8

In an interview to Linux Voice, not long ago, Eben Upton said:

"You can build a business around [Raspberry Pi] because you can depend on them existing [...]"

Hence, my question: Has the Raspberry Pi already been used to build a proprietary product?

Say, for example, a console running a piece of closed-source proprietary software in kiosk mode or anything else?

P.S.: Apart from Eben Upton's own Raspberry Pi Trading business...

Jacobm001
  • 11,898
  • 7
  • 46
  • 56
Serge Stroobandt
  • 455
  • 7
  • 18
  • If you Google you should be able to find examples of Raspberry Pis embedded into products, media centres and such like. I doubt there are many legal closed source products because most will be based on open source "viral" licenced software. – joan Feb 24 '16 at 22:45
  • 1
    This looks like an interesting development. With a minimum order in the region of 3000 units then it's conceivable that there might be an industrial market for Pi-ish boards. – goobering Feb 24 '16 at 22:47
  • ...and the compute module was created specifically for customers to embed into their own products. – joan Feb 24 '16 at 23:10
  • 1
    Just in case this isn't glaringly obvious, and without intending to imply anything about this particular case: Consider what it really means when a salesperson/corporate rep/CEO/someone who is paid one way or another to promote a product says, "You can build a business around our product because you can depend on them existing..." In a big picture literal sense, this could never be true for any product of any sort. So the value and significance of it is obviously context dependent. – goldilocks Feb 24 '16 at 23:29
  • 1
    ...More generally, few technology businesses are really 100% dependent on the existence of any particular component -- but the cost of redesigning/retooling/reprogramming etc. may vary greatly depending on the knowledge, skill, and foresight of those involved. So this is somewhere between whimsical and nonsensical WRT real world relevance. Also, tangentially: You introduced the term proprietary here which is not used once in the article you refer to. – goldilocks Feb 24 '16 at 23:29
  • It's also still a great prototyping board for a variety of applications. When you're actually selling a device at large scale, you'll probably have your own boards printed with an SOC on them. – Will Feb 25 '16 at 07:48
  • Also check engineering university websites. Lots of capstone senior design (final year project) projects involve the creation of prototypes. A chunk of these always have some key Raspberry Pi integration. These projects can be sponsored by major companies. – dearN Dec 01 '16 at 22:34

2 Answers2

4

If you google around you'll find several. The first that comes to my mind is slice. I would argue that it's not an optimal platform for a commercial product, but it's clearly possible and has been done.

Jacobm001
  • 11,898
  • 7
  • 46
  • 56
3

I was quite amused and surprised to find a Raspberry Pi sitting in the rack-mountable case for a PBX I recently bought— it's the XorCom Spark CXS1000. It handles calls over VoIP and Analog phone lines for a small business.

You can see the Pi in the PDF getting started guide on the final page, the Pi is the board on the right (you can just make out the RaspberryPi logo)

Doobeh
  • 131
  • 2