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A competition for space-bound students resulted in a tiny, can-sized, Raspberry Pi-powered satellite. Rob Zwetsloot boldly takes a look at it.
What would you do if you had to create a satellite the size of a drinks can? The yearly CanSat competition for students in their teens asks this question, and many teams have answered — including LittleBlueDot.
Satellites are constructed to fit the same space as a can of soft drink for the competition
“The challenge for students is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as power, sensors, and a communication system, into this minimal volume,” the team tell us. They came third in the country for their final build. As the competition instructions explain, “After building their CanSat, teams will be invited to launch events across the UK to launch their CanSats on small rockets, with their CanSats returning to Earth using a parachute designed by the students. Teams are set a primary mission of measuring air pressure and air temperature during the CanSat’s descent, with data being transmitted to the students’ ground station.”
They also needed to design a secondary mission, which in the case of LittleBlueDot included taking photos of the ground below to map it. “The idea of mapping large areas, including foreign bodies, came up when we were discussing potential asteroid mining in the future,” the team say. “And also improving efficiency in agriculture, both fields where large benefits could be seen from mapping land cheaply.”
Trial and error
For the project, Raspberry Pi was an obvious choice for the team — while a microcontroller would be able to handle the environmental recording and transmitting requirements, a Raspberry Pi computer allowed for on-board image processing. The team then got to work building and refining.
“Initially, a very basic CanSat was made to help visualise the size and space that was available to be worked with,” they explain. “Different ways to secure the Can’s inner electronics in an accessible way were explored. In V0, there were two bodies: a screw lid with an attached compartment behind, and the main module itself.”
The V1 build went from a vertical orientation to horizontal to accommodate a larger gap between the cameras. Across V1 and V2 builds, different ways of wiring up and loading the circuit were explored, and clear acrylic discs were added to protect the cameras from moisture and reduce their drag.
“In V1, the parachute was attached via four straight vertical holes,” the team continue. “V2 featured a more reliable solution, using four M5 nuts inset into the walls of the Can to secure the paracord in place and put the strain on the parachute rather than on the Can itself.”
The design was iterated on several times via 3D prints
After some issues at the regional launch, a V3 was created to better fit all the components they required.
“The Can was simplified by removing the inner module and trays [for the electronics], and a friction fit was used to directly mount components to the inside of the CanSat,” the team say. “During testing of the temperature readings, it was found that heat from the internal components was affecting the readings being taken. To mitigate this, fans were added for cooling, and vents were installed on both sides of the CanSat using a honeycomb grid to allow air flow. The strength of the vents were tested in Fusion 360 and they still passed the stress tests.”
With this, they were ready for the national launch, where they were part of the national finals.
Mapping with data
As well as cameras, the CanSat had temperature and pressure sensors, an IMU (inertial measurement unit), a magnetometer, and GPS. These were used to calculate altitude and orientation.
Hi team!
“The two on-board cameras took photos of the ground simultaneously,” the team explain. “This meant that an FFT [fast Fourier transform] taken of an image from the first camera would give a wave that was a translation of the wave an FFT would give for the second camera. This translation would vary based on the orientation of the Can, the distance between the two cameras, the altitude of the Can, and finally the actual altitude of points on the ground. Given values for the first three variables, the fourth could be calculated using trigonometry.”
The team came third overall in the competition. And the data? Sadly, due to a safety quick-release switch being released during launch, they were only able to get one set of images. Hopefully they can get it all working for another launch.
We’re partial to a 3D printer around here. The Maker Lab at Pi Towers has a nice collection of various types and sizes to serve the unique needs of our engineers, so we’re pretty good at figuring them out across a range of brands. When we saw Form 4, the newest 3D printer from Formlabs, we figured it would be especially easy to get our heads around, seeing as it’s built on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4.
Printing for professionals
While some printer brands focus on building machines to support the quick and easy home printing jobs lots of makers need, Formlabs has always been more focused on industrial customers — they were the first company to build a 3D printer capable of achieving professional part quality at an affordable price. Turning to our Compute Module 4 to base their newest machine around was a no-brainer as they looked to increase the speed, quality, and success rate of printing for their flagship line, providing a reliable, high-power solution capable of meeting the needs of businesses.
Formlabs was founded in 2011 and, these days, we see their printers used in all sorts of industries, including engineering, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, and medical. All Formlabs printers across the range have various apps running in the background to move motors, regulate temperatures, log critical events, and so on. The new Form 4 would also need to run two high-resolution displays and a camera simultaneously, so more CPU, RAM, and graphics capabilities were required. Enter Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4.
