PicoCluster and CES2017

Finally!  We are doing a summary of our experience at CES2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  We had many interesting and exciting experiences, a few of which we would like to share. 

First, we would like to thank all those who visited with us last year at CES2016 who took the time to find us again this year.  Every day we had people stopping by wanting to know if we had finally launched, wanting to see what new products we were displaying, and sharing ways they were using their PicoClusters. 

As many of you know, we have had a hard time defining the main market for the PicoCluster.  In fact, the number one question is we get is: “What would I do with a cluster of Raspberry Pi’s?”  It seems that just when we think we have all the answers nailed down we find a new market for our cute clusters.  CES2017 was no different!  We were told by many who stopped by our booth, including Gartner analysts, that we are perfectly poised to be a market leader in the Micro Data Center industry.  After doing quite a bit of research, we agree!  In fact, many of our post-CES contacts have been with enterprise customers. 

Of course, we also talked to many at CES who were using their PicoClusters for IoT applications, home security, media centers, education from preschool through graduate school, personal data centers, cloudlets, and more.  Will from Neo4j was a guest in our booth for a couple of days. He brought a Pico 5 to show people how well Neo4J, a graph database, scales in a cluster.

We brought PicoClusters made from Raspberry Pi, Pine 64, and Odroid single board computers to CES2017.  We were pleased to have the CTO’s and/or chief hardware designers from both Raspberry Pi and Pine 64 stop by to chat for awhile.  We were very excited to see and hear about their new ideas!  We met with at least 3 members of the Onion team, including their CTO.  We should be getting some of their new boards to play with soon!  We also learned of more powerful, but more expensive, SBC’s that we are hoping to incorporate in future clusters.

Of course, we all know that “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”  This is true of our most memorable experience at CES2017.  Here’s just a teaser.  It had to do with an international technology magnate, dark streets with no street lights, 15+ foot high electronic gates, and a mansion that used to be owned by an international sports star where we entered through the back door of the guest house. 

What a great start to 2017!