Raspberry Pi Is Now A Key Part of Ventilators Built For COVID-19 Patients

If there is one thing that the health care industry desperately needs at the moment to fight the coronavirus pandemic, then that has to be ventilators. The world needs more this life-saving device and in order to cope up with the demands, manufacturers are shifting to designs that are not only faster to make but also cost-efficient.

Well, such results can now be achieved with Rasberry Pi computer boards as an integral part of the ventilators.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has taken up the initiative to speed up the production of their Pi Zero boards, all with the aim to provide manufacturers enough units which could easily facilitate the making of more ventilators as per the demands.

The $5 Pi Zero is regarded as the least powerful computer in the company’s lineup with single-core, 1.0 GHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM, however, still it has the capacity to handle the computing tasks conducted on a ventilator and save lives.

In the current crisis scenario, the Raspberry Pi boards also stand as an ideal choice because of how its makers are supplying the units quickly. Furthermore, Eben Upton, CEO and Founder of Raspberry Pi infromed TomsHardware that their company makes Raspberry Pi with the aim to stock and not “building to order”. This then eventually serves as a basis for why they have a great number of products in their warehouse or the ones in the process also usually have a short lead time.

The team at Rasberry Pi Foundation has already made 192,000 Pi Zero and Pi Zero W boards in the first quarter of 2020 and they further plan to make another 250,000 in the later part of the year for beating the COVID-19.


Moreover, Upton also revealed the surprising fact that this is actually the first time that Raspberry Pi boards are being installed as an important part of medical devices.

While we are of course praising the makers of Raspberry Pi here for the remarkable effort, the credit also goes to the manufacturers of the ventilators who chose to be creative under pressure and trusted the smart technology which was previously limited within the DIY community.



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