Story time
Formlabs was initially most familiar with Raspberry Pi’s popularity with makers and hobbyists, and investigated whether the devices were also suitable for industrial applications, checking that they met needs regarding security, supply, ease of use, and, of course, price. The Compute Module line satisfied all their requirements.
Our Product Information Portal provides business customers and professional users with access to white papers, guides, compliance reports, and other information to help keep product development moving along at pace. Formlabs harnessed all of the above and managed to hit its time-to-market target. We do love a good success story.
There’s a much longer story behind Formlabs’ new Compute Module 4-based machine if you’d like to read it. You’ll find all sorts of juicy detail about the design, development, and journey to market, so if you’re into your printers or are curious about how Raspberry Pi supported this industrial use case, give our recent case study a read.
Accurate maps of intricate cave systems help improve the safety of intrepid divers. In issue 150 of The MagPi, Rosie Hattersley hears about Raspberry Shake’s contribution.
Richard Wylde describes himself as “a sort of physicist and engineer living between the business and academic worlds” whose passion for cave diving is “closer to an obsession than a hobby”. He is co-founder of Terahertz, an advanced engineering company which, among other impressive achievements, developed remote sensing instruments for the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE mission. Richard is also one of several experienced cave explorers involved in mapping the subterranean network of cenotes [sinkholes] in Yucatan, Mexico. “The caves are stunningly beautiful and [mapping them] is technically difficult,” he says. “A lot of effort goes into staying alive.” Acoustic and magnetic mapping can help plot the location and direction of these unexplored passageways, improving safety for all who visit them — an endeavour made more robust using Raspberry Shake, a Raspberry Pi-based device more commonly used to detect earthquakes.
Cave measurements are made manually underwater using a compass and tape measure
The maps are also useful for dive guides keen to show off the speleothems (mineral deposits such as stalactites and stalagmites), and for developers to know whether building on a particular area is possible and permissible. Their dives also reveal the effects of developments such as golf courses, which are built by clearing jungles, use nitrates to maintain their greens, and may also be drawing water from the aquifers.
Distinguished company
Richard often dives with renowned cave explorer Fred Devos in Mexico’s Quintana Roo region, which has no overground rivers. Mapping its subterranean cave network is “incredibly dangerous and physically challenging”.
Team Raspberry Shake’s kit, including a Raspberry Shake acoustic seismograph, oxygen tanks, and maps of remote and barely accessible stretches of cave systems
Exploring the caves involves following taut lines of string with knots every ten feet to mark the way, just like Theseus in the Greek myth. Richard mentions the trust and focus needed to accurately read a compass and count out distances travelled ten feet at a time based on how many knots you’ve passed. Visibility and human physical resilience are all factors too — if you’re exhausted from a lengthy dive, you probably aren’t noticing arrows or counting knots accurately. “It’s milk of magnesia down there when the bubbles hit the ceiling.”
Richard explains the process: “We mark the depth, the distance and the azimuth, and the angle to the next station” — often simply where the line is wrapped around a rock. Painted arrows help ensure divers don’t get lost, but some caves have more than one entrance, or arrows pointing in more than one direction.
Richard Wylde, Fred Devos, and colleagues published a booklet mapping the cave system at Actun Koh
The maps are written on specially printed paper and include geographical features such as cave openings, changes in cave and water depth, and height. Relating this information to the outside world requires a way of referring it to the surface and getting a GPS position from it. “The map is linked to an absolute position by taking the line out of the cave entrance and accessing a GPS coordinate in an area with few obstructions to the sky,” says Richard. “In caves which have more than one entrance, it is possible to ascertain and correct for the build-up of errors by taking GPS measurements at the entrances. Programs such as Ariane [a widely used mapping tool] can then be used to distribute the correction through the map.”
Instrumental improvements
The team previously used a fluxgate magnetometer to match above-ground and subterranean locations at the Sagitario cenote. In the summer of 2024, Richard and his cave-mapping colleagues trialled a new means of confirming their findings, using both the Raspberry Shake 1D vertical motion seismograph and a far more sensitive acoustic magnetometer. Getting to the site after hacking through the jungle, the Raspberry Shake and acoustic magnetoscope were placed directly above where divers believed the cave was located.
Golfing greens are treated with nitrates that poison the cenotes with algae
“Raspberry Shake helped confirm our findings and add a degree of accuracy that was not previously possible,” says Richard. The results were promising enough that the team ordered an RS3D three-axis model for their planned return trip in early 2025. This time, the Raspberry Shake will be placed in an IP67 waterproof box, and the team hopes the additional measurements will allow direction to be determined from the relative amplitudes of the disturbance in the X, Y, Z frames.
