Raspberry Pi expands support for industrial customers

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has expanded its support for its rapidly growing base of industrial customers by launching a programme that matches firms with design partners to work on deployments.

With business customers now representing nearly half of its sales, the foundation has launched a resources section on its website curated specifically for businesses, in addition to launching the Raspberry Pi Approved Design Partners scheme.

The website section serves as a hub providing all the guidance and information that businesses deploying Raspberry Pi devices, or aspiring to do so, should need. It includes advice for using the single-board computer across business deployments, including links to datasheets, all the required compliance documentation, and software.

“The industrial market for Raspberry Pi has grown over the years, and now represents around 44% of our annual total sales,” said the Raspberry Pi Foundation's principal hardware engineer, Roger Thornton.

“We’ve seen this borne out with new releases of Raspberry Pi products: typically sales of a consumer product drop off once a new product is released, but we still see incredible sales of older models of Raspberry Pi. Our inference is that these are destined for embedded applications, where changing to the latest model is not practical.”

The organisation is also hoping to reassure business customers of the Raspberry Pi’s longevity with a product lifetime guarantee until at least 2026. Product lifetimes rarely end, too, with users still able to purchase the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+, for example, which was first released in 2014.

The foundation’s new Approved Design Partners programme, meanwhile, will match business customers seeking to design Raspberry Pi systems into their products with design consultancies. This scheme will launch with a select set of designers with a proven record for integrating Raspberry Pi into industrial systems, expanding to include more partners over the coming years.

“If you have a product or a piece of work that uses Raspberry Pi, and you need technical assistance, Raspberry Pi Approved Design Partners have the capacity to provide you with effective help,” Thornton added. “All our Design Partners have been through a rigorous application process, and we will monitor them regularly for quality and ability.”

The foundation’s six initial design partners are Ignys Ltd, EDA Technology, Kunst Engineering, Hallsten Innovations, OnLogic, and AVID Technologie, and all six can be contacted directly through the Raspberry Pi site.