The 1st Raspberry Pi Approved Reseller Gathering

EVENT AND VENUE

This gathering was held at two places, from the 2nd to the 4th of July. We meet and have most of the time at Downing College, Cambridge University. Everyone depart for Wales on 3rd July, visited the SONY manufacturing plant the next day, and farewell too.

Most of the resellers arrived and registered at Downing College on 2nd July, straight from Airport  This is a very special place, Downing College of Cambridge University, UK. The historical architecture of the building amazed us.

Upon registering at the lobby of Haward Theater, we get our name tag and goodies which include the Magpi, Hackspace, and also Hello World. We only realized that all these 3 magazines are from the Raspberry Pi Publication division.

Of course, we have workshops and met other Raspberry Pi Resellers from all over the world!

WHAT'S NEW?

Well, we are bound to the code of ethics for partners  Yet, there is some existing news that I will share.

Publications

Well, our 1st workshop was with the publication team of Raspberry Pi Foundation, and to my surprise, they actually publish Hackspace and Hello World besides the well-known MagPi (which I share in the earlier part of this post). Hackspace talks about anything related to hacking so the version that we have is about Arduino releasing the new IDE and MRK boards. While Hello World has more coverage on coding and education.

Product Roadmap

I believe everyone is interested in this workshop :) I can leak a little existing news, 2019 will be an exciting year for Raspberry Pi fans. Don't just look at the main board, may also focus on accessories. I am looking forward to seeing more announcements next year.

As we all know, the official Raspberry Pi PoE (Power over Ethernet) HAT was launched end of August this year. We get a sample of this HAT in early July :)

Desktop and Operating System

There are many single-board computers from competitors released since the 1st Raspberry Pi launched back in February 2012. But despite the effort from competitors, Raspberry Pi is still the most popular SBC in education and industry. We believe the Operating system plays a big role in this trend.

As the team will continue to support and ensure the stability and compatibility of Raspbian for the public.

We have a discussion on several issues:

• The process of Raspbian updates - Not as straightforward as compiling a code for Arduino :)
• The suitable microSD card for Raspberry Pi or the suitable standard (Class 10? A1? or others)?
• Drivers for different peripherals on previous, current, and future Raspberry Pi board
• Technical community - Testing and feedback

I guess the most concerning issue would be the suitable microSD card for Raspberry Pi, right? To my own surprise, you do not need class 10 microSD for Raspberry Pi. As the main task of a microSD card on Raspberry Pi is to store the Operating System, the write speed is not crucial. Yet the reading speed of the microSD is more critical. From the discussion, the Raspberry Pi foundation recommends a microSD card with class A1. As currently we are getting the microSD from the Raspberry Pi foundation, it will be best to get it from here which is also class A1. If you are aware, there are some Raspberry Pi boards being made in China, the UK, and also Japan. But for the latest Raspberry Pi 3 B+, every single board is and will be made in the UK. And the factory that assembles this main board is SONY UK Technology Centre in Wales to be exact.

It was an amazing trip because this SONY factory build the 4K camcorder for the world cup live recording which is happening at the time we visit the premise. Again, due to NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), I cannot share more insights. But they manage to automate and improve the yield of manufacturing of Raspberry Pi board :)

We gain a lot of insights during this gathering and Raspberry Pi Foundation also assemble valuable feedback from resellers. We will further bring these values to customers all around the world, and we are looking forward to the next gathering. Please do feedback to us if you have any suggestions, on our Facebook, or forum.

BUY