Richard, Sam, and Chris embark on a cave dive at Actun Koh
For 2025’s Official Raspberry Pi Handbook, PJ Evans created an entire feature exploring the world of Raspberry Pi home automation projects. We especially liked this project, which shows you how to take control of your home, and your privacy, with a Raspberry Pi 4.
Home automation is not only useful but can also be a great deal of fun, particularly when setting up cool automations or connecting different devices together in new ways. It can also help boost the energy efficiency and security of your home; there are a wealth of practical reasons to start experimenting with this technology. Although there are different vendor-specific automation systems out there, we prefer one that doesn’t ‘lock’ you into one provider. One such platform is Home Assistant (home-assistant.io), a free open-source operating system designed with flexibility and independence in mind. Home Assistant is a huge topic, but here we’ll look at the basics of setting up a server to get you started on your automation journey.
Prepare your Raspberry Pi
Although Home Assistant isn’t strictly an operating system in its own right, it is available as a Raspberry Pi image that significantly reduces the work a user has to do to get up and running. Home Assistant is intended to run on a Raspberry Pi as the sole service. It is possible to run Home Assistant alongside other apps and services, but we’re keeping to the true path here. Home Assistant works with Raspberry Pi 3, but we strongly recommend using a Raspberry Pi 4 for the best performance. You should also use a wired Ethernet connection for setup and to ensure reliability. Home Assistant is headless, so no monitor or keyboard is needed.
As your confidence and knowledge grow, you can create more complex dashboards. You can even incorporate video feed
Write the Home Assistant image
Luckily for us, you can write the latest stable Home Assistant image directly from the Raspberry Pi Imager. Insert a fast SD card 32GB or more in size into your computer. In Imager, select Choose OS > Other specific-purpose OS > Home assistants and home automation > Home Assistant > Home Assistant OS 9.5 (RPI 4/400 or RPI 3, as needed).
You’ll now get a ready-to-boot image. Insert the card into your Raspberry Pi, make sure you’ve got a wired network connection, and power up. After a few minutes, try to connect to http://homeassistant:8123 in your web browser.
Replace your porch light with a smart light bulb and you can trigger it at sundown all year round
Initial setup
Time to grab your favourite beverage. You’ll see an initial setup screen stating that it will take about 20 minutes before you can proceed. Soon it will be automatically replaced with the first stage of setup. Provide your name, username, and choice of password. On the next screen, there will be some questions about the server’s location. It’s important to set this accurately if you want to take advantage of sun-up/down times. Finally, Home Assistant will ‘look’ around your network for any existing smart devices and let you know what it’s found. Don’t worry if something doesn’t appear, it will probably just need manual configuration later on.
Add integrations
Home Assistant refers to smart platforms as ‘integrations’. For instance, if you have Philips Hue or IKEA Trådfri smart lights, it will add an integration for them and then a ‘device’ for each light it finds. It will also create a default dashboard for you based on what’s been found. Not all integrations can be found automatically, so you can browse available integrations and add them yourself or install third-party add-ons. Integrations include lights, security devices, media centres, printers, and mains power controllers —you can even make your own. At this point, it’s best to start exploring.
Combine devices to create clever energy-saving automation. Got solar panels? When it’s sunny, switch the washing machine and all the lights on
Customisation
One of Home Assistant’s greatest strengths is customisation. The dashboard system (‘Lovelace’) allows you to arrange your device control and set automations however you like them. By default, Home Assistant automates the layout, but we recommend you disable that. Click the three dots in the top right of the screen, followed by ‘Edit dashboard’. You’ll be asked if you want to take control of layout. Do so, and then you can create your perfect layout. You can resize, restyle, add graphs, tabs, and badges. Don’t be intimidated; start small and build things up as you become more familiar.
Next steps
Congratulations, you now have a running Home Assistant server. The capabilities of this service can seem overwhelming at times, but with a little reading on home-assistant.io and some digging around the menus, you’ll soon be taking control of your home. Once you’ve added the ability to switch devices on and off, or monitor things like printer ink levels, move on to Automations. These allow certain actions to happen based on events. For example, you can have a motion sensor turn on certain lights around the house. Check out Settings > Automations and have a play.
The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2025
Dive into the world of Raspberry Pi with this huge book of tutorials, project showcases, guides, product reviews, and much more. With 200 pages packed full of maker goodness, you’ll also find inspiration for your Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, Raspberry Pi 4, or any other Raspberry Pi model you have — there’s something for everyone.
