The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book - Projects_Book_v4

(^88) The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book raspberrypi.org/magpi
RAPANUI
CLOTHING
hen brothers Rob and Mart
Drake-Knight struggled
like mad to find a job in
2008, they could so easily have
reached a point where they would
have to sell the shirts off their
backs. Luckily they decided to spend
£200 setting up an environmental
clothing company on the Isle of
Wight instead, growing it from a
garden shed to a large factory in a
former Co-op supermarket.
Today, the whole operation at
Rapanui is powered by renewable
energy and a creative, hackathon,
Projects SHOWCASE
Mart Drake-Knight and his brother Rob have put dozens of Raspberry Pi
boards at the heart of their super-efficient clothing factory

Rapanui’s
factory plugs
into the Internet
of Things
All workstations
and machinery
are Pi-powered
The UI has
been made
mistake-proof
IBM’s Node-
RED is free and
open source
Fire destroyed
the previous
factory in 2016
Quick
Facts
W
This Arduino robotic
arm is an experiment
to see if tasks can be
delegated to it
MART DRAKE-KNIGHT
Mart and his brother Rob want to
make fashion more sustainable
and they love organic cotton and
renewable energy.
rapanuiclothing.com
DIY spirit. More specifically, it
also makes use of nearly 100
Raspberry Pi boards to perform
many different tasks. “Some are
connected to sensors or machinery
that we’ve made in our machine
shop,” says Mart. “Some do simple
stuff like open windows and help
people solve problems.”
Other Pi devices drive
touchscreens and workstations and
they enable staff to prioritise work.
Put together, they have made
Rapanui’s manufacturing process
very efficient while allowing the
firm’s eco-friendly and sustainable
clothing to be affordable. By
automating the dull parts of the
job and giving managers a solid
overview of what’s happening in
the factory and where, Rapanui
can go as far as offering tailored
services: you could get the
company to make a single T-shirt
with your picture or logo or order

1000. Either way, you could have
      the garment the following day.
      In order to bring the technology in
      the factory together, Rapanui uses a
      lightweight messaging protocol for

88 raspberrypi.org/magpi

An Echo Dot is also

connected so workers

can verbally ask the

robot to perform tasks

Connected to a Pi

receiving MQTT

data, it listens to the

instructions given to

Pam and attempts to

parallel-perform the

same task