mirror of
https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject.git
synced 2025-01-28 23:20:10 +08:00
Merge pull request #1179 from zpl1025/master
[translated] Raspberry Pi s Eben Upton--How We are Turning Everyone Into DIY Hackers
This commit is contained in:
Xingyu.Wang
commit
32940c3af1
@ -1,190 +0,0 @@
|
||||
zpl1025, so loooooooooooooooog...........
|
||||
Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: How We're Turning Everyone Into DIY Hackers
|
||||
================================================================================
|
||||
> Inside the mind that prototyped a $35 computer for tinkerers.
|
||||
|
||||
I’ll never forget my first time seeing a Raspberry Pi. The tiny, credit-card sized computer is powerful enough to operate as a home PC, a media center, a gaming console, or anything you can dream up. At only $35, it’s a bargain for tinkerers of all ages who want to try out hardware and software experiments without worrying about bricking their pricier family computers.
|
||||
|
||||
[Eben Upton][1], cofounder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is generally credited as the magician behind this incredible machine. While working on his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Cambridge's computer laboratory, Upton painstakingly put together Raspberry Pi prototypes by hand.
|
||||
|
||||
Today, Upton is CEO of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s trading company, where he oversees production and sales of the Raspberry Pi. The foundation has now sold more than 2.5 million units.
|
||||
|
||||
### Pi In The Sky ###
|
||||
|
||||
ReadWrite: What got you really interested in technology in the first place? How did that lead you eventually to the Raspberry Pi project?
|
||||
|
||||
**Eben Upton**: So I actually got started when I was a kid. I have a father who has a certain amount of interest in engineering. He’s not an engineer, he’s an English academic. There were always piles of electrical stuff around the house that I used to play with before I understood what it did. Little things like making a light to have by your bed so you could read after “lights out” and stuff.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
And then I got a computer. In the UK we have these machines called [BBC Microcomputers][2], which were 8-bit micros that were build for education. We had them at school, I got into programming at school, and I enjoyed it.
|
||||
|
||||
These things weren’t necessarily in school for programming, or at least they didn’t tend to get used for programming. They would get used to run educational software. But I used to program on them. And then I bought one to program at home. I mean, the day I got my BBC micro, I went in my room, turned it on, and never came out again. [Laughs]
|
||||
|
||||
Programming is amazing for a kid. When you’re a kid you don’t have a lot of power. You don’t have a lot of agency, a lot of control over the world around you. The great thing about programming is it’s a little world where you do whatever you want. And I certainly found that very compelling.
|
||||
|
||||
I’d always been interested in science, math, kind of hard science subjects. Did a lot of computing, did a lot of programming on my BBC. I had a Commodore Amiga after that.
|
||||
|
||||
At university I did a mixture of physics, engineering, and computer science. And then that really kind of led me to the Pi. Because after I’d been at university for a decade [while getting a doctorate], I realized that the kids who were arriving hadn’t had the chance to have that set of experiences as a child. You could still get Legos but … that ladder.
|
||||
|
||||
We’d kind of pulled the ladder up after us. We built these very sophisticated and user-friendly computers for children to use now. Or not even computers—game consoles and phones and tablets, kind of appliances. But people were being denied that opportunity to tinker. So really Raspberry Pi is an attempt to get back—without kind of being too retro—some of what we kind of feel was lost from the evolution of computers over the last 25 years.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** What were some of the biggest hurdles you had to overcome?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** Well, we didn’t have any investors, so that was one nice thing. We’ve been trying to do this since 2006 so you can see it took us a long time to get from the idea of a Raspberry Pi to something you could sell. Finding something that had the right tradeoff between price and performance, or price and programmability was a big deal.
|
||||
|
||||
Getting the money together. We’re a not-for-profit, so we had to go find some money, and there ended up being a few of us on the board of trustees just loaning money out of our own pockets. So we had about a quarter of a million dollars of startup funding which was entirely loans from me and a couple of other people. So having the guts to do that, I guess.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
### From East To West ###
|
||||
|
||||
Finding a way to get it manufactured at the right price. We ended up taking an unusual route. Generally when people make more conventional products, what they do is make them locally, when they’re low volume. And they [manufacturers] charge a high price. Most people have thicker margins than Raspberry Pi.
|
||||
|
||||
So what people do is manufacture in the west. Later on, in search of a squeeze, they got the volume and are looking to improve their production costs, so they go to the far east.
|
||||
|
||||
The issue for us was that, because we didn’t have enough margin to support that kind of order, we built our very first units in China. Which was of course, at first a slightly daunting prospect. I knew nothing about manufacturing in China, and we ended up sending $50,000 of chips and $50,000 to some guy in Hong Kong. And he sent us back 2,000 working Raspberry Pis.
|
||||
|
||||
It got to the point where there was a little bit of a delay and we were convinced that we’d gotten shafted. And then one day, the first 2,000 of now 2.5 million Raspberry Pis turned up on the doorstep on a pallet.
