It's 9am on a lovely autumn morning at Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, just outside Geneva. The sun shines on to an open vista of fields and mountains, glistens off nearby lakes. It's an ideal day for cycling, walking, picnicking; almost anything other than messing around with computers in the dark.
I am standing in the dark, watching people mess around with computers. Scruffy young men take cables out of plastic carrier bags and plug them into the back of television screens. They connect up keyboards, slot in SD cards, bung long leads into USB jacks. Parcel tape is slathered over stray cords to stick them in place. Somehow, I thought that Cern, the closest thing to a Bond lab on the planet, would be more sophisticated than this.
Still, it's not Cern that we're checking out. We're here for something far more basic, and even more exciting. Take a closer look.
You will notice that near every terminal sits a small green circuit board. Slightly bigger than a credit card, with cables sprouting out of it like twisted limbs, it resembles a rectangular spider. In fact, it's a computer, busily driving and connecting all the disparate elements around it to create€¦ well, whatever the geeks want it to. Say hello, ladies and gentle-nerds, to the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is a robust, cheap (about 25), low-powered programmable computer. It is a British invention that went on sale for the first time in February this year and has been a science sensation, the computing equivalent of tickets to Glastonbury or the Rolling Stones: everyone wants one, not just hardcore fans. Before it even launched, demand for the Pi outran supply, and the day the first 10,000 became available, the distributing websites all crashed. The first ever BBC online video of the RPi - a preview of it, before it went on sale - got more than 800,000 views in a matter of days. Since then, the RPi has shifted almost 500,000 units and is on target to top 1m by Christmas - topped up by purchasers from South America and China who haven't been put off by the import costs which turn the RPi from bargain to just cheapish. It's been used to take photographs of the Earth from near space and snaps of birds in back gardens. And it has united the science community, from primary school teachers to particle physicists, in joyous enthusiasm; mostly because they hope its price, size, software and sturdiness (you can shove it in your pocket without damaging it, supposedly) will make it appeal to kids, and thus lead children into computer programming.
So let's see, shall we? From 9am until 5pm, an unremitting stream of young kids wander into the dim room at Cern, look around for a free monitor, and sit down in front of it. They spot a small cat in the right hand top corner of the screen. Someone - an adult, another child - tells them they can make the cat move if they program it to do so. And then the kids do so.
Mickal, who's six, is as charming an advert for the RPi as you will ever meet. €Watch the cat,€ he says. €He can dance.€ He drags and drops commands across the screen. The cat walks and turns around in circles. Later, he shows me that he can switch some tiny lights on and off using the RPi. €Press N and enter,€ he says. €Now N, space and enter.€
Nancy, seven, is also enjoying herself. She's given the cat a friend, a horse who makes odd noises, gallops into walls and bounces back. €We don't have a computer at school, except sometimes for maths. I don't play computer at home either. I like drawing. And I like this.€
Nearby, Thomas, seven, is having a go too. Is he enjoying himself? €I like it a little bit,€ he says. €It's fun, but sometimes when you get a bit stuck, it gets annoying, and you want to do something else.€ He looks a little wistfully at the door, and at the bright sunshine beyond.
Since the RPi's launch, it has had almost perfect press, and you would have to be a far more cynical hack than I am to scoff at its ideals. Its developers are six highly qualified Cambridge-based scientists, and its principles are pure of heart. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity whose sole aim is to promote the study of computer science in schools; the Raspberry Pi was born from that aim. If the foundation had been a business rather than a charity, the original six could have retired by now.
The geek buzz around the RPi - let's not forget it's been around less than a year - has been phenomenal. Now there are events like the one at Cern held all over the place: Manchester, Machynlleth, Silicon Valley, Singapore. Called Raspberry jams (do you see?), and not officially endorsed by the foundation, they're essentially just local people getting together and sharing knowledge about the RPi. Here at Cern, on the Swiss-French border, organiser Dr William Bell is concerned with the lack of computer science in local schools (his kids attend a French primary which, at the moment, doesn't have a working computer for the children to use). Thus his jam involves teachers, kids and parents. Others have been more grown up, with lectures and demonstrations, people standing in front of large screens, making jokes in computer code.
The jams are just one of the RPi-inspired offshoots that have sprung up since the launch. The point of the RPi is that, contrary to most of today's computers, it doesn't come bundled with everything you require. To make it work, you need a keyboard, a screen, an SD memory card, a vast array of cables€¦ So RPi packages have become available, enabling you to buy all those accessories in one go. And if you don't want to program the operating system on to the memory card, there are pre-programmed ones available. If you don't like the idea of it knocking about without a case, several people have designed those.
More interestingly, there are now add-on boards that expand the Pi's capabilities, to make it easier to use for physical computing and give it functions like driving motors, making lights flash, turning your Lego man into an actual moving robot. These include the Gertboard, designed by a member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation team (called Gert). And Pi-Face, which is similar, though slightly easier to use (no soldering required), and is the baby of Dr Andrew Robinson of Manchester University.
Robinson, a friendly, funny man, tells me about the bird box some of his students have designed using an RPi and Pi-Face; the box has an infrared light beam, so the RPi knows when a bird is coming in and out and can activate a camera or send you a message. Robinson also uses his RPi outside work; at the moment he has one at the centre of a theatre show. The RPi syncs interactive projections with lighting and sound, which all respond to the movements of the dancers.
