Raspberry Pi Reviewed, With an Initial Setup Guide 188
jjslash writes "It has been six years in the making, with the original goal of the project intending to reignite computer programming in schools across the country. Despite those honorable intentions, the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer has captured the imagination of programmers, consumers and tinkerers alike, resulting in unprecedented demand for the product. Last month the first 10,000 credit-card sized computers were set to make their way to those who pre-ordered them back in February. TechSpot takes a look at the Pi Model B, covering the basic steps for setting up the computer, as well as basic post-installation tasks those first using it might encounter."
I'm still waiting (Score:2)
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I just got an update email, week of june 29th. It may be nearly half a year after I ordered, but damn it'll be cool to play with finally.
I was too (Score:4, Interesting)
Then by accident I found the rtl-sdr software radio project. Long story short is that a $20 USB dongle designed for receiving digital TV can also be used as a wideband receiver from 64Mhz to over 1.6GHz. Yes it works on Linux too.
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I opened up a nearly-free Pinnacle USB/1394 video capture device and found an FPGA, but I can't find anything more useful to do with it than throw it away...
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TFA is wrong in saying "When the first 10,000 devices shipped in mid-April", Only around 1500 devices were shipped in April I believe, with another 8000 going out during May. This is because the ethernet jack had to be replaced by hand on all 10,000 initial boards which takes a lot of man-hours (more likely woman-hours) to do, and so was done in 2 stages.
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I should be getting mine next week, as are alot of other people, and I pre-ordered mine on the morning of day one (after much wrestling with Farnell's ordering system breaking under the massive load :D).
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you can buy an entire computer for less than a license for the Windows operating system.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Now you can buy an entire computer for less than a license for the Windows operating system.
You've been able to do that since the turn of the century. Here's the sad part: Long after every computer that can run any of the windows operating systems to date have been put in landfills or as non-working museum exhibits, and everyone who reads this today is dead -- it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
And well it should be. Friends don't do things like that to friends.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
You've been able to do that since the turn of the century. Here's the sad part: Long after every computer that can run any of the windows operating systems to date have been put in landfills or as non-working museum exhibits, and everyone who reads this today is dead -- it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend if you live in the USA .
In Finland, and most other countries in Europe (all countries in Europe?) when you buy software, you own it. You can resell it or give it away as a gift, and Microsoft can do fuck-all about it.
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In Finland, and most other countries in Europe (all countries in Europe?)...
In Italy any modification and reverse engineering of the software to improve its functionality is explicitly allowed by law, as long as you own a license for it.
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...it'll still be illegal to give it to a friend
Also, I should think, impossible... unless there is some other definition for friend of which I am unaware.
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now? I gave away a 800mhz P3 with 512 megs of ram 3 years ago, sure its not a credit card, but it was a pizza box
just cause you make it small does not mean its the only thing available
(ps waiting on my pi)
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Windows CE: $5
Windows XP Embedded: $40
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
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They can usually run Windows XP just fine, and they're quite able to handle Linux.
I'd switch "Windows XP" and "Linux" around in that quote, for two reasons:
1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended.
Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.
2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linu
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2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linux drivers. (And when they do, depending on the hardware and type, they sometimes won't work as just generic .ko modules, but need special hooks in the kernel, see #1) You have to do your homework to know you get hardware you can fully use under Linux.
While it's true you still have to do some homework, driver support is something that actually has improved tremendously for Linux over the past 10 years. :)
Making installing third party drivers easier can improve the situation even more. It would be fantastic if you could just double-click some driver package, enter sudo credentials, and that's it.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended.
Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.
You'd be wrong on that point. My system boots up to 80MB of RAM used (full graphical desktop, with several applications open in the tray, using a 3.0 kernel. There is a newer kernel available in the distro, but I don't see the point in upgrading yet, as there's no new support for my hardware), and even now, with Chromium open and a dozen tabs, it's peaking at 236MB of memory actually used. If I was actually trying to pare down the memory usage, this particular distro (which is quite modern) can boot up to less than 40MB of memory in use, simply by disabling CUPS at startup, using a lighter weight browser, and getting rid of a few of the widgets in e17. The minimum spec for this distro is 128MB of memory recommended (but it'll install in 64MB if you don't mind having a swap partition), and a 300MHz processor.
It's not the kernel that uses so much memory in mainstream distros, it's the desktop environment. KDE in particular is a beast, but Gnome3 isn't that great, either.
Also, Windows XP recommends 64MB minimum memory in the same way that Vista recommended 1GB minimum memory: It'll run, but if you're planning on doing more than one thing at a time, you'd better hope most of them are editing a text file in notepad.
2: The good old problem with hardware support. All old desktops will have XP drivers, but the same can't be said for Linux drivers. (And when they do, depending on the hardware and type, they sometimes won't work as just generic .ko modules, but need special hooks in the kernel, see #1) You have to do your homework to know you get hardware you can fully use under Linux.
That's weird. It's weird because every old computer I've tried installing on, including an ancient Dell laptop (a Latitude LS from ~1999) as recently as yesterday, everything "just worked". No need to install graphics drivers, audio drivers, special hooks, or anything. Even the Prism2-based PCMCIA wireless card worked out of the box. And e17 absolutely flies, even with full screen OpenGL compositing enabled, on the 800MHz P-III with 256MB of RAM.
I still haven't had a single machine where everything Just Worked, and I've lost count of how many dozen Linux installations I've done over the years. The closest I have gotten is the current "Dell Optiplex n" machine at work, but even there, the front panel audio detection doesn't work. You'd think that their "n" line which is sold with no OS (ok, with FreeDOS) would have full hardware/driver support in non-Windows, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I suspect they really sell them for a market of pirates that run illegal copies of Windows, plus a few MS Select customers who do their own licensing.
