{"id":347595,"date":"2020-04-14T08:24:36","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T06:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=347595"},"modified":"2020-04-14T08:26:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T06:26:01","slug":"raspberry-pi-computers-to-power-ventilators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/347595-raspberry-pi-computers-to-power-ventilators.html","title":{"rendered":"Raspberry Pi computers to power ventilators"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of the Raspberry Pi Zero so it can be used to build ventilators during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, reports Tom’s Hardware<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to CEO and Founder of Raspberry Pi, Eben Upton, 192,000 Pi Zero and Zero W computers were produced in the first quarter of this year, but they plan to increase this number to 250,000.<\/p>\n

Why the Pi Zero<\/h3>\n

The Pi Zero is the least powerful of all the Raspberry Pi computers, offering a single-core 1GHz CPU and just 512MB RAM.<\/p>\n

However, according to Upton, the Raspberry Pi Zero is popular with ventilator makers precisely because of its low computing power.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the interest in Zero is mostly down to it offering enough compute for the relatively modest requirements of a ventilator (potentially control air-handling components at fairly low frequency, handle a simple user interface),\u201d said Upton.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I know some of the approaches out there (not sure if we’re engaged with any of these) aim to scale production of the sort of lightweight ventilator they use in ambulances, so size may also be a factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Easy to produce<\/h3>\n

Upton explained that it is much easier for the Raspberry Pi foundation to make its products than it is for other computer makers, making the Raspberry Pi a go-to option during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the main challenges with rapidly scaling manufacture of products like this is that you may be able to surge production of the air-handling elements, but you still need to provide the control element: often the components you need are on 20-week lead times and (hopefully) we’ll be out of the other side of this pandemic by then,\u201d said Upton.<\/p>\n

\u201cRaspberry Pi \u2018builds to stock\u2019 rather than \u2018building to order,\u2019 so we generally have products either on-hand or in the pipeline with short lead times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now read: Awesome Raspberry Pi projects you can build at home<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of the Raspberry Pi Zero so that they can be used in ventilators during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341039,"featured_media":296492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[62808,8043,34191],"class_list":["post-347595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-coronavirus","tag-raspberry-pi","tag-raspberry-pi-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341039"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347607,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347595\/revisions\/347607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}