|
||||
|
||||
This UPS guy comes out of his truck with a pallet and a pallet jack and jacks this pallet into the garage. It’s got 2,000 Raspberry Pis on it and each one of those is massively more powerful than any computer I had when I was a kid. And we were just picking them out at random out of the pallet just to sample them and they all worked perfectly.
|
||||
|
||||
So getting lucky, I guess, with China, and then finally having got the volume, we went in the other direction from everyone else. I guess the other defining moment in the project was when we realized that, having got the volume, we could now build in the west for the same price we would have been able to build in China. So we were able to repatriate, to reshore all the manufacturing back to Wales, which is where I was born. Kind of a nice sort of circle.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** Were there any precursors to the Pi that didn’t work out?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** Yeah, we built a number of different prototype devices. We were trying to build something that was programmable but interesting to kids. “Interesting to kids” means kind of … powerful in some respects. Able to play video and games and go on the Web.
|
||||
|
||||
We had a number of prototypes that met the price goal and the programmability goal, but it was only very late, post 2010 and 2011, that we were able to identify a path that allowed us to build something that was also powerful enough that kids were going to engage with it.
|
||||
|
||||
### Whence The Pi Was Baked ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** Tell me about inventing the Raspberry Pi.
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** We tried building some units based on what you’d call microcontroller technology. I don’t know if you’ve come across an [open source electronics prototyping] platform called Arduino? Sort of a similar level of performance to the Arduino. The nice thing about those chips is they’re very available, they’re commodity parts, they’re very cheap and easy to get ahold of.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
So we tried that. And we ended up with something which was technically a computer—you plug it into your television and stuff. But it was kind of primitive and it was clear that kids weren’t going to engage with it. So that was prototype one, and that prototype is coming to a museum in Ireland in an exhibition called “Fail.” [Laughs] I’m going to go see it next month. It’s in a glass cabinet as an example of a glorious failure.
|
||||
|
||||
The nice thing about that was that was hand built. You can’t really build a modern Raspberry Pi by hand. But this one was primitive enough that you could actually solder it together and I soldered it together in a week. And it was a nice little toy.
|
||||
|
||||
After I’d been at university for a decade of so, I went to work for a company called Broadcom, which is based in southern California but has a big office in Cambridge. They make cellphone chips. And we realized that cell phone chips are quite a good fit. They’re quite a good platform for building a Pi-like device, since they have a lot of graphics performance.
|
||||
|
||||
I built a prototype based on that, based on a Broadcom dev kit. And that was much more powerful, much more capable, again at the same price point. But the challenge we had with that was that it was really a custom environment. It wasn’t a standards based platform.
|
||||
|
||||
We were writing our own SD card drivers, our own file system, our own text editor. You find yourself doing a lot of basic work and although you end up with a platform which is powerful and programmable, it's completely nonstandard [and] completely unlike any other machine. You don’t get to leverage any of the work that’s already been done by people on desktop platforms. That was prototype two.
|
||||
|
||||
The real breakthrough for us was with prototype three. We got hold of another chip from Broadcom which had an ARM processor which was able to run standard Linux. That was really the point where we realized we had something that met all our goals. And that was the product we went to market with.
|
||||
|
||||
### Hacking The Next Generation Of Hackers ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** Kids as young as eight have built projects using the Raspberry Pi. Did you intend that, or did it take you by surprise?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** Eight is a good age. I think everyone defines the right age as being the age when they started programming. I was eight when I started programming. To some extent, all a child needs is to be old enough to have the relevant suite of cognitive skills, kind of problem solving type skills. A little bit of math maybe, at school.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
To be old enough to be able to plan activities—programming is the ultimate planned activity. You need to have the mental equipment to do that. By the age of eight, a lot of children are quite mature in their way of thinking. You also need mechanical dexterity; another challenge that younger children have is the lack of mechanical dexterity required to use a keyboard.
|
||||
|
||||
So eight’s a great age. You’ve got the physical equipment, the mental equipment, and you’re still at that point in your life where you’re able to learn new things very easily. Your brain’s very plastic, you’re able to learn languages....
|
||||
|
||||
I mean, if you want a child to learn French, start teaching them at eight, don’t start teaching them at 16. One of the weaknesses we have historically in our formal teaching of computing is we start people incredibly late, and then are surprised when people have difficulty picking up the concepts. So I think the younger you can get them the better and eight is a fantastic age. Eight, 10, 12—12 is maybe a little bit late.
|
||||
|
||||
Our foundation CEO, [Lance][3] [Howarth], is particularly passionate about primary education. He really perceives a real opportunity there to do something quite special.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** So that was an intention of the Raspberry Pi, to get really young kids programming?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** I think we’ve always thought that young kids could do programming just by example. But the intention of the Raspberry Pi was to make this thing available and just see who buys it. We always believed that at least a subset of young children would find it exciting. Now we have the breadth and scale to get it to young kids with support.
