components, professional engineers are shifting their attention to it for industrial applications in human-machine interface (HMI). This is evident in Seeed Studio's latest upgrade of its reTerminal device called reTerminal DM.
The reTerminal DM features a high-performance gateway and hybrid connectivity processes for downlink and uplink transmission of data to edge devices and the cloud, respectively. Image used courtesy of Seeed Studio
reTerminal DM is a Raspberry Pi-powered HMI suitable for applications such as safety control, water management, and temperature management in various industries and sectors.
The reTerminal DM employs Raspberry Pi CM4, featuring a quad-core Cortex-A72 at a processing speed of 1.5 GHz. The device integrates Panel PC, HMI, PLC, and an IIoT gateway all-in-one device. What’s more, the device supports connectivity interfaces such as CAN bus, RS485, RS232, and Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as powerful wireless communication capabilities such as 4G, LoRa, Wi-Fi, and BLE. Its 10.1-inch touchscreen is IP65-rated. This makes it compatible for use in harsh working environments.
With this HMI device, Seeed Studio aims to commit to more innovation and development in Raspberry Pi.
