Raspberry Pi Gertboard In Action 191
An anonymous reader writes with news from Geek.com on an expansion board for the Raspberry Pi. Quoting: "In the middle of December last year the Raspberry Pi Foundation made a surprising announcement that not only would we see the $25 PC released in 2012, it would also be getting an expansion board ... called the Gertboard, and is being developed by Broadcom employee Gert van Loo in his spare time. When completed, it will allow Raspberry Pi owners to play around with flashing LEDs, electric motors, and a range of different sensors. It effectively takes the $25 Raspberry Pi beyond just being a very cheap PC. There's a video of the Gertboard already working which demonstrates the 12 LEDs being lit up and the board powering an electric motor more than capable of lifting something like your garage door."
Re:Raspberry Blob (Score:5, Informative)
Plug it into your tv or ancient flatscreen. Wifi signal your video feed over the air for 25usd and some coding.
I think your imagination is useless.
Re:Unsure about the gert... (Score:5, Informative)
Arduino doesn't run Linux.
This is more similar to a BeagleBone prototype cape - except with the Gertboard don't expect to be able to use any features in the chip that aren't put into the kernel by Eben and Gert. Unlike the CPU in the Arduino (ATMegaXX8) and the CPU in the BeagleBone (TI AM335x), the technical reference manual for the Broadcom chip in the Pi is completely unavailable. If support for anything is left out of the kernel, whether intentionally or simply due to lack of time, you will not be able to implement it yourself. If support for anything is broken in the kernel, you will have to live with it due to lack of documentation and the fact that Broadcom never comments their damn kernel code for anything. (Look at the BCM4330 driver for mobile devices as an example - if it misbehaves, you're screwed.)
Re:Through-hole (Score:4, Informative)
Soldering a 1.27mm pitch SMT component is really easy, it takes about the same amount of time as a DIP component, and is much, much, smaller.
No.
Perhaps to a seasoned EE or hobbyist who gets his hands dirty on a daily basis, but otherwise, no.
The best way to turn the Raspberry Pi to shit (apart from its name - "Acorn", the obvious predecessor to this whole project, sounded much better) would be to set the bar at a level which assumes you already know what you're doing before you've even started.
Re:Quit yer yapping and start producing! (Score:5, Informative)
It IS in production, it just hasn't come out of the production pipeline yet. The working beta boards (with a hand-applied last-minute fix) are being auctioned off, proceeds for the charity recipients for which Raspberry Pi was created: making classroom computing happen.
I will be happy to buy a bunch when they're available too, but let's watch the development. As for Tesla, did you buy the Roadster, seeing as how it's been available in showrooms for some time now?
Re:Through-hole (Score:5, Informative)
Who are these people who keep on insisting on using through-hole components? That board could easily be the same size as the Raspberry-pi board itself simply by using SOIC packages as opposed to DIP for all of the ICs. Soldering a 1.27mm pitch SMT component is really easy, it takes about the same amount of time as a DIP component, and is much, much, smaller.
Its a meme that just won't die. As a guy who's been doing SMD at home on and off since the 80s for ham radio microwave gear, it gets tiring hearing for about three decades that what I find easy to do and enjoyable is "impossible" and will be the "death of homebrewing" and all that rot. Its right up there with "PL-259s are impossible to install" and "power poles are impossible to install", you only hear about it over and over from the 0.1% of the population who really can't do it.
I'm willing to bet there are some very young hardware hackers on /. right now emulating their elders by rambling about how impossible it is to do SMD at home, despite my experience doing it for years before they were born.
Re:Unsure about the gert... (Score:4, Informative)
R pi + Gertboard
or
R pi + Arduino
Both would be developed on the host linux PC, but Arduino is already rather mature and well supported, and connects via USB with no soldering to your shiny new Raspberry pi. What's the gertboard bringing to the table in addition to what the arduino does already?
Better Boards From Open Source Friendly Devs (Score:0, Informative)
These boards are only a few weeks away, far more powerful, low priced and have nothing to do with broadcommm
http://rhombus-tech.net/ [rhombus-tech.net]
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA [elinux.org]
Re:Unsure about the gert... (Score:5, Informative)
There are some aspects that are redundant but there is a lot more that is not. Here are some major differences:
Arduinos do not run Linux. Their code is written in Assembly, C or C++ but WITHOUT the STL. There is no OS or kernel. It's pure monolithic code running on a Atmel Atmega328, ATmega2560 or similar processor. They support Analog I/O, Digital I/O, I2C, SPI, 1-wire, EEPROM, Serial communication via digital i/o lines or Serial over USB, typical 16Mhz clock speed and 8k of RAM, 32-256K of program storage. It probably uses slightly less power than the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi do run Linux. Their code is written in any language supported by an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU with a Linux kernel such as Assembly, C, C++ with STL, Python, Perl, etc. There is a OS such as Debian, Arch with more to follow and a Linux kernel. Code written is traditional Linux code running in a multi-tasking system such as Linux provides. It's run on an ARM 1176JZF-S CPU. They support Digital I/O I2C, SPI, Serial communication via digital i/o (gpio) lines, SD card support, composite video out, HDMI video out, RCA audio out. 700Mhz clock speed, 128-256MB of RAM, 1-32GB of program storage (depending of SD card size).