Having looked to see how blood pressure monitors operate, Miloš Rašić has been hard at work trying to improve their accuracy.David Crookes conducted this interview for the special 150th anniversary issue of our official magazine.
Keeping track of blood pressure is crucial for maintaining good health, especially when managing heart-related conditions. Electrical engineer Miloš Rašić knows this only too well. “Like most older people, my grandma suffers from elevated blood pressure, so a digital pressure monitor is something that is being used daily in the household,” he says. But he also noticed the machines can be flawed.
Besides the main PCB, which is based around a Raspberry Pi Pico W, there is an air pump and valve, GX12 connectors, buttons, an 18650 battery, NeoPixel LEDs, an OLED display, and some other smaller parts
“Different monitors have provided widely different measurements and their performance was highly dependent on their battery level, which is not a good thing,” he explains. “So for my master’s thesis project, I wanted to explore digital blood pressure monitors and discover how they work.” This led him to develop a cardiography signal measuring device based around a Raspberry Pi Pico W.
Conducting experiments
When Miloš approached his project, he had a list of requirements in mind, chief among them being safety. “The device had to have optical isolation when connected to a PC and be battery-powered or have an isolated power supply,” he says.
As a priority, it needed to measure blood pressure. “This included measuring the air pressure inside an arm cuff, controlling a small air pump, and controlling an electromagnetic valve,” he adds. Miloš also wanted the device to use a well-supported microcontroller unit with wireless capabilities, hence the use of a Raspberry Pi Pico W. “It provided everything I needed in a small package and was supported by a large community, which meant everything would be easy to troubleshoot,” he says.
The main device casing as well as the PPG clamp have been 3D printed using a Creality K1C. The models can be downloaded from Printables
Along the way, Miloš began to add more features, including a stethoscope and the ability to take an ECG measurement. By using a photoplethysmography (PPG) clamp, he also figured the device could detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue and that, combined, these sensors would be able to give a better insight into a person’s heart health.
And yet he was clear from the start that he wasn’t going to create a medical device. Instead, the ultimate aim was to take readings and conduct experiments to discover an optimal algorithm for measuring blood pressure. “The whole area of blood pressure monitors was a curiosity for me and I wanted to demystify it a bit and generally have a platform which other people can experiment with,” he explains. “So I created a setup that can be used for experimenting with new methods of analysing cardiography signals.”
To connect the stethoscope to the system, the earphones were removed and a small piezo microphone was then connected to an amplifier circuit
Heart of the build
To fulfil his ambition, he got to work designing the PCB before looking at the other necessary components, such as the pump, valve, battery, and connectors. Some parts were simple enough — for example, the air pressure cuff, which you’ve likely seen on a visit to a GP or hospital. “This is the only sensor most commercial devices use, and the estimations using it are good enough for most cases,” Miloš says. But others required more work.
The ECG sensor to record heart activity was an important part of the build. “I wanted to extract the pulses from the air pressure signal and for the ECG to be my reference measurement so that I knew the algorithm was working properly,” he says. For this, Miloš included a custom layout of the AD8232 IC on the PCB (AD8232 is an integrated signal conditioning block for ECG measurement applications), allowing measurements to be taken.
The pressure sensor calibration apparatus was created so that constant pressure can be maintained in the system
Miloš also made a PPG clamp using a MikroE Oxi5 Click board that communicated with the rest of the system over I2C. “The PPG clamp is often used to measure blood oxygen saturation, but since it works by detecting the changes in blood flow in the finger, it’s a very useful sensor when it’s used in combination with the arm cuff,” Miloš says. “Since the arm cuff cuts off circulation in the arm, and then slowly lowers the air pressure inside until the circulation is established again, by using the PPG we can have a precise detection of when the laminar flow has been established again, which is the moment that the air pressure inside the arm cuff is equal to the diastolic air pressure.”
Finally, an old analogue stethoscope was added. Miloš combined this with a small piezo microphone, turning the stethoscope into an electronic device. “A stethoscope is used when doing manual blood pressure measurements, and since [this] is still the gold standard for non-invasive methods, I wanted to see how the signal on the stethoscope looks during this process and if I could draw any conclusions from it,” Miloš reveals.
Pressure’s on
To make sense of the data, Miloš decided the project would need a graphical interface. “This would have a live view of all of the measured signals and the capability of recording all of the data into a CSV file,” he says. It required a hefty dose of programming; Python was used to code the GUI, handling the graphical interface, the communication with the device, and the data logging capabilities. Python was also used to analyse the recorded signals, while the firmware was written in C++, “so that it runs as fast as possible on the Pico,” Miloš explains.
