Raspberry pi anyone?

RobertP

RobertP

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A bit too much geek for me but a £20 ish computer might appeal to some.

Likely to be going on sale at 6am tomorrow morning.

Homepage
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

What it is
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

An Arm chip based computer board with pentium 2 300meg level processing and xbox 1 level graphics according to the FAQ.

:)
 
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I'd probably get one to mess about with (y)

I would also go for the model B, with the ethernet ports
 
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I'd like to get hold of one but both of the distributor websites are overwhelmed with the web traffic :(

Dave
 
Way to DDoS Radio Spares and Farnell :D. Hopefully no-one wants to order any electronic components today!

I had one in my basket on farnell at 6.01 this morning, then the site vanished and that was the last I saw of it.

Wonder how often RS and Farnell show in the top 5 worldwide on tweeter?
 
Talk about "Back to the Future"!

Something very similar to this was on sale in (I believe) the early 80s.

A single board with a hex LED display and about 256 BYTES of RAM.

All programming done by either toggle switches or a small hex keypad.

A row of LED lights showed what was going on.

It may have been made by Sinclair (Clive).

Anyone else remember it?

.
 
petersmart said:
Talk about "Back to the Future"!

Something very similar to this was on sale in (I believe) the early 80s.

A single board with a hex LED display and about 256 BYTES of RAM.

All programming done by either toggle switches or a small hex keypad.

A row of LED lights showed what was going on.

It may have been made by Sinclair (Clive).

Anyone else remember it?

.
Click to expand...


Are you talking about the Tandy TRS80? Or the Altair 8800?
 
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Rob 80386 said:
Are you talking about the Tandy TRS80? Or the Altair 8080?
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No it was literally like the pi, just a minimal single board with a very minimal system, no enclosures or anything.

You could only put in machine code.

.
 
RobertP said:
A bit too much geek for me but a £20 ish 'computer' might appeal to some.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure why you put 'computer' in quotes. It is a computer.

I want one to replace my mail server, which is currently a P3/667 running debian. One of these would do just as well and consume a lot less electricity. The idea of using one as a media box appeals as well.

For learning use, given that the permenant storage is a memory card there are no worries about screwing things up and making it unbootable. If that happens just wipe the card, put a new ISO of the OS on to it and start again. Not like Windows (or OSX) when recovering from a borked OS is a lengthy process. Also, compared to an ordinary PC to run Windows, or an Apple PC to run OSX, they are VERY cheap.

By learning I mean "learning about computers and programming" rather than "learning how to use PowerPoint".
 
Tori_T said:
Ah. :thinking:
Are you thinking of the MK14?
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Similar but not quite - and a lot smaller - the board looked very similar to the pi.

It was advertised in Practical Electronics probably about the same time as the MK14.

.
 
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I've registered my interest at both websites, having missed the boat on preordering one
 
I nearly went for the 'Dingle Berry' but someone told me it was mostly shi.e...
 
Does it come with custard or ice cream?
 
If there's pie, there has to be custard...!! So I'll pass. On the other hand, I'm not sure what real use the RP is TBH... Novelty yes but not sure what else it will do really...
 
arad85 said:
If there's pie, there has to be custard...!! So I'll pass. On the other hand, I'm not sure what real use the RP is TBH... Novelty yes but not sure what else it will do really...
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I can think of 101 uses for it, however saying that, about 50.5 of those can be achieved with an AVR and a breakout board

:)
 
People have used similar boards to make semi-autonomous UAVs, for one.
 
Rob 80386 said:
I've registered my interest at both websites, having missed the boat on preordering one
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Me to I'm sure it won't be too long owing to the huge demand.
 
Apologies.. I didn't realise it has programmable PIOs. It's a glorified Arduino with built in GPU that can do video then... I'm sure it'll keep people busy :)
 
one my uses would be for a model lift with doors, as a controller
 
I have no real use for one but somehow I want one anyway as it is only £20 and you can plug it into a tv!
 
petersmart said:
Talk about "Back to the Future"!

Something very similar to this was on sale in (I believe) the early 80s.

A single board with a hex LED display and about 256 BYTES of RAM.

All programming done by either toggle switches or a small hex keypad.

A row of LED lights showed what was going on.

It may have been made by Sinclair (Clive).

Anyone else remember it?

.
Click to expand...

Science of Cambribge MK14 is one you may be thinking of.

SoC was one of Sinclair's companies that evolved into Sinclair research - I think the MK14 was designed by Chris Curry (before he left to co-found Acorn)

I managed to persuade my parents to buy me one for XMas - either '77 or '78. It's currently sat on the shelf in my study, though it is long dead....

Dave
 
Primary use for me is as an XBMC front end. Power it off the TV's USB, use a pass-through 500mb powerline ethernet...done.

Then when stock comes back I will get a bunch of them and build a grid computing cluster/web server farm.....for learning purposes..and just because I can :p
 
mid_gen said:
Primary use for me is as an XBMC front end. Power it off the TV's USB, use a pass-through 500mb powerline ethernet...done.
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I'm yet to be convinced of that... Typically with these embedded chips, you need to pay royalties to the codec manufacturers to enable the codecs. Not sure the Pi has enough grunt to run - for example - DTS decode in software. I'm sure a DTS decoder is available for it, but licensing it may be an issue (I work for a competitor company to Broadcom in the set-top box marketplace so I'm quite familiar with how this side of things work).

Having said that, if it does prove to be seamless for xbmc, it's an interesting proposition...
 
mid_gen said:
Primary use for me is as an XBMC front end. Power it off the TV's USB, use a pass-through 500mb powerline ethernet...done.

Then when stock comes back I will get a bunch of them and build a grid computing cluster/web server farm.....for learning purposes..and just because I can :p
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Funny, I was thinking of making a cluster with several of those :)

My daughter (9) actually asked me for one, she has some project ideas games and an app she was drawing out the other day. Got to help and stimulate it when they have the interest.
 
I'm after a B model for a bit of fun, at £22 what harm will it do.

Let the hardcore enthusiasts get their grubby mitts on it and I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before sites like XDA developers etc have threads offering pre built flashable software for those who can't/won't create their own programs.
 
RS have replied to my request and will be sending more info when the boards come in soon :)
 
I'm still waiting to hear from them but the way the websites for RS and CPC were being hammered I expect they have one or two emails to answer before they get to mine.
 
arad85 said:
I'm yet to be convinced of that... Typically with these embedded chips, you need to pay royalties to the codec manufacturers to enable the codecs. Not sure the Pi has enough grunt to run - for example - DTS decode in software. I'm sure a DTS decoder is available for it, but licensing it may be an issue (I work for a competitor company to Broadcom in the set-top box marketplace so I'm quite familiar with how this side of things work).

Having said that, if it does prove to be seamless for xbmc, it's an interesting proposition...
Click to expand...

I believe that H.264 is handled with the video hardware acceleration, but it's the only codec that is, so if using it for XBMC you may get stutter on other codecs such as divx, xvid, etc on the ARM processor. Haven't seen any reviews on this side of things yet though.
I believe that the XBMC community has already produced a build compatible with the Raspberry Pi so as soon as I get mine I'll have a play!
I'll be interested to see how it does with other codecs and for £25 you can't really complain!
Regards
Jim
 
I've just ordered mine with Farnell element14, they also emailed me (y)
 
Ordered one. Seems I'll not get it until end of April.
 
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