|
||||
|
||||
There’s a big difference between [just] making a platform like Raspberry Pi available and offering support for it. I think if you just make it available, you’ll find one percent of eight-year-olds will be the one percent who love that sort of thing and will get into it, regardless of how much or how little support you give them.
|
||||
|
||||
I think the real opportunity for the foundation right now is that, since we can afford to pay for the development of educational material, we can afford to advocate for good training for teachers throughout this. There’s an opportunity to get more than one percent. There’s an opportunity to reach the bright kids who don’t quite have the natural inclination to personally tackle complicated technical tasks. If you give them good teaching and compelling material that’s relevant and interesting to them, you can reach ten percent, twenty percent, fifty percent, many more.
|
||||
|
||||
We look back to the 1980s as this golden era [of learning to program], and in practice, only a very few percent of people were learning to program to any great degree. Most people could probably write a couple of lines. But doing any significant programming was still rare.
|
||||
|
||||
I think the real opportunity for us now, because we can intervene on the material and teacher training levels, we can potentially blow past where we were in the 1980s. There’s much more participation, there’s much more gender equality. Programming was largely a boy’s activity in the 1980s, and that’s now reflected in the makeup of our engineering community. I think there’s a real opportunity to get more girls programming computers. That’s the lowest of low hanging fruit. If we do that, we instantly double the number of people.
|
||||
|
||||
There are a lot of opportunities and I think the most satisfying thing for Pi is we’re kind of at the scale where we can start to attack some of them.
|
||||
|
||||
### Pi For Everyone ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** What does that say to you about the potential demand for DIY projects like the Pi? Are we all going to be DIY hackers one day?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. There is an enormous demand for it. And I think that there is a tie to the maker community. The maker community is much more developed in American than it is in the UK. We do have maker fairs and hackerspaces now, but it’s probably five years behind where it is in the U.S.
|
||||
|
||||
So one thing we found when we started talking about Raspberry Pi, when it started getting international attention, we found we were launching into this very well established community of people who like doing all sorts of DIY activity: knitting, or, you know, woodworking.
|
||||
|
||||
So that’s one of the things that led to that surprise increase in volume for the Pi. Makers who see it as a component they can use to build their projects. Which is great!
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** What do you think about the emergence of mainstream hardware-hacking culture?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** I mean, it’s fantastic, right? It’s something we would never have predicted on the software engineering front. I’ve come to this stuff from a software background, so the fact that most of the cool stuff people do with the Raspberry Pi is hardware related is surprising to me. It’s not surprising to me anymore, but it was surprising to me originally.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
I think it’s a very positive trend, for all sorts of reasons. It’s positive because it provides children with relevant experiences. In my mind, moving pixels around on the screen is still cool, but in reality, it’s much less cool than it was in the 1980s. I think moving objects around in the world, like robots, is what’s cool for kids now.
|
||||
|
||||
When you get more relevance, you attract more girls. There’s a really insidious tendency to try and design activities for girls around tech, and it actually isn’t about girls. It’s about appealing to a broader audience.
|
||||
|
||||
There is this tiny segment—I’ve talked about the one percent, the kids who find the abstract computer programming exciting. “Let’s learn about variables!” And I was one of those kids. But that’s only a small number of people, and it seems to be boys, more often. I don’t know whether that’s a cultural thing or what but it just seems to be the way the world is.
|
||||
|
||||
Quite often when people are talking about pursuing relevance in order to attract girls, it’s not about attracting girls at all. It’s about attracting anyone other than that tiny little sliver of boys. You’re not just attracting girls, you’re attracting all the other boys as well.
|
||||
|
||||
One of the wonderful things from an education standpoint is that part of actually doing stuff in the real world with a computer is automatically more relevant than just doing things on the computer itself. So it gives you a route to attract girls into the subject, it gives you a route to track more than one percent of boys into the subject.
|
||||
|
||||
It’s great not to be alone. It’s fantastic to be launching into this tidal wave of interest, of people doing stuff in the real world. I know a guy in southern California whose two hobbies are Pi hacking and making his own chainmail. It’s just a wonderful thing that people are doing that sort of stuff.
|
||||
|
||||
### Sharing The Pi ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** Can you give me an example of the sort of “relevant” projects that attract more than the one percent?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** The whole broad area of robotics is one. There are just vast numbers of people using the Pi as a base to make little robots that run around and do stuff, particularly now that we have the camera module, which acts as kind of computer vision.
|
||||
|
||||
I think other camera-based projects as well tend to get a lot of play. People doing wildlife photography type things, people doing time lapse photography, a wide range of stuff because we have this $25 camera module, and an infrared version so you can do nighttime animal photography—writing scripts to take pictures at night and save away the ones that have some motion in them. So those ones are nice.