A custom four-layer PCB was developed, using Raspberry Pi Pico W as the microcontroller
With everything working, Miloš designed a case. “I needed to see the rough space required for everything, which allowed me to design a case with mounting points for each of those things,” he says. “On the top, there is a lid that has NeoPixel LEDs and a small OLED display that can be programmed to show information to the user.”
Since then, he’s been using the project to conduct many tests, and you can see the results of those on Miloš’ GitHub page. The project has also been made open source because he hopes it will help others with their own projects. “It can give them a head start so they don’t have to develop their electronics from scratch if all they want to do is, for example, signal analysis,” he says. “This is why I’ve also included some data that I’ve recorded with this device if anyone wants to use just that without ever having any contact points with the hardware!”
Of course, you shouldn’t use home-made tools to diagnose medical problems; Miloš made it clear from the start that he wasn’t creating a medical device.
A very rewarding thing about designing affordable hardware is watching young makers grow up with it, sometimes taking their interest in computing to university and beyond. We’ve seen kids who began playing around with Raspberry Pi go on to use our devices in their professional lives — in fact, that’s how a couple of our own engineers started out. In issue 149 of The MagPi, we spoke to the three siblings behind theGurgleAppsYouTube channel. They’ve been sharing STEM projects for ten years now.
We’ve been covering projects from the team of siblings who make up GurgleApps for a long time — most recently their Colour Word Clock (image below) — and they themselves have been using a Raspberry Pi since the year it came out. In fact, it helped turn them into the makers they are today.
“Making became a part of our lives largely due to the influence of our parents, who filled our home with electronics, science, and coding projects,” the GurgleApps trio tell us. “Funnily enough, we weren’t hooked immediately — we had all this amazing equipment and knowledge at home, but took it for granted. The real spark came when Caleb received his first Raspberry Pi in 2012. Our dad playfully ‘forgot’ to tell us about the startx command, so we spent the first month working solely in the terminal, using simple commands like top and programming in Vi (a text editor) to create quiz and adventure games — without realising there was a graphical interface! It was rather frustrating for us at the time, but as our dad reminded us, it was nothing compared to his old ZX Spectrum.”
How did you start making videos together?
We started making videos together somewhat accidentally in 2015. It all kicked off with a prank on our dad where we used a Raspberry Pi to SSH into his computer and close the app he was working on. Amélie demonstrated the prank using simple shell commands, while Caleb handled the filming. Since we were too young for social media, we posted the video on our parents’ account. Unexpectedly, it went viral, gathering 1.4 million views! The overwhelming support inspired us to create more content, leading to the birth of our channel, GurgleApps.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we noticed that many students — including us — were missing out on hands-on science experiments. We started recreating school physics experiments at home and sharing tutorials on our channel. This allowed others to keep learning and exploring STEM subjects despite the circumstances. We’re dedicated to making STEM education accessible and fun for everyone.
What was your first group maker project?
Our first significant group project was creating the Pico Piano (watch below). We built it using a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and designed our own circuit board right at home. To make the circuit board, we used a DIY method: drawing the circuit design on a copper board with Sharpies and then etching it using ferric chloride. This hands-on process was both challenging and exciting, as it combined electronics, coding, and a bit of chemistry.
How has the channel affected your lives?
Running our YouTube channel has taught us a wide range of skills — from presenting and video editing to live-streaming and valuable maker and business skills. Live streaming helped us handle mistakes on the fly and build confidence. We’ve also been guests on podcasts and other live streams, which allowed us to meet lots of fun and interesting people in the maker community.
Our STEM knowledge has deepened significantly. Supportive viewers often share their expertise; for example, one viewer spent hours teaching us about PCB manufacturing, and another pointed out an inaccuracy in our light gate calculations, helping us learn and improve.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — Raspberry Pi 400 was inspired by the ZX Spectrum
What’s your favourite thing you’ve made together?
Our favourite project we’ve made together is definitely the Word Clock! It’s special to us because it was inspired by our very first word clock project with a tiny 8×8 display over ten years ago. We’ve evolved it into a kit that you can now buy, and we’ve made everything open source — even the 3D print files for the case are available. We spent months perfecting it and putting everything we’ve learned into making it something we’re really proud of. What’s even more exciting is seeing people hack it to do things we never dreamed of. Watching others take our creation, build upon it, and share their own versions has been incredibly rewarding. We’ve recently updated our custom-made RGB LED matrix display — a key component of our word clock — and hopefully it will be ready for purchase from our shop very soon!
To see more of the trio’s projects and tutorials, subscribe to GurgleApps on YouTube.