What else? Manchester University is running the Great British Raspberry Pi Bake Off, a competition for kids to design an exciting use for the RPi; it's sending out RPis and Pi-Faces to the developing world, places like Bangalore and Kenya, where the RPi has caused a sensation but has been hard to come by. €I don't think the Pi is going to change the world,€ says Robinson. €But it has opened stuff up, and created an excitement around programming that I've never seen before.€
I am standing in the dark, watching people mess around with computers. Scruffy young men take cables out of plastic carrier bags and plug them into the back of television screens. They connect up keyboards, slot in SD cards, bung long leads into USB jacks. Parcel tape is slathered over stray cords to stick them in place. Somehow, I thought that Cern, the closest thing to a Bond lab on the planet, would be more sophisticated than this.
Still, it's not Cern that we're checking out. We're here for something far more basic, and even more exciting. Take a closer look.
You will notice that near every terminal sits a small green circuit board. Slightly bigger than a credit card, with cables sprouting out of it like twisted limbs, it resembles a rectangular spider. In fact, it's a computer, busily driving and connecting all the disparate elements around it to create€¦ well, whatever the geeks want it to. Say hello, ladies and gentle-nerds, to the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is a robust, cheap (about 25), low-powered programmable computer. It is a British invention that went on sale for the first time in February this year and has been a science sensation, the computing equivalent of tickets to Glastonbury or the Rolling Stones: everyone wants one, not just hardcore fans. Before it even launched, demand for the Pi outran supply, and the day the first 10,000 became available, the distributing websites all crashed. The first ever BBC online video of the RPi - a preview of it, before it went on sale - got more than 800,000 views in a matter of days. Since then, the RPi has shifted almost 500,000 units and is on target to top 1m by Christmas - topped up by purchasers from South America and China who haven't been put off by the import costs which turn the RPi from bargain to just cheapish. It's been used to take photographs of the Earth from near space and snaps of birds in back gardens. And it has united the science community, from primary school teachers to particle physicists, in joyous enthusiasm; mostly because they hope its price, size, software and sturdiness (you can shove it in your pocket without damaging it, supposedly) will make it appeal to kids, and thus lead children into computer programming.
So let's see, shall we? From 9am until 5pm, an unremitting stream of young kids wander into the dim room at Cern, look around for a free monitor, and sit down in front of it. They spot a small cat in the right hand top corner of the screen. Someone - an adult, another child - tells them they can make the cat move if they program it to do so. And then the kids do so.
Mickal, who's six, is as charming an advert for the RPi as you will ever meet. €Watch the cat,€ he says. €He can dance.€ He drags and drops commands across the screen. The cat walks and turns around in circles. Later, he shows me that he can switch some tiny lights on and off using the RPi. €Press N and enter,€ he says. €Now N, space and enter.€
Nancy, seven, is also enjoying herself. She's given the cat a friend, a horse who makes odd noises, gallops into walls and bounces back. €We don't have a computer at school, except sometimes for maths. I don't play computer at home either. I like drawing. And I like this.€
Nearby, Thomas, seven, is having a go too. Is he enjoying himself? €I like it a little bit,€ he says. €It's fun, but sometimes when you get a bit stuck, it gets annoying, and you want to do something else.€ He looks a little wistfully at the door, and at the bright sunshine beyond.
Since the RPi's launch, it has had almost perfect press, and you would have to be a far more cynical hack than I am to scoff at its ideals. Its developers are six highly qualified Cambridge-based scientists, and its principles are pure of heart. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity whose sole aim is to promote the study of computer science in schools; the Raspberry Pi was born from that aim. If the foundation had been a business rather than a charity, the original six could have retired by now.
The geek buzz around the RPi - let's not forget it's been around less than a year - has been phenomenal. Now there are events like the one at Cern held all over the place: Manchester, Machynlleth, Silicon Valley, Singapore. Called Raspberry jams (do you see?), and not officially endorsed by the foundation, they're essentially just local people getting together and sharing knowledge about the RPi. Here at Cern, on the Swiss-French border, organiser Dr William Bell is concerned with the lack of computer science in local schools (his kids attend a French primary which, at the moment, doesn't have a working computer for the children to use). Thus his jam involves teachers, kids and parents. Others have been more grown up, with lectures and demonstrations, people standing in front of large screens, making jokes in computer code.
The jams are just one of the RPi-inspired offshoots that have sprung up since the launch. The point of the RPi is that, contrary to most of today's computers, it doesn't come bundled with everything you require. To make it work, you need a keyboard, a screen, an SD memory card, a vast array of cables€¦ So RPi packages have become available, enabling you to buy all those accessories in one go. And if you don't want to program the operating system on to the memory card, there are pre-programmed ones available. If you don't like the idea of it knocking about without a case, several people have designed those.
More interestingly, there are now add-on boards that expand the Pi's capabilities, to make it easier to use for physical computing and give it functions like driving motors, making lights flash, turning your Lego man into an actual moving robot. These include the Gertboard, designed by a member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation team (called Gert). And Pi-Face, which is similar, though slightly easier to use (no soldering required), and is the baby of Dr Andrew Robinson of Manchester University.
Robinson, a friendly, funny man, tells me about the bird box some of his students have designed using an RPi and Pi-Face; the box has an infrared light beam, so the RPi knows when a bird is coming in and out and can activate a camera or send you a message. Robinson also uses his RPi outside work; at the moment he has one at the centre of a theatre show. The RPi syncs interactive projections with lighting and sound, which all respond to the movements of the dancers.
What else? Manchester University is running the Great British Raspberry Pi Bake Off, a competition for kids to design an exciting use for the RPi; it's sending out RPis and Pi-Faces to the developing world, places like Bangalore and Kenya, where the RPi has caused a sensation but has been hard to come by. €I don't think the Pi is going to change the world,€ says Robinson. €But it has opened stuff up, and created an excitement around programming that I've never seen before.€
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