|
||||
|
||||
I’m particularly fond of anything that has to do with high altitude ballooning. Environmental monitoring—there are some high school kids in the UK who did an IndieGoGo called [AirPi][4], which is a pollution monitoring shield that would sit on top of the Pi. So lots of those things that let you do physics or chemistry or biology using the Pi—those are the things that I think have relevance. Those are the things that are much easier to justify to the bulk of kids as a thing that’s worth paying attention to.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** When will we be seeing a Raspberry Pi Model C?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** We have no plans at the moment. We are mostly doing software work at the moment. I think we’ve discovered that there is a large amount of performance gain available by nickel and diming the software, buffing it a little bit.
|
||||
|
||||
If we go and make a Model C, we orphan 2.5 million people who are committed to the current platform. So I think we are, at least for now, pretty committed to trying to do software work because that helps all of those people who are in the field. We feel there is still significant performance gain available through software optimization.
|
||||
|
||||
Obviously, we’ll have to do something [about hardware] at some point. I don’t really known when. If we’re still shipping the Pi Model B in 2017, 2018, that would be bad. But I think we’re probably a year away from giving any serious consideration to what to do next.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** Lots of people are building projects using both the Pi and Arduino, the DIY electronics-hacking kit. Did you design Pi with kits like Arduino in mind?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** Not really, but we realized very early on there could sometimes be a tendency in the press to see us as a competitor to the Arduino. We were always skeptical, I think, as to whether that was really the case because I think the Pi and Arduino do different things and do them well.
|
||||
|
||||
We didn’t design it to work with the Arduino, but the Arduino is designed to work with a house PC. We make a great low power house PC for the Arduino. So yeah, it was just lucky, I guess.
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** What do you use Raspberry Pi for at home? At work?
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** At home, I use it as a media center; that’s a fairly common use of the Pi. It’s an interesting thing that you have people doing actual consumer electronics, using it as a piece of consumer electronics. And I’m certainly one of those.
|
||||
|
||||
I don’t have anywhere near as much time to play with it at work as I would like. Usually when I get a Pi at work it’s because I’m testing some new piece of software that I’ve commissioned. Mostly I’m just using it to check that the contractors I’ve paid to do work have done a good job.
|
||||
|
||||