The MagPi #150 out NOW!
You can grab the latest issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store, which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.
You can also subscribe to the print version of The MagPi. Not only do we deliver it globally, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W!
At Raspberry Pi, we have always been keen to do things that are more sustainable. Our products are intrinsically small and low-power, which makes them efficient in terms of resource usage (materials, shipping, electricity); Raspberry Pi devices can replace more resource-hungry solutions in many applications that would traditionally use a legacy x86 PC, such as digital signage. They also enable innovative approaches to improving the environment or people’s lives – including, of course, Raspberry Pi’s founding mission to make cheap computers and computing resources readily available to all to support learning.
When Raspberry Pi floated on the London Stock Exchange on 11 June 2024, we were proud to be awarded the LSE’s Green Economy Mark. The Mark recognises that not only are our products efficient in terms of resource usage, they also enable the displacement of other, less sustainable, technologies.
Raspberry Pi joins the London Stock Exchange
We’ve also worked to reduce the environmental impact of our manufacturing and shipping. Over time we have reduced our use of plastic packaging and shrunk product carton and shipper sizes, as well as working on more efficient production methods such as the new intrusive reflow soldering process for Raspberry Pi 5. The latter both saves energy and reduces the physical manufacturing footprint at the factory, while increasing throughput. As well as benefitting the environment, all of these initiatives improve our products’ cost structure, increasing efficiency and allowing us to keep our prices lower.
Now that we are a public limited company, we have formalised the role of sustainability within the business, with a Sustainability Committee to oversee activities like these. The committee monitors our performance using various metrics such as CO₂ emissions and materials use, comes up with future targets, and challenges the team to develop a strategy to achieve them. Raspberry Pi aims to be a leader in sustainable practices within the technology sector while maintaining our core focus on providing affordable and accessible technology for all. Below we explore the key principles that guide our sustainability strategy, and look at how we calculate our impact in terms of carbon emissions.
Guiding principles for sustainable practices
Raspberry Pi is firmly committed to sustainability alongside our responsibility to our shareholders. Our commitment is driven by the beliefs of our founders, our team, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, our largest shareholder and a charity focused on digital skills education. Customers quite rightly value credible and meaningful sustainability initiatives, which often have an important positive impact on brand reputation and market share, and we are able to balance these activities with the need to perform in a price-sensitive market. It goes without saying that we will adhere to all UK sustainability laws and regulations transparently, and we will also monitor voluntary best practices and adopt them where we can.
As well as monitoring and reducing our own CO₂ footprint, we are conscious of emissions generated by the many third parties we rely on for supply of materials and services – components, shipping, and so on. Encouraging suppliers to reduce their environmental impact is central to Raspberry Pi’s approach, and we are beginning to engage with all our suppliers, asking them to quantify the carbon content in their products. Over time we will consider the “carbon cost” of what we purchase (broadly, the cost of an equivalent high-quality carbon offset), as well as the base item cost, when we do our costing calculations. So, for example, a diode from one manufacturer may appear cheaper than one from another manufacturer, but if the carbon cost of the first is higher, we would take this into account and might choose the second. Over time this will favour lower-carbon solutions and encourage manufacturers to supply lower-carbon products.
Raspberry Pi prioritises keeping our products affordable and accessible, empowering customers to make informed choices about offsetting their own carbon footprint. This allows us to maintain profitability and maximise our contribution to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s charitable mission, which remains a core objective for the company.
Measuring emissions
It’s imporant that our sustainability efforts are both transparent and accountable. To this end, we are actively measuring our carbon footprint across what are known as Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, and we have developed a methodology to assess our environmental impact as accurately as possible.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions
Scope 1 emissions are the direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company, while Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from generating the energy that the company purchases. Scope 2 includes emissions from electricity, heating, and cooling that the company consumes; although the company doesn’t produce these emissions directly, it is still responsible for them because they result from its energy consumption.
For Raspberry Pi, Scope 1 and 2 are lumped together, since we don’t have any energy-generating assets that emit carbon. We measure these emissions via the energy bills for our various offices and shops.
Scope 3 emissions
Scope 3 emissions encompass all the other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain. This is the broadest category; it includes emissions from upstream activities like the production and transportation of raw materials, as well as downstream activities like the use and disposal of products. Scope 3 emissions also cover employee commuting, business travel, and waste generated in a company’s operations.
We divide the measurement of Scope 3 emissions into two categories: emissions due to products that we make to sell, and other carbon emissions generated through our business activities. As we are a company that sells millions of computers and accessories every year, our product emissions are especially important to understand.
