Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Casting an eye on the Internet of Things, Raspberry Pi has formed a partnership with board manufacturer element14 in order to design and of course, put on sale these customized computing boards.
Just don’t expect to get this perk when you buy a single Raspberry Pi for yourself, or even a few hundred.
Pi guy Eben Upton told the BBC that the Pi has already found its way into industrial applications and has become the basis of consumer-oriented products offered through crowdfunding platforms.
The company behind popular microprocessor Raspberry Pi is offering an option to customize and mass-produce preferred specifications. These are not going to end up in schools used teach kids to program. These will be used in factories for automate factory processes.
Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd., the commercial subsidiary of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and Element14 have signed a global exclusive agreement whereby Element14 will provide “design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create bespoke designs based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform“, the companies jointly announced in London today.
According to element14 the ability to reconfigure the board layout will enable designers to add additional functionality, redesign interfaces allowing the board to connect to other equipment and change the board and memory configuration. Since 2012, the company has managed to sell a whopping seven million units of its computer, which is perhaps why it’s now in a place to expand. That’s up from five million at last update in February, following the launch of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B boards.
The customisation service also doesn’t signal any change in the proprietary license over Raspberry Pi’s physical design.
The minimum order for custom Pi starts at between 3,000 to 5,000 boards, depending on the nature of the customization.