I’m really hoping that I will get some more downtime over the next year. Sometimes it feels like, aside from the media center, I’ve been involved with making this fantastic toy, and because it’s been so successful I don’t get much time to play with it.
|
||||
|
||||
But it’s really gratifying to see how many people are having fun with it, to see it show up in different places. I understand we got mentioned on The Big Bang Theory, I need to track down the episode. It shows up in all these unusual places. It’s really nice to see how many people have taken it to heart and started doing stuff with it.
|
||||
|
||||
Eben Upton image courtesy of the Raspberry Pi Foundation; Raspberry Pi images by Flickr users [Johan Larsson][5], [Clive Darra][6], [Pete Sneekes][7], [Luca Sbardella][8] and [Ashley Basil][9]
|
||||
|
||||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
via: http://readwrite.com/2014/04/08/raspberry-pi-eben-upton-builders#awesm=~oBGnazhOCOfaUd
|
||||
|
||||
译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID) 校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
|
||||
|
||||
本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](http://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
|
||||
|
||||
[1]:https://twitter.com/EbenUpton
|
||||
[2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
|
||||
[3]:http://www.raspberrypi.org/welcome-lance/
|
||||
[4]:http://airpi.es/
|
||||
[5]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/johanl/8384790662
|
||||
[6]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/osde-info/8626662243
|
||||
[7]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/p8/7950485168
|
||||
[8]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbardella/7473604878
|
||||
[9]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/28438417@N08/8006786385/in/photolist-dcwSD8-d8PKa3-bmosVm-bmosWG-bz3YJF-e8NRQD-btyqN1-dorXrE-hTF7id-hTF7jL-hTF4mJ-hTF4jj-hTF4q1-hTF7jA-hTF7gj-gKRLrn-ftALdo-c7Qnjs-c7Qnyh-c7QmZj-c7QnY1-c7QmNY-cu8zs3-cu8BWm-cu8u5S-cu8yC3-cu8DBN-cu8wRq-cu8xNL-cu8CJj-cu8tss-cu8BcG-cu8uVL-cu8AoW-hTF7dU-hTEzCr-hTFBCp-hTFBvR-hTFBBH-hTF4hA-hTF7c1-hTEzza-hTFBM2-cdtf1b-bz7n87-gKQSJ7-gKQUko-ds8x8q-dqweVP-cVwvJq
|
||||
@ -0,0 +1,190 @@
|
||||
来自树莓派的Eben Upton：我们是怎么让大家都成为DIY黑客的。
|
||||
================================================================================
|
||||
> 请记住它是为喜欢折腾的人准备的只要35美元的计算机
|
||||
|
||||
我永远不会忘记我第一次看到树莓派的情形。那个小巧的，信用卡大小的计算机，性能却足够强劲，可以作为一般家用PC，媒体中心，电视游戏机，或是其他任何你能够想像的东西。只有35美元的价格，它是任何年龄段的动手爱好者都可以拥有的小东西，可以在上面捣腾硬件和软件试验，而不用担心会弄坏昂贵的家庭电脑。
|
||||
|
||||
[Eben Upton][1]，是树莓派基金会的共同创始人，通常被誉为这个神奇机器背后的魔法师。在剑桥大学的计算机实验室攻读哲学博士学位的时候，他费尽苦心地手工打造了树莓派的原型机。
|
||||
|
||||
如今，Upton是树莓派基金会下面贸易公司的CEO，监督着树莓派的生产和销售，目前销量已经达到250万台。
|
||||
|
||||
### 天上的派 ###
|
||||
|
||||
ReadWrite网: 一开始是什么让你对技术这么感兴趣？它又是如何偶然地引导你创建树莓派项目的？
|
||||
|
||||
**Eben Upton**: 在我还是孩子的时候就开始对技术感兴趣了。我有个对工程技术有很大兴趣的父亲，他自己不是工程师，而是一个英语老师。我们的房子里经常到处堆着各种电子器件，在还不知道这些东西是干嘛的时候，我就开始摆弄了。都是些小玩意，比如在床头装个灯，在“关灯”后还可以继续看书之类的。
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
之后我有了一台计算机。在英国，我们把这种机器叫做[BBC微计算机][2]，实际上是8位单片机，做教学用的。我们在学校的时候接触到这种机器，我之后就学会了编程，而且还蛮喜欢的。
|
||||
|
||||
