Raspberry Pi Connect for Organizations - My First Experience

In this article I will share my initial experience on organizational capabilities of Raspberry Pi Connect Beta.

Raspberry Pi Connect is a new service developed by the Raspberry Pi team to enable remote access to Raspberry Pi devices. This service is particularly beneficial as it eliminates the need for configuring network settings, VPNs, or relying on third-party services, allowing secure and seamless remote access. For detailed instructions on setting up Raspberry Pi Connect, refer to their official documentation.

Recently, the Raspberry Pi team announced a new feature called Raspberry Pi Connect for Organizations (referred to as RPCO from here on) and invited developers to participate in beta testing. As I was intrigued by the opportunity, I joined the beta program to explore the feature firsthand. I had the chance to experience this new feature on October 18, 2024.

1. Switching to Organization View

The user interface has minor upgrade to change the organizational view. To switch from the personal view to the organizational view, click on the switch button represented by two arrows (Step 1), then select the registered organization name (Step 2). This action will switch to the organizational view, and a new tab named ‘Users’ will appear to the right of the ‘Devices’ tab for users with ‘Administrator’ roles (Step 3).

2. Access Management in RPCO

Currently, RPCO supports two roles: ‘Administrator’ and ‘Member’. To add members to an organization, a user with the Administrator role must invite others by sending an invitation to their email addresses. Invited users must have a Raspberry Pi ID associated with their email address in order to accept the invitation and join the organization.

Once users are added, the ‘Users’ page will display the list of members. Currently, administrators can change roles, remove users, and invite new members to the organization.

3. Overall Experience and What to Expect

My overall experience with RPCO has been very positive. The user interface is simple, and the design is consistent with similar services, which made navigation familiar and intuitive. I tested the service using a Raspberry Pi 4, and the shared user could access the device without any issues. Based on my experience with the current interface and internal information, here are some key takeaways:

1. Users can easily switch between personal and organizational environments.
2. A single user can be part of multiple organizations.
3. Users with the Administrator role can manage other users within the organization.
4. Major changes to the user interface in next few months.
5. There is an upcoming payment management portal.

According to Gordon Hollingworth, CTO Software at Raspberry Pi Ltd, the intended pricing structure for RPCO is as follows:

- $0.50 per device per month.
- $7 per TB TURN server bandwidth.

4. Final Thoughts

As RPCO is still in beta, there is room for additional features and improvements. I believe we may see the introduction of more user roles, such as ‘Owner’ or ‘Guest’, to allow for fine-grained access control. Considering that Raspberry Pi devices are generally not used for heavy computational workloads compared to GPU workstations, they may not add any feature for workload management. However, with the rapid growth of IoT and edge computing use cases, adding support for centralized monitoring and management of device performance metrics would be an impressive enhancement.

Finally, since the Raspberry Pi team is seeking feedback from collaborators during the beta period, I am eager to contribute suggestions to help improve this promising service. I would also love to hear your valuable feedback, so please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Thank you for taking the time to read my article!