Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled 161
First time accepted submitter anwe79 writes "Those of you who have been wishing for a Raspberry Pi this Christmas will sadly not get your wish granted. However, you may be happy to hear that populated beta boards have now been produced. Beta of course means the boards still have some more testing to undergo. But, if all goes well, those inclined should be able to get their hands on production boards in January!"
Arduino, anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you've brought up a very good point: Are there *already* "mature" products that do these things? The Arduino product line comes to mind. There is MUCH to like about Raspberry Pi, but little chance we'll ever see these things marketed for a reasonable *hobby* price. Prototyping something and saying the parts cost xyz does not really address realistic cost of the infrastructure necessary to actually source, manufacture, and yes, *market* something like this, which in all reality is very niche.
And, Arduino already exists in this market. This is not a troll: What does Raspberry Pi expect to do that something in the Arduino line does not? What are Raspberry Pi's close "competitors" in terms of expected use similarity? And, is there room for more than one or two competing products in this niche?
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a full blown Linux box, unlike Arduino. I'm planning on hooking up a small USB-SP/DIF board [minidsp.com]. With a USB wifi adapter and web interface controlled by my phone, I'll have a cheap, pocket sized, remote controlled "bit bucket" for my concert recording hobby. I doubt you can do that with Arduino, or at least not without major hacking.
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Rapeberry PI does not appear to be positioned as an Arduino competitor, but rather as an accessible (monetarily) computer. Please explain how the Arduino is even remotely positioned as an accessible computing platform.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/arduino-arm-products/
96 MHz, 256KB RAM... fast, but have fun trying to run any software a typical consumer would be willing and able to use...
Now if it had 640KB RAM, well now.. that ought to be...nvm
Re:no mounting holes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Design flaw? (Score:5, Informative)
What the heck is the attraction of these stupid mini and micro USB connectors anyway?
The Raspberry heads stated that they wanted to be compatible with cheap phone chargers...
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Bullcrap, why don't you go and watch the video of it being demo on their website. It's running an ARM version of ubuntu.
Re:Design flaw? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I cant wait to taste that pi (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps you missed it, but Broadcom is selling them the silicon by tacking it on to larger production runs, so they've got as much as they want at quantity pricing.
They've already bought the other parts so sourcing isn't a problem(for the first 10k anyway).
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/302 [raspberrypi.org]
And clearly they've got the marketing down, otherwise you wouldn't be discussing it:)
Re:Reality is coming (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I cant wait to taste that pi (Score:4, Informative)
It *is* making "good progress". But where these types of projects usually hang up is when they finally get to the stage where they need to put together the infrastructure to source parts, manufacture, and market the *product*. At this point, they generally realize that they just don't have the organization and resources necessary, and the sub-$100 price point is out-the-window unrealistic for the volume they can realistically project to move...
I think Raspberry Pi's price goal is pretty ambitious but at the same time it's not outrageous. It's basically running the same parts you'd find in any cheap ass media player. You can pick up media players for less than $100 and if you cut out the case, packaging, power supply, application software, optional software licences (e.g. AC3, Dolby), reseller margins, and just ship the barebones product you could do it for the price they're proposing. Or if not exactly then not far off it.
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I'm lucky enough to have a Raspberry Pi alpha board. And it basically can do the same stuff (albeit a bit slower, except the 1080p30 encode!) than my Linux desktop.
Runs LXDE, Midori via a USB wireless adapter, USB keyboard and mouse etc. Have run various X apps. Plays back 1080p30 video, runs Quake at 1080p at around 30fps.
Using Debian. Ubuntu isn't supported - they don't have Armv6 anymore.
I personally think it will be very good at its intended purpose.
Re:Bending USB the spec? (Score:2, Informative)
The charging specification does not require enumeration.
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs
Battery Charging Specification, Revision 1.2
Section 1.4.7
Try to keep up.
Re:Arduino, anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Except it brings out eight 3.3v unbuffered GPIOs, TX/RX and a full SPI bus(which you could use as more GPIO).
Somebody has already built an expansion board to provide buffering, plus a bunch of SPI expansion chips.