这些机器在学校里并不一定是用来编程的，或者说他们根本不是用来编程的，一般都运行教学软件。但是我却给它编程，之后我还买了一台回家，在我买了这台BBC微机后，我就泡在了房间里，再没出来过。[笑]
|
||||
|
||||
编程对于小孩来说太神奇了。当你还是小孩的时候，并没有太多力量。没有听话的随从，反而身边有很多的限制。编程最伟大的地方在于，这是一个可以让你随喜所欲的小世界。而这当然让我无法抗拒。
|
||||
|
||||
我一直都对科学和数学，以及硬科学学科感兴趣。我在我的BBC微机上做了大量的计算和编程，之后我拥有了一台Commodore Amiga。
|
||||
|
||||
在大学里我学习了物理，工程和计算机科学。这是激发树莓派项目想法的原因，因为当我在学校呆了10年的时候[当时在读博士学位]，我发现那些新来的孩子们在他们小时候并没有机会获得这方面的经验。你也许仍然能拥有乐高玩具，但是问题是梯子。
|
||||
|
||||
在一定程度上我们把身后的梯子撤掉了。我们造出了这些非常复杂而且用户友好的计算机给小孩使用，或者不仅仅是计算机，还包括电视游戏机，电话和平板，以及一些家用电器。但是，人们却没有机会自己动手改一改。所以实际上，树莓派是回到最初的一种尝试，当然也不会过于原始，希望找到在过去25年里计算机发展中迷失掉的那种感觉。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 你需要克服的最大的障碍有哪些？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 好吧，我们没有任何投资者，当然这也是一件好事情。我们从2006年就开始尝试做这件事情，你可以看到它花了我们很长时间才把树莓派从一个想法变成一件能卖的东西。在价格和性能之间或是价格和可编程性之间找到平衡，是一件很重要的事情。
|
||||
|
||||
另外一件麻烦事是募集资金。我们是非营利组织，所以我们得去找人赞助，而这最后都变成了董事会中的几个人自掏腰包。我们有25万美元的启动资金是从我和其他几个成员自己借的。所以我觉得，当初这样做还挺有勇气。
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
### 从东方到西方 ###
|
||||
|
||||
为了找到价格合适的生产方式，我们选了一条不同寻常的路线。通常人们生产更传统的产品时，当量不大的时候都会选择在本地生产，然后[制造商]再制定较高的价格。大多数都能获得比树莓派丰厚的利润。
|
||||
|
||||
所以他们开始会在西方生产。然后，为了追求更高的利润，当产品有一定的量就会想减少生产成本，所以转到远东地区。
|
||||
|
||||
我们的问题是，因为我们没有足够的利润来支撑这种模式的订单，所以我们在中国制造了第一批产品。当然一开始会有一点不好的预感。我一点也不了解中国制造，最后，我们把价值5万美元的芯片和5万美元现金交给一个香港人，他需要还给我们2000片可以工作的树莓派。
|
||||
|
||||
之后交期出现了延时，我们甚至都开始相信自己被骗了。然后终于有一天，现在250万台树莓派中最早的2000台放在托板上来到了门口。
|
||||
|
||||
那个UPS快递员从卡车里拖出一个托板，并拉到我们车库里。托板上放着2000台树莓派，它们中每一台都比我小时候用过的计算机强多了。我们随机抽查了几台，都可以完美地工作。
|
||||
|
||||
所以我觉得还挺幸运，中国你懂的。然后我们的产品终于开始有量了，我们选择了跟其他所有人不同的方向。我觉得这是这个项目中的另一个决定性时刻，我们认识到，以目前的订单量，我们可以用和在中国同样的成本在西方生产。所以我们可以回归，把所有的生产制造搬回威尔士，也是我出生的地方。像是一个美妙的圆圈。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 有没有一些树莓派的前身没有被制造出来的？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 有的，我们做了许多不同的原型机。我们希望做出一个可以编程，也能吸引小朋友兴趣的东西。“吸引小朋友兴趣”意味着，在某些方面要足够强大。比如，播放视频，玩游戏，以及上网。
|
||||
|
||||
我们有许多能够达到价格目标和可编程目标的原型，但是等我们确定一个合适的方案，它足够强大能够吸引孩子们的热情，已经挺晚了，都到2010年底2011年初了。
|
||||
|
||||
### 派是从哪儿烤好的 ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 跟我们说说发明树莓派的故事
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 我们尝试过基于所谓的微控制器技术做了几台机器。不知道你有没有听过一个叫Arduino的[开源电子原型]平台？它们的性能跟Arduino是一个级别的，优点是很容易买到，是常用的元器件，非常便宜，也很容易掌握。
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
所以我们试了一下。最后的成品只能从技术上来说还是计算机，你可以把它接到电视机或其他显示设备上。但是，它太原始了，很明显不能吸引孩子们的兴趣。这个是一号原型机，它在爱尔兰一家博物馆的叫“失败”的展览中展出[笑]。我下个月会去看看。它现在被装载一个玻璃盒子里，作为一次辉煌失败的典型。
|
||||
|
||||
好的一面是它是手工制作的，你不可能手工制作一块现代的树莓派。但是，这个原型太原始了，你实际上可以把所有器件手工焊接到一起，它就是我一个星期里做好的，是个挺好的小玩具。
|
||||
|
||||
我在大学里呆了差不多10年以后，进入到一家叫Broadcom的公司工作，总部在南加利福尼亚但是在剑桥有个大办公室，主要生产手机芯片。然后，我意识到这种手机芯片非常适合，它是制作像派这样的设备的非常合适的平台，因为它有优秀的图形性能。
|
||||
|
||||
我基于Broadcom开发工具制作了一个原型。这次的原型非常强大，也有更多功能，价格也差不多。不过问题是，它有一套定制的开发环境，而不是一个标准的平台。
|
||||
|
||||
我们得写自己的SD卡驱动，自己的文件系统，自己的文本编辑器。你会发现你得做大量基础工作，虽然最后你能够得到一个强大的可编程的平台，但是它却是完全非标准的[而且]和其他设备完全不一样。从而无法重用那些已经在台式机系统中已经做过的工作。这个是二号原型机。
|
||||
|
||||
真正的突破是三号原型机。我们从Broadcom拿到了另一种应用了ARM处理器的芯片，可以直接运行标准Linux。我们意识到终于可以做出能够满足所有的需求的机器了，这就是我们推向市场的产品。
|
||||
|
||||
