RPi's Eben Upton: “Children are some of the most demanding consumers”

In an interview with Jan Buiting, Eben Upton explains: “If you can make a device that will withstand a child’s bedroom, it will certainly withstand a factory!” […]. When those who have bought their first RPi for their own edification, at home, then taking it into their professional lives, they have to explain to their colleagues that this board, seen as a toy, is more reliable than a lot of devices that claim to be industrial.”

Last week, at the electronica 2018 show in Munich our esteemed editor Jan Buiting had a casual conversation with Eben Upton, co-founder of the famous Raspberry Pi. Everyone knows that this nano-computer has given the electronics world a creative impulse of unprecedented power. The success of the famous Raspberry is such that even industrial enterprises in the micro-electronics sphere have found it to their taste and incorporated it into their products. It was therefore logical that the first question posed by Jan to open this video interview on Elektor’s “Fast Forward” stand concerned this meteoric success and the now professional ambitions of the Raspberry Pi.

The skilled professional is often also a skilled amateur

Eben Upton remembers that around 6 years ago, before he’d sold a million Raspberry Pi boards, his clientele was almost entirely composed of amateurs, mostly adult hobbyists. In fact, a lot of them were also professional engineers. These users, convinced by their personal experiences of the power and stability of the RPi as a stable IT platform, quickly also adopted it in their professional lives.
This is nothing extraordinary, says Eben Upton, a good player. “Arduino did this long before we did.” The history of technology offers many examples where known proven ideas were found in family life before being transposed to the professional domain.

The porosity of the border between private and professional life is never so fruitful as when professional activities correspond to the deep aspirations of individuals.

Children are some of the most demanding consumers

Eben Upton explains: “If you can make a device that will withstand a child’s bedroom, it will certainly withstand a factory! When those who have bought their first RPi for their own edification, at home, then take it into their professional lives, they have to explain to their colleagues that this board, seen as a toy, is more reliable than a lot of devices that claim to be industrial.”

You can see Eben Upton in the video below. He replies, amongst other questions, to a wish-list expressed by the French and Dutch editors of MagPi, the official magazine of the Raspberry Pi published in by Elektor.