How an edtech pro uses Raspberry Pis as thin clientsSkip to main content
ByBilly Hurley<br>June 29, 2026 • 4 min read
TOPICS: Hardware / End-User & Peripheral Hardware / Enterprise Hardware Strategy
At first glance, a computer at one of Explore Learning’s almost 100 tutoring facilities in the UK might look pretty normal: monitor, keyboard, and mouse.<br>But tucked behind each screen is a Raspberry Pi, a small single-board device often used by hobbyists for prototyping hardware projects.<br>Explore Learning’s facilities provide math and English education to students between 4- and 16-years-old, using the company’s browser-based “Compass” software, onsite computers, and an in-person tutor.<br>Daniel Hyatt, the tutoring company’s head of IT infrastructure, and his team have been using thin-client Raspberry Pis since about 2014; thin clients refer to low-cost, limited-capability, but centrally managed computers. By 2016, Hyatt said, they had Raspberry Pis running on close to 3,000 machines. Each Explore Learning site features up to 50 computers, all pulling from a single server’s virtual machine. Hyatt sees the approach as an efficient one for other companies to potentially adopt.<br>“If you don’t need a laptop to be able to move around with, then it feels like an absolute no-brainer, because it’s simple to manage, it’s cheap to run, it’s energy efficient,” he told us.<br>Recite Pi. A Raspberry Pi is a palm-size computer with options that include quadcore CPUs or 8 GB of RAM; the mini computers are a popular choice for hobbyists working on Internet of Things (IoT) devices or robots.<br>Each of Explore Learning’s onsite computers connects to a virtual machine running a Windows server. The Raspberry Pi-based thin clients have NComputing firmware that enables connection via Remote Desktop Protocol.
Computers set up in one of Explore Learning’s centers in the UK (Credit: Explore Learning).).
Why Pi? The thin-client choice thinned out the management footprint; the company and its mostly browser-based workloads didn’t need 30-plus quadcore-powered desktop PCs. Now, Hyatt’s team can update one site server and push updates to each connected endpoint—rather than send someone over to repair a desktop.<br>“From a management perspective, the beauty is we can remote into these servers. We’ve got one virtual machine, which runs all of the thin clients, so if there’s an update required, we go and update one computer, and all of them get the update immediately,” Hyatt said. “Being able to have a single device is what’s allowed us to keep the IT team relatively lean compared to the volume of devices that we actually maintain.”<br>Top insights for IT pros<br>From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.
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Hyatt sees energy efficiency advantages with the small-footprint devices, as well as security benefits. A thin client has nothing stored locally, he said, which could come in handy for government-specific or highly sensitive tasks.<br>“You can quite easily have the server locked away in an authorized-only room…and the devices will not work outside of the network,” Hyatt said, adding that his clients also have a “freeze state” that can be restored after a reboot, rejecting any previous changes from a user.<br>Raspberry Pi setups have their limitations. Streaming 4K video, using Photoshop, or playing a video game—capabilities Explore Learning doesn’t require, Hyatt said—would likely require a different and more powerful setup. Hyatt has also had instances where a student hogs bandwidth or opens a legacy application one too many times in a row, which can “sap a lot of resources”; such situations might require mitigation controls like quotas or application open limits.<br>Hyatt recommends his thin-client approach for other companies, especially those that don’t need laptops with a lot of processing power. He sees companies over-optimizing for occasional mobility, like moving over to the conference room—a scenario that “hot desks” with thin clients and individual employee profiles could solve.<br>Pi on the rise? While IDC’s Director of Consumer Devices Research Jitesh Ubrani has been hearing more organizations consider thin clients, given the rising prices of PCs, he considers Raspberry PI usage to be a niche application—one that requires configuration expertise, since the devices arrive without an operating system.<br>“With Raspberry Pi, in general, you can get a lot of your basic work done. They’re capable machines, they’re just not ideal for businesses, partly because of the maintenance and setup processes,” he said. “But also they lack the typical tools that many employees have come to expect when they work in a business.”<br>Ubrani can see, however, why businesses might want to get creative with Raspberry Pis as a memory crisis emerges. And so can Hyatt.<br>“With...