Red Pitaya launches new version of the “Raspberry Pi” of measurement gear

Red Pitaya, a leader in software-defined instrumentation, today launched its next-generation hardware which is akin to the “Raspberry Pi of measurement” gear.

Launched in 2013 by Slovenia’s Instrumentation Technologies, Red Pitaya is an open-source, affordable and measurement instrument platform. Red Pitaya has gained significant traction in research labs, including NASA and MIT, and in the industry for its compact size and open hardware. The company refers to the platform as a “Swiss Army Knife for engineers.”

The company announced STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2, a next-generation upgrade to its widely adopted test and measurement platform. Designed for engineers, researchers, and industrial developers, the new release enhances performance, connectivity, and modularity, reinforcing Red Pitaya’s role in advancing flexible, software-defined instrumentation.

The product uses a Xilinx FPGA and ADCs/DACs by Analog Devices, offering 125 MSPS with 14-bit resolution. Red Pitaya’s open-source nature has been a key to its success, enabling rapid innovation and attracting a community of 45,000 users, said Mateja Lampe Rupnik, CEO at Red Pitaya, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The company has doubled its revenue in four years and is preparing to launch a second-generation product now.

Red Pitaya’s technology is trusted by innovators like NASA, Apple, Meta, Neuralink, Toyota, Volvo, and Nokia, and is used by over 400 universities and schools worldwide. With 40,000 customers, Red Pitaya has established itself as a go-to platform for precision engineering. The company builds high-performance computing solutions designed to be versatile, scalable, and easy to use, making them valuable for both advanced industrial applications and educational environments.

This next-generation series enhances performance and reliability while maintaining complete backward compatibility, ensuring a smooth transition for existing users. With improved features such as enhanced RF input performance, USB-C connectivity, and a compact design, the Gen 2 series is designed to facilitate signal acquisition, generation, and processing across various applications.

Whether used in educational settings for hands-on learning or in professional industrial or scientific environments for complex testing and measurement tasks, the Gen 2 series empowers users with the tools they need to innovate and excel in their respective fields.

“Engineers need adaptable, modular platforms that evolve with technology,” said Lampe Rupnik. “With STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2, we are delivering a more powerful system that meets industrial-grade performance requirements while staying true to our vision of flexible, software-defined instrumentation.”

The Gen 2 series comprises three distinct models: the STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2, the STEMlab 125-14 Pro Gen 2, and the STEMlab 125-14 Pro Z7020 Gen 2. All offer enhanced RF input performance with reduced noise, cross-talk, and distortions, an improved output voltage range of ±1 V at 50 Ω and ±2 V at high impedance, and modern USB-C connectivity.

STEMlab 125-14 Pro Gen 2 is tailored for demanding applications in industrial environments. It features an E3 connector that provides more reliable booting options (QSPI, eMMC), an onboard external clock selector for precise timing control, and multi-channel synchronization through USB C connectors.

Finally, the STEMlab 125-14 Pro Z7020 Gen 2 is engineered for the most intensive industrial and scientific tasks; it boasts double the DDR memory (1 GB) for longer capture times, a significantly larger FPGA (Z7020) for enhanced processing capabilities, additional GPIOs on E1 for expanded functionality, E3 connector that provides more reliable booting options (QSPI, eMMC) and eight more high-speed differential pairs.

This model is particularly suited for cutting-edge applications such as quantum computing experiments, photonic technologies, medical imaging advancements, space applications, and sophisticated OEM solutions.

Red Pitaya is also working with Texas Instruments to develop a low-latency board optimized for real-time control systems, radar, and LiDAR applications. More details on this partnership will be announced later this year.

“With the Gen 2 lineup, we are transforming the landscape of modular, software-defined instrumentation,” added Črt Valentinčič, CTO of Red Pitaya, in a statement. “By working closely with industry leaders and proactive engagement with our growing user community, we are providing innovative solutions specifically designed for industrial needs. Our offerings boast superior performance, enhanced reliability, and alignment with the latest technological advancements.”

Red Pitaya’s modular approach allows developers to customize, scale, and integrate STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2 across diverse industries, from research labs to industrial automation. As demand for flexible, software-defined instrumentation grows, Red Pitaya continues to push the boundaries of performance and accessibility in precision engineering.

The STEMlab 125-14 Gen 2 series will be showcased at Embedded World 2025 in Nuremberg, Germany, where Red Pitaya will demonstrate its capabilities in live engineering use cases. Lampe Rupnik likes to think of Arduino and Raspberry Pi as kindred technologies as all were developed in Europe.

Origins

Lampe Rupnik said the story started in 2013 with a Slovenian company called Instrumentation Technologies, which made measurement instruments for particle accelerators. The owner at the time decided that growth was flat and the market was too much of a niche. So he gathered some engineers and they came up with the idea of Red Pitaya.

Valentinčič, the CTO, came up with the name, Red Pitaya, which is a tropical fruit and kind of a twist on the fruity name Raspberry Pi.

“It’s like a dragon fruit, and it’s an exotic kind of name,” Valentinčič said.

They designed a credit-card sized, affordable open source port that enables engineers to get measurement instruments from oscilloscopes, signal generators, body analyzers and so on. This board enabled the specialized instruments to become software-defined hardware. If you connect it to a smartphone or laptop, you can use a browser to reach a lot of apps for it.

Since it is open source, and it can be programmed to whatever is needed, it’s also a very powerful tool for research, Lampe Rupnik said. Lampe Rupnik has been with Red Pitaya for about 15 years, starting as a supply chain manager at Instrumentation Technologies. During the lockdowns of 2020, she took over as CEO.

“It was during COVID, so it was really challenging to start managing a team in a remote way,” Lampe Rupnik said.

The company grew from two people to 12 now. The logistics team is outsourced so there are about 30 people involved now. The forum has about 15,000 members.

“Today we are present on all major research labs, from NASA to MIT to Cal Tech,” said Lampe Rupnik. “Professors love this product. During COVID, they were able to run all the labs remotely or from students homes. The board fits in a pocket. We become a component in a bigger system.”

And the product is now available across the globe. NASA built a prototype of an instrument that measures the quality of air with Red Pitaya. Oklahoma University’s physics department built a radiation detector and sent it to space on a Space X rocket.

“We are very agile organization. It’s a very nice group of engineers serving the big physics lab for 25 years. That’s a lot of knowledge,” Lampe Rupnik said.

How it works

The board has two inputs and two outputs. The brain of the of the board is based on AMD Xilinx field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

It can handle 125 mega samples per second, and it has a 14-bit resolution for the basic version. The basic version costs about $400, and for that you get a very powerful tool, Lampe Rupnik said. There’s also a version with four inputs.

“This is something that was demanded by our customers, especially by the research labs, so we issued that version,” she said. “And then we have more compact one for for industry, which can do 250 mega samples per second, for industrial applications.”

Now the new device is debuting at Embedded World in Nuremburg, Germany. The second-generation product is a 14-bit version of Red Pitaya build on newer chips. It has the same basic architecture, but the features are getting better.

“This second generation was really built in cooperation with our industry partners,” Lampe Rupnik said.

The devices can be targeted to a variety of technologies, quantum photonics, nuclear medical devices, and other emerging technologies like a laser-based system for continuous gas leakage detection.

“I think open source has a great future as people are fed up with proprietary architectures,” Lampe Rupnik said.