### 黑黑下一代黑客 ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 八岁的孩子就开始用树莓派做项目了。这在你意料中吗，还是说让你意外了？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 八岁是很好的年纪。我想每个人都会把自己开始编程的年龄定义成合适的年龄。我就是八岁开始编程的。某种程度上来说，孩子们所需要的只是年龄大到拥有相对完整的认知技能，或者说是解决问题的技能。也许在学校学一点数学就够了。
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
年龄大到可以计划任务，编程就是终极的计划任务。还是得有一定的智力基础去做这个事情。八岁的时候，大多数孩子在自己的思维上已经非常成熟了。另外还需要敏捷的身手，对更小的孩子来说还存在一个问题就是，他们还不够灵巧去使用键盘。
|
||||
|
||||
所以说，八岁是很好的年纪。你有合适的身体，有合适的心智，而且还处于生命中能轻松学习新知识的时候。你的大脑还具有非常大的可塑性，可以学习语言。。。
|
||||
|
||||
我的意思是，你要是想让你的小孩学习法语的话，八岁就开始教他，不要等到16岁才开始。正式的计算机教育有一个历史性的缺点，就是太晚开始了，然后就很惊讶为何学生们理解起来概念有困难。所以我认为越早接触越好，而八岁是奇妙的年纪。八岁，十岁，十二岁，十二岁可能都有点晚了。
|
||||
|
||||
我们基金会的CEO，[Lance][3] [Howarth]，对初级教育特别热心。他真的认为这是一个实际的机会来做点非常特别的事情。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 所以这是树莓派项目的目的，让小孩子们编程？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 我想我们一直认为可以让孩子们玩编程只是举个例子。但是树莓派的目的是把这个东西做出来看看谁会买它。我们一直相信至少有一部分年轻的孩子会觉得它令人激动。现在我们已经有知识宽度和规模来支持孩子们玩它了。
|
||||
|
||||
[仅仅]做出一个像树莓派的平台和提供相关支持是有很大区别的，如果只是做出来的话，你会发现有1%的八岁孩子会喜欢它并且玩起来，不管你提供多或者少的支持。
|
||||
|
||||
我觉得现在基金会的一个实际的机会是，我们已经可以承担得起开发教材了，我们还可以提倡培训这方面的教师。有个机会是我们可以吸引比1%更多的孩子。还有个机会是吸引那些没有独自处理复杂技术问题倾向的机灵小孩。如果能够提供良好的教程和让他们感兴趣的教材，就能够吸引10%，20%，50%，甚至更多的孩子。
|
||||
|
||||
我们认为80年代是[学习编程]的黄金年代，而实际上，只有很少一部分人学习编程并达到一定深度。大部分人也许可以写个几行，但是能够编写大型程序的还是很少见。
|
||||
|
||||
所以我认为我们目前有一个实际的机会，因为我们可以参与到教材和教师培训的级别，我们也许可以超越80年代。现在有更多的参与者，两性之间也更平等。在80年代，编程很大程度上是男孩们的事情，而这也能反映到我们的工程师社区构成上。我觉得现在有个很好的机会，让更多的女孩子接触电脑编程。这个是挂在枝头上垂得最低的果子了，做到这个，人数马上增加了一半。
|
||||
|
||||
机会有很多，我对树莓派最满意的地方就是我们已经有点规模可以吸引部分人的注意了。
|
||||
|
||||
### 每个人的派 ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 关于像派这样的项目的潜在需求，对于你来说意味着什么？是不是有一天我们都会变成DIY黑客？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 是的，我意思是，就是这样的。有非常大的这种需求。而且我认为有一条通向制作者社区的纽带。美国的制作者社区比英国成熟多了。我们也确实在举办制作者集会和黑客空间，但是差不多比美国落后了5年左右。
|
||||
|
||||
所以在开始讨论树莓派之后我发现了一件事情，在它获得国际关注的时候，我们发现我们受到一些非常稳定的社区的成员的追捧，他们喜欢各种各样的DIY活动：编织，或者，你知道的，木工。
|
||||
|
||||
所以，这也是为树莓派带来意外增长的其中一个因素。制作者们把它当作用来构建自己项目的模块。这太棒了！
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 你怎么看现在出现的主流硬件黑客文化？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 我觉得，这太美妙了，不是吗？这是在软件工程领域里完全无法想到的。我接触这些之前就有软件背景，所以，实际上人们用树莓派制作的多数很酷的东西都是硬件相关的，让我很惊讶。当然现在没那么吃惊了，不过一开始是有的。
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
我认为这是非常积极的趋势，基于所有这些因素。因为它给孩子们带来了相关的经验。在我看来，在屏幕上移动一下像素还是很酷的，不过事实上，它没有像80年代那样酷了。我觉得，在现实世界里移动一些物体，比如机器人，对于现在的孩子来说是非常酷的。
|
||||
|
||||
当有更多实用性的时候，就会吸引更多的女孩。确实存在一种潜在趋势，尝试和设计针对女孩子的科技活动。不过实际上这并不是关于女孩子，而是关于扩展用户的迫切要求。
|
||||
|
||||
有这样一小段－我之前谈过的关于有1%的小孩会觉得抽象的计算机编程很有趣。“让我们开始学习变量！”我就是他们其中一个。但是，那只是很小一部分，而且看起来更大部分是男孩子。我不知道是不是文化因素或其他的，但是看起来这个世界就是这样的。
|
||||
|
||||
在人们谈论追求实用性来吸引女孩子的时候，根本不关女孩子的事。而是吸引那一小部分男孩之外的所有人。不仅仅吸引女孩，也包括其他男孩。
|
||||
|
||||
从教育的角度来看有一件美妙的事情是，在现实世界里应用计算机做点实际的东西，自然而然会比仅仅在计算机本身上面做点事情有用多了。所以，这就提供了一个方式来吸引女孩子进入这个领域，同样也可以吸引更多的男孩子进入这个领域。
|
||||
|
||||
不再是一个人很好。能够加入到这波兴趣的浪潮中，和许多制作现实世界东西的人一起，也是很精彩的事情。我认识一个南加利福尼亚的小伙，他有两个兴趣就是倒腾派和制作他的锁链甲。有人做这些事情本身就是一件很美妙的事情。
|
||||
|
||||
### 分享你的派 ###
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 关于吸引比1%更多人的“实用”项目，能举个例子吗？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 整个机器人技术领域就是个很好的例子。有很多人基于派来制作小型机器人，让它们四周跑跑或做点事情。特别是现在，我们增加了摄像头模块，可以一定程度上实现计算机视觉。
|
||||
|
||||