Unlike the Raspberry Pi, the Arduino cannot be developed on by itself. It requires another computer running Linux, OS X or Windows in order to develop on them.
The Gertboard is more akin to what an Arduino shield is for an Arduino. It's just something you plug into a Raspberry Pi to provide access to more of the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi's SOC and it has some convenience functionality like LEDs built-in. Like an Arduino shield, it's optional. You can still use GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi without it.
Re:Through-hole (Score:5, Informative)
*disclaimer* I work for Broadcom in the team that did 2835, however I am not involved with the Pi, so posted anon to not to be accused of karma-ing
Reasons For through hole:
1) Hobbyists aren't scared of them - some are scared of SMT (and some SMT is used on Gertboard)
2) Requires less skilled soldering - yes a skilled solderer can do smt with ease, but half the point of this project is that it should be unintimidating to everyone.
3) More mechanically sturdy. Useful for many hobby projects
The Pi mainboard got in trouble for being none through-hole, and not available as a kit of parts, now Gertboard is in trouble for being exactly that.
*sigh* this is why we can't have nice things.
Re:Neat! (Score:4, Informative)
Model B owners using networking and high-current USB peripherals will require a supply which can source 700mA (many phone chargers meet this requirement). Model A owners with powered USB devices will be able to get away with a much lower current capacity (300mA feels like a reasonable safety margin).
Re:Hardware folk shouldn't write code (Score:4, Informative)
Python makes everything cleaner.
# Make the 17 GPIO file systems & set them to output mode
for g in gpiotbl:
with open('/sys/class/gpio/export', 'w') as fout:
print >> fout, "%d" % g
with open('/sys/class/gpio%d/direction' % g, 'w') as fout:
print >> fout, "out"
# light effect on buffers
for rep in xrange(5):
for g in gpiotbl[:12]:
with open('/sys/class/gpio/gpio%d/value' % g, 'w') as fout:
print >> fout, "1"
sleep(TIME)
for g in gpiotbl[:12]:
with open('/sys/class/gpio/gpio%d/value' % g, 'w') as fout:
print >> fout, "0"
sleep(TIME)
test_motor()
test_motor()
sys.exit(0)
Re:Neat! (Score:4, Informative)
I used to be an electrician, but then I took an arrow to the knee. Just kidding, a bone tumor broke off, caused an false aneurism, and doctors played copay ping pong with me for a month. I was left unable to work due to nerve damage.
But before that, I used to work with 14 gauge wire, 12 gauge wire, and 10 gauge wire. It is significantly harder to route 10 gauge wire. Even more so if you already have insulation and drywall up. Perhaps things will be different with the 10 gauge equivalent graphene wire gets mass produced at a reasonable price, but until that day you'll need to accept that electricians will charge you extra for the inconvenience of having to deal with 10 gauge when 12 gauge probably more than met the hot tub's requirements.
model-A is damn close to 1 watt Re:Neat! (Score:4, Informative)
While the gp will have to account for the efficiency of their power supply as well, I'm pretty impressed w/the rPi. It looks really cool. Here is a nice nice overview [raspberrypi.org], the power-suppy section links to the parent's "archives/260" reference.
From http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/260 [raspberrypi.org] Model B owners using networking and high-current USB peripherals will require a supply which can source 700mA (many phone chargers meet this requirement). Model A owners with powered USB devices will be able to get away with a much lower current capacity (300mA feels like a reasonable safety margin).
Re:Neat! (Score:5, Informative)
Arduino programming language (Processing) is very similar to Python or interpreted C.
No, arduino programming is NOT very similar to python at all. Its not even close.
Arduino's native programming languages are C, C++ (with some limitations), and AVR assembler. That's it. The confusion comes from the fact Arduino purposely attempts to obscufate the fact you are using realatively low level languages behind a nice, high level API. None of these are close to python.
When I first started using Arduinos, it took me a week before I figured out the imaginary "script language" everyone talks about, which I could never seem to find, doesn't actually exist. Its completely imaginary. Its 100% marketing and obscufation for C and C++.
Re:Please get it through your heads!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Agree 100%, the overlap is tiny.
The Pi has a keyboard, video output and a lot more CPU power. It will be used for projects where that's important.
The Arduino does hobby electronics much better/easier/cheaper than the Pi.
Alternate AVR Runtime (Score:3, Informative)