Understanding carbon emissions from Raspberry Pi products
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method for evaluating the environmental impact of a product throughout its life, from sourcing the materials used to make it through to disposing of it. We assess emissions for all our products across all of their LCA phases except for customer usage of the product. The diagram below shows the different phases in a product’s life cycle:
To assess the environmental impact of our products, we worked with our partner Inhabit to conduct a comprehensive study, following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO 14044:2006 standards. We used industry-leading tools from Inhabit together with the EcoInvent database to calculate the carbon footprint of products throughout their lifecycle. This involved carrying out a detailed analysis of a set of individual, representative products across our range, then applying the results to other, similar products.
Calculating individual product carbon emissions
How do we calculate the carbon emitted when a product is manufactured? In a nutshell, we first take every item in the product’s Bill of Materials (BOM) and find the carbon emitted during its production (called its embodied carbon), and add up all these emissions. We then take account of the carbon used to make the product in the factory as well as the carbon emitted during shipping (both shipping of the materials to make the product, and shipping of the finished product). Finally, we add on a number representing the carbon we expect will be emitted when the product is disposed of.
This may sound like a fairly simple step-by-step process, but finding the exact quantity of embodied carbon for every item of a product’s BOM is not easy – in most cases you can’t (yet) just ask a manufacturer what the embodied carbon is in their capacitor or diode or PCB or other widget. So how do we do it? The simple answer is averages: lots of them, in a database.
We map every item in a product’s BOM to a category in an officially recognised database which contains the average embedded carbon for many, many categories; there may be a category for the average small signal diode or capacitor, or for the production of steel plate, and so on. Often these figures are provided by mass – a certain quantity of carbon emitted per unit mass of the product – which means we need to know the mass of each component. Where there are no good matches for a particular item, we might need to look at that item’s own BOM, calculating the mass of the various materials in a connector, for example, and using yet more averages for the plastic, metals, and processes involved in order to estimate its embodied carbon.
Raspberry Pi hardware is manufactured at Sony’s facility in Pencoed, south Wales
For the carbon emitted in factory production, we can use real data provided by our contract manufacturer Sony, and for shipping we also have quite a lot of real data to hand. For product end-of-life, we have to turn to averages once more and add on the average carbon cost of disposal; again, these figures come from an officially recognised database.
As I explained above, we do these detailed calculations for a representative subset of our products, and then we scale the carbon footprint calculations proportionally for products with similar designs or varying sizes. We have also categorised certain items which sell in smaller quantities as “de minimis”: for these products, we have estimated their environmental impact by applying to them the average CO₂ emissions per dollar of revenue across our calculated products. This has allowed us to provide a comprehensive carbon footprint assessment for our entire product range.
Lastly, the total emissions per product are combined with our yearly sales number for each product to give us our final estimate of Scope 3 carbon emissions in the product category across our business.
Other Scope 3 emissions
I wrote earlier in this article that we divide Scope 3 carbon emissions into two categories: product emissions and other emissions. To calculate emissions for the other Scope 3 items, we take all the non-product transactions for the year from our accounting journals, and assign a category to each one. Then we can link this category to average emissions per pound spent; these average figures are drawn, once more, from the EcoInvent database. This allows us to convert the money we have spent with a business into a carbon emission figure.
Combining all of our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions gives us a yearly emissions figure. For 2024, this will be reported in our inaugural annual report in April 2025.
Can we rely on the results? What do we do with them?
A good question to ask, given that our Scope 3 emissions calculations are based on a large sum of approximations, is how accurate – and therefore how useful – all this is. We’re using approved standards for these processes, and other businesses like ours will necessarily be calculating their emissions in a similar way; the averages method is the best currently available. It’s important to bear in mind that the results are an approximation, and this is a reason to work towards better data in the future, not a reason to be discouraged.
Each Raspberry Pi Carbon Removal Credit offsets the embodied carbon of a Raspberry Pi computer
As well as carbon emitted today, our monitoring work allows us to get a stake in the ground and the infrastructure in place to measure carbon emitted in the future, steadily improving our accuracy over time. We are talking to our suppliers about providing product carbon emissions figures, and building these into our design cycle. By developing more accurate models and automated data collection and carbon calculation systems, over time we can both produce more accurate numbers and reduce our carbon footprint!
Understanding product carbon emissions means we can come up with innovative solutions to help reduce emissions, such as our recently launched Carbon Removal Credits. We are taking our first steps in a long and important journey: in future articles here, we’ll delve deeper into the various initiatives we are undertaking to minimise our environmental impact and build a more sustainable future for computing. Stay tuned to learn more about our efforts in responsible sourcing, energy efficiency, and waste reduction, and find out how you can contribute to a greener Raspberry Pi ecosystem.