我觉得其他基于摄像头的项目也会变得更活跃。那些从事野外摄影的人们，以及从事缩时摄影的人们，因为有了这个25美元的摄像头模块，应用范围宽了许多。还有红外版本的模块，所以你可以在晚上拍摄野生动物－写脚本在晚上拍摄相片，然后选择保存里面包含了动作的。这些都非常好。
|
||||
|
||||
我特别喜欢应用到高空气球的任何项目。环境监控－有一些英国的高中学生在IndieGoGo发起了一个叫[AirPi][4]的项目，这是一个污染监控防御系统，底层将用到树莓派。所以会有许多这样的项目，你可以用派来处理物理的，或化学的，或者生物的事情。－这些都是我认为有实用性的事情。这种项目也更容易向孩子们证明，这是值得他们关注的项目。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 我们什么时候可以看到树莓派C型？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 暂时还没有计划。我们目前都还在处理软件工作。我觉得我们还有机会通过调整软件来大幅提升系统性能，再优化一下。
|
||||
|
||||
如果我们现在就启动制作C型，将会抛弃250万使用目前平台的用户。所以我觉得，至少现在，我们决心要继续软件工作，因为这可以帮到所有已经在这个领域里的人。我们感觉通过软件优化还有很大的性能提升空间。
|
||||
|
||||
显然，我们同时也必须做一点[硬件方面]的事情。我真的不知道具体在什么时候。如果到了2017，2018，我们还在销售树莓派B型的话，那也挺糟糕的。但是，我认为我们也许在一年后再认真考虑后面要做什么。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 很多人的项目同时用到了派和Arduino，一个DIY电子调试工具套件。你在设计派的时候，有考虑类似Arduino的工具吗？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 实际上没有，但是我们很早就意识到，媒体可能会倾向于把我们和Arduino看作竞争者。对于这件事情我们有点多疑，我觉得，因为我认为派和Arduino分别处理不同的事情，而且他们都做得很好。
|
||||
|
||||
我们并没有把它设计成配合Arduino工作，但是Arduino被设计成配合家用PC一起工作。所以，我们为Arduino制作了一台非常低功耗的家用PC。所以好吧，只是巧合，我猜。
|
||||
|
||||
**RW:** 你在家里用树莓派做什么？工作中呢？
|
||||
|
||||
**EU:** 在家里，我把它当作一个媒体中心；这是树莓派一个非常普通的应用。有趣的事，有些从事消费电子的人，把它当作消费电子来用。我当然也是其中之一。
|
||||
|
||||
在工作中，我总是没有我想要的那么多时间来玩玩树莓派。通常在工作的时候如果在用派的话，那是因为我需要测试刚拿到的一些软件更新。大多数时候我用它来检查我花钱请的承包人是否把工作做好了。
|
||||
|
||||
我真心希望明年会有更多休息时间。有时我感觉，除了媒体中心之外，我参与制作了这么神奇的玩具，但是因为它太成功了，我都没有时间去好好玩玩它。
|
||||
|
||||
不过，看到这么多的人喜欢它，看到它被出现在各种不同的地方，也是很开心的。我听说在《生活大爆炸》中提到了我们，我要去找找是哪一集。它出现在所有的这些不可思议的地方。真是非常开心，看到这么多人把它放在心上，开始用它做点事情。
|
||||
|
||||
承蒙树莓派基金会提供Eben Upton的图片；
|
||||
树莓派图片来自Flickr用户：[Johan Larsson][5], [Clive Darra][6], [Pete Sneekes][7], [Luca Sbardella][8]和[Ashley Basil][9]
|
||||
|
||||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
via: http://readwrite.com/2014/04/08/raspberry-pi-eben-upton-builders#awesm=~oBGnazhOCOfaUd
|
||||
|
||||
译者：[zpl1025](https://github.com/zpl1025) 校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
|
||||
|
||||
本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](http://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
|
||||
|
||||
[1]:https://twitter.com/EbenUpton
|
||||
[2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro
|
||||
[3]:http://www.raspberrypi.org/welcome-lance/
|
||||
[4]:http://airpi.es/
|
||||
[5]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/johanl/8384790662
|
||||
[6]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/osde-info/8626662243
|
||||
[7]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/p8/7950485168
|
||||
[8]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbardella/7473604878
|
||||
[9]:https://www.flickr.com/photos/28438417@N08/8006786385/in/photolist-dcwSD8-d8PKa3-bmosVm-bmosWG-bz3YJF-e8NRQD-btyqN1-dorXrE-hTF7id-hTF7jL-hTF4mJ-hTF4jj-hTF4q1-hTF7jA-hTF7gj-gKRLrn-ftALdo-c7Qnjs-c7Qnyh-c7QmZj-c7QnY1-c7QmNY-cu8zs3-cu8BWm-cu8u5S-cu8yC3-cu8DBN-cu8wRq-cu8xNL-cu8CJj-cu8tss-cu8BcG-cu8uVL-cu8AoW-hTF7dU-hTEzCr-hTFBCp-hTFBvR-hTFBBH-hTF4hA-hTF7c1-hTEzza-hTFBM2-cdtf1b-bz7n87-gKQSJ7-gKQUko-ds8x8q-dqweVP-cVwvJq
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user