Michael del CastilloUpstart Business Journal Technology & Innovation Editor Email |TwitterThe UpTake: The imminent launch of a Raspberry Pi touchscreen could turn any hacker into a potential competitor for Apple and Samsung.
W hy buy an iPad, when you can build one yourself to almost any specification-not to mention design? Thanks to a new touchscreen revealed today by the makers of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, that will soon be a reality. And for a tablet computing industry that is rapidly losing momentum, this could be just the jolt it needs.
'The whole time we've been doing Raspberry Pi we've been saying yeah the display accessory is coming, yeah the display accessory is coming-and the display accessory is finally coming,' said Eben Upton, the company's founder and CEO, speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, according to this report. In addition to being the founder of Raspberry Pi, Upton, who was one of MIT's 35 under 35 in 2012, is also a technical director at chip-maker, Broadcom, based in Irvine, California.
The original Raspberry Pi, on which Upton's new screen will be built, is a credit card sized computer that plugs into a television, a keyboard, and a mouse, originally designed to spur experimentation among school students, but which has become a favorite among hackers looking for cheap ways to build minimum viable products.
Examples of products that have been built with the $40 Raspberry Pi, according to an InfoWorld report earlier this year, include a Network Time Protocol server, a wall-mounted digital calendar, and a temperature and humidity monitor, just to name a few of the limitless possibilities, even without a touchscreen.
My favorite example of the Pi technology at work is the Kano computer, a DIY computer kit that last year raised$1.5 million on Kickstarter to teach children (and less experienced adults such as myself) how to build computers.
http://ift.tt/1hgKyaM For tablet reviews of the best budget tablets
No comments:
Post a Comment