Raspberry Pi’s official magazine, The MagPi, has turned the big 150 and decided to mark the occasion in true maker stylewith a special feature celebrating 150 Raspberry Pi people and projects previously featured on its hallowed pages. Here, we’ve cherry-picked a few of our favourites. You can read the full feature, including Raspberry Pi appearances on TV, some famous makers, and excellent Pi-focused events, in The MagPi #150.
We Still Fax
People found creative ways to stay entertained in 2020. Enter We Still Fax, an intriguing theatrical project that interacts with an audience remotely using a fax machine. The core components of the show are the fax machine, Raspberry Pi, and Grandstream adapter, which translates a phone signal into an Ethernet signal and vice versa.
The Blueswarm team from Harvard University set out to explore how shoals of fish coordinate by building a swarm of underwater fish robots. Raspberry Pi Zero W was used to create multiple Bluebot fish-style robots that can be accessed remotely.
Taking gaming on a tiny screen to its extreme, maker James Brown responded to enquiries about whether his LEGO brick-embedded console could play the popular first-person shooter. With a 0.42-inch OLED, 4MB flash chip, and RP2040 microcontroller (as on Pico), it uses the latter’s second core to update the screen fast enough to create greyscale images and play video.
BrewPi was one of the first initiatives to recognise the power of Raspberry Pi for precision brewing. The BrewPi Spark 3 is a temperature controller that handles beer or wine fermentation with 0.1°C precision and sends data to an on‑board display.
Martin Spendiff and Vanessa Bradley updated a Goblin Teasmade with a Raspberry Pi Zero WH to produce their hot drink of choice… coffee! It uses a Grove ReSpeaker HAT and a speaker with a relay switch to replace the alarm. A script monitors Google Calendar, and if it sees a trigger phrase, it starts the boil cycle.
Greece’s NTAU School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering knew plenty about Raspberry Pi before selecting it for its underwater archaeology surveillance project, in which a self-powered submarine unit detects people or craft coming close to sensitive marine areas and sites of historic wrecks and alerts authorities to potential intruders.
A solar-powered sensor buoy that is “cheap to build, easy to run”, and provides continuous and reliable data. It helps study rising sea levels and was deployed in Grenada in the Caribbean for this job. It communicates via radio signals to a Raspberry Pi base station — something Raspberry Pi is very well suited to.
Art and technology can go hand-in-hand, especially with this Raspberry Pi Zero W-powered dress that shows how the wearer is feeling via the special EEG headband they wear and the images displayed on various (eye-catching) screens attached to the outfit.
You can grab the new issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store, which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.
You can also subscribe to the print version of The MagPi. Not only do we deliver it globally, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W!
Regular readers of The MagPi will be familiar with the HackSpace ‘Top Projects’ feature. It’s a good place to find the most wonderfully weird builds. The January issue features an LED habit tracker and a pet piano that doubles as a food dispenser, but it’s this gloriously retro-looking, clicky-keyed device made by Un Kyu Lee that caught our eye.
The internet is a giant distraction machine. How does anyone get any work done when they’re constantly plugged into the mental churn of social media, 24-hour news, and an endless supply of cute cat videos? It takes an iron will to ignore such distractions. Or, if you’re smarter than that, you could simply cut the distractions out of your life with something like the Micro Journal: a distraction-free writing device.
Described by the maker as a “modern solution with a nostalgic twist, designed specifically for writers who crave focus and mobility”, this foldable device has all the charm of a vintage typewriter. Not only does it have deliciously clicky Cherry MX keys, it also uses some of the controls of vintage typewriters. Rather than changing line spacing via a drop-down menu in Microsoft Word, for example, the user rolls a physical knob.
You can choose between AZERTY, QWERTY, DVORAK or any other key mapping you want — you can even remap individual keys to your personal preferences by copying a configuration file to an SD card in the device.
I want one!
Want one? The Micro Journal is out of stock right now, but you can join the waitlist to be notified when fresh stock lands at 6 pm Italian time every Wednesday.
The MagPi #149 out NOW!
You can grab the new issue right now from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, WHSmith, and other newsagents, including the Raspberry Pi Store in Cambridge. It’s also available at our online store, which ships around the world. You can also get it via our app on Android or iOS.
You can also subscribe to the print version of The MagPi. Not only do we deliver it globally, but people who sign up to the six- or twelve-month print subscription get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico W!
