A new partnership between Wolfram Research and the Raspberry Pi Foundation bundles the Wolfram Language and Mathematica with the Raspbian OS included on every Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi—a credit-card sized, $25 Linux ARM computer that was originally conceived as a means to inspire a new generation of programmers—recently shipped its two millionth unit. This is the next step in Wolfram’s large-scale plan to apply sophisticated computation everywhere, in a universally accessible way.
The Wolfram Language on Raspberry Pi provides a unique knowledge-based programming environment for STEM education and general computing, and is a striking demonstration of the capability of running the Wolfram Language on an embedded computer anywhere. Users can easily connect to devices that do things in the world—analyzing and uploading sensor data, controlling an autonomous system, analyzing and routing traffic, and millions of other embedded applications.
Speaking today at the business and technology leader forum D2: The Future of Data and Devices in Boston, Massachusetts, Wolfram Research Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram said, “In effect, this is a technology preview: it’s an early, unfinished glimpse of the Wolfram Language. Quite soon it is going to start showing up in lots of places, notably on the web and in the cloud.”
Earlier in the day, at the education-focused Computer-Based Math™ Education Summit (CBM) at UNICEF headquarters in New York, Conrad Wolfram, Managing Director of Wolfram Research Europe, and Eben Upton, a Founder and Trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, highlighted the STEM education aspects of the pilot release.
“So pleased we can associate the power of Mathematica‘s math with the coding excitement of the Raspberry Pi,” said Conrad Wolfram. “Coding is central to modern math as much as math is often needed to code. Both are central to our fundamental reform of math education—CBM—and today’s announcement puts all the elements together with a secret ingredient: fun.”
Added Upton, “Since we launched in 2012, we have come to realize that there is a broader opportunity to engage young people in all aspects of STEM education, from physics and biology to geography, and to use programming itself as a tool to develop the kinds of problem-solving skills that children need to deal with the world around them. We’re great fans of the work that Wolfram Research has been doing in promoting CBM as a new paradigm in mathematics education, and are excited to be able to offer every Raspberry Pi user the chance to get hands-on experience with the Wolfram Language.”
The Wolfram Language–Raspberry Pi integration includes a new Device API to connect to serial devices, the on-board GPIO, and the RaspiCam digital camera. A Remote Development Kit for use on any desktop installation of Mathematica can also be downloaded from the Wolfram website.
“I’m very excited to see what kinds of things people invent with the Wolfram Language on the Raspberry Pi—and I look forward to reading about some of them in the Wolfram+Raspberry Pi section on Wolfram Community and other places,” wrote Stephen Wolfram in a post on his personal blog.
About the Raspberry Pi Foundation
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK-registered charity organization founded in 2009, which aims to serve as a catalyst for making cheap, accessible, programmable computers available everywhere—including developing countries that can’t afford the power and hardware needed to run a traditional desktop PC. Since the launch of the first Raspberry Pi in 2011, the organization has sold over two million devices.
http://www.raspberrypi.org
About Computer-Based Math™
Founded by Conrad Wolfram in 2011, Computer-Based Math™ (CBM) aims to build a completely new math curriculum with computer-based computation at its heart—alongside a campaign to refocus math education away from historical hand-calculating techniques and toward relevant and conceptually interesting topics. Find out how you can get involved with the global CBM initiative:
http://computerbasedmath.org
About Wolfram
Wolfram is the company where computation meets knowledge. For over 25 years, the organization has pursued a long-term vision to develop the science, technology, and tools to make computation an ever-more-potent force in today’s and tomorrow’s world. The company is the developer of Mathematica, the world’s most powerful integrated computation system, and Wolfram|Alpha, the widely used and continually growing computational knowledge engine. Wolfram is also the creator of the Computable Document Format (CDF), an interactive, computation-based knowledge container that is the core technology behind the 9000+ examples in the Wolfram Demonstrations Project and digital content offerings by all major STEM publishers. For more information, visit the company website:
http://www.wolfram.com