And yet, here I am typing this on a Vostro v130n, which came with Ubuntu LTS preinstalled, where again, everything "just works". It's been a *very* long time since I've had to fiddle with drivers on a Linux installation, and it's almost always because I want better performance out of a video card.
Of course, all of this is missing an extremely important point, which is that the OP was talking about *new* computers, not something you got 2nd hand from a thrift store. I plan to buy one of these myself, once I see some reviews of XBMC decoding performance. I can power it from the USB plug on my TV, and connect it by HDMI to the TV. Plug it in to the ethernet then point it at my network fileserver, and it's a perfect silent HTPC.
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Does your system come with a dedicated video card, or use main memory?
A relative recently gifted me a 2nd hand computer that despite my best efforts, choked on Xubuntu with 512MB (I already had installed on a usb drive). That's just with synaptic and firefox running, with swapping. Further, it suffered from an annoying intel driver bug (diagnosed but not fixed upstream) that scrambled text on screen when shared memory ran low powering a 1080p display.
I could have paired it down somewhat but I got a good dea
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Does your system come with a dedicated video card, or use main memory?
The Vostro V130n has a Sandy Bridge processor, and is using the integrated Intel graphics with shared system memory. I've never had any problems using external display on it, but it's also a much newer system than you are talking about, as it came with 2GB of memory from the factory. I'd have to check the BIOS for how much memory is actually being used by the graphics.
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Pardon? There are still a lot of companies centered around using the Linux kernel in embedded space (albeit, in the smaller cases, with a very different userland -- ucLibc, busybox, etc). If it runs your $60 router and your $100 phone, last-decade's desktop is going to be fine... at least as far as the kernel is concerned.
Now, if you were tell
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Now, if you were telling me that the basic userland was getting bloated, I might believe you there
Did I say that it wasn't?
You seem to have misread "much of" as "most of" or even "all of".
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I'd switch "Windows XP" and "Linux" around in that quote, for two reasons:
1: Some modern distros require 768 MB RAM or more, and almost all of them are 256 MB+, while XP Home Edition is 64 MB required, 128 MB recommended. Much of this bloat is in the kernel, which even if built fully modular now has so many hooks and semi-optionals that you can't run a normal distro on minimal hardware.
I call bullshit on that. You seem to be saying unused/useless kernel *code* eats up your RAM, but vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-amd64 is 2.4MB on my system. That's compressed, so let's be generous and say 5MB in memory. Then I have some modules loaded: 6MB.
As for total memory used by the kernel, I don't know how to see that. Do you? Note that there's all this buffering going on.
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I call bullshit on that.
Try booting something like Fedora on a 64 MB system. Even to runlevel 3.
You seem to be saying unused/useless kernel *code* eats up your RAM,
No, that's not what I'm saying. Sure, it contributes, but it's a combination of code, data, tables and buffers.
As for total memory used by the kernel, I don't know how to see that. Do you?
A couple of pointers: /boot/System.map-$(uname -r)
The kernel itself:
# egrep "(T _text|A _end)"
ffffffff81000000 T _text
ffffffff81e64000 A _end
Unless I remember my hex all wrong, that's a bit over 14.5 MB.
Then the kernel allocation (slab): /sys/kernel/slab/*/slab_size | awk '{sum += $1} END {print "Sum: "sum}'
# cat
Sum: 160136
Gr
No ethernet (Score:2)
What did Larry say about Java on Pi? (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing new except... (Score:2)
There's really nothing in this writeup that hasen't already been covered in most of the articles that have been posted here on /.
Well nothing except some elitism from techspot:
from TFA "We assume you're on Windows or you probably wouldn't need this guide"
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Indeed, they forgot about Apple users!
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Not really. I'd expect a lot more Mac users know how to use a UNIX/Linux command line than Windows users, given that Mac OS X... you know... has one.
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Re:Nothing new except... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'll address your point and the GP's point in the same reply.
Cygwin is not part of the OS.
PowerShell is not a UNIX/Linux CLI; it is basically DOS, which while distantly related, behaves very differently, from the syntax for flags versus switches to the basic commands used to list the contents of directories.
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Are you easily hurst, or just celebrating political correctness?
If one writes a book for alfabetizing kids, he wouldn't recommend it for gratuate students, as he wouldn't recommend a book about the mathematical fundamentals of superstrings for those first kids.
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Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry, something Apple"
Want to have your product on Slashdot? Name it like a fruit!
But avoid bananas like hell, you know, the slashdotters and their crude sense of humor...
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Tomorrow on /.: "Something something Raspberry Pi, something Apple"
"Something hyped, something trite
something useless,something white"
When's the wedding?
Not credit card sized (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not really credit card sized. If it were it'd look like SELMA from Time Trax. It has two dimensions that correspond with a credit card, but it's a lot thicker. Not that I'm complaining, it's still amazingly small. I just think it's better described as "deck of cards sized" or "pack of cigarettes sized" or whatever.
the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the $35 ARM-based credit-card sized computer (Score:5, Informative)
"Despite"? (Score:2, Informative)
Alternatives? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Informative)
Depending on your definition of "functional", I believe some of the Arduinos, BASIC Stamps, and the similar are in that range. Of course, these will require custom programming and don't just drop into a self-hosting Linux environment, and don't have video out, but they are fully self-contained computing & IO devices.
While the RPi is pretty weak compared to the current ARM offerings, it does trounce the microcontroller range in computational capability, but its IO would require extra hardware (it's not buffered, etc) to do some real interfacing.
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Just wait a year or two longer.
Right now you can pick up this for around $60 http://www.ebay.com/itm/HTC-G1-T-Mobile-Black-Fair-