Official resources for Raspberry Pi products

Here are several official Raspberry Pi Foundation and Raspberry Pi Trading resources meant to help you utilize the full potential of the various products they offer.

Who is behind Raspberry Pi?

First, let's clarify what is the difference and the similarity between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Raspberry Pi Trading.

  • The charity Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) was created with an educational mission "to put the power of computing and digital making into the hands of people all over the world".

    In the beginning, they created and marketed the Raspberry Pi for their educational programs. The growth in demand for Pi burdened the foundation with the commercial aspects of making, selling and delivering Pis and other Pi products. So, they split the "boring" commercial side of Pi to Raspberry Pi Trading, allowing the foundation to concentrate on the charitable educational mission it was created for. You can read more about the Raspberry Pi Foundation here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/
  • The company Raspberry Pi Trading (RPT) is the commercial arm of the Raspberry Pi foundation. Raspberry Pi Trading manages the complex side of manufacturing, selling and shipping the products used as the basis for the foundation's educational programs and countless other uses. You can read more about Raspberry Pi Trading here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/about/

Although they are separate entities, they are often seen as one Raspberry Pi team!

Now that we know the two sides of the Raspberry Pi, we'll see the resources they offer to their various users:

Resources to learn

The first stop for anyone who wants to learn with Raspberry Pi activities is, of course, the Raspberry Pi Foundation's website (https://www.raspberrypi.org/). On the foundation's website, you will find lessons for students, projects and teacher resources. You will likely want to inspire yourself with the foundation's Blog (https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/)!

Resources for general support

Documentation

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/

The Documentation section should be your first stop to learn how to get your Pi products to work. The extensive documentation covers how to get started, basics on how to use Raspberry Pi OS, configuration settings, hardware schematics, manuals, datasheets, and much more. You will also find links to the operating system files and instructions on how to create card images for Pi, to PIP and the Forum (both discussed later).

Forum

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/

If you don't find your answer in the documentation, you may want to search the Raspberry Pi Forum, it has a very active community with a wealth of information! Raspberry Pi engineers roam the forum, you might receive the answer from the team that makes and programs the Pi!

The forum has sections dedicated to using the Pi, troubleshooting, use in education, programming, user projects, hardware and Operating systems. There are a few other sections, including an Announcements section.

Resources for commercial support

In addition to the documentation and forum above, there are a few resources meant for commercial and industrial users of Raspberry Pi products:

Raspberry Pi for Industry

https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/

This portal is designed to regroup resources used by the various volume Pi users. You will find links to:

Product Information Portal

https://pip.raspberrypi.com/

This multi-level information portal gives access to documents in three confidentiality levels. You will find:

  • Product compliance approvals
  • Schematics
  • Mechanical drawings
  • Product change notifications
  • White papers
  • Compliance test reports and software

We highly recommend anyone who relies on Raspberry Pi products (Pis, Compute Modules, displays, cameras, Picos, etc.) register with the website at the "Restricted" level and subscribe to the Product Change Notifications (PCNs) for the products you rely on! 

Subscribing to Product Change Notifications will give you a heads-up on upcoming hardware changes and the required modifications needed by your projects for the continued operation of Raspberry Pi products in your designs. Among such changes, you might need to update your software or operating system to the minimum version required for new Pi revisions. 

Failing to make the changes described in the PCNs could lead to Pis not booting, error messages or other product issues! Implement the changes mentioned in the PCNs as soon as possible (preferably before the date mentioned in the PCN), otherwise, you risk receiving Raspberry Pi products your project can't function with. 

We are NOT able to sell a specific revision of a Raspberry Pi product to avoid issues in your projects as there is often no way for us to tell the revision without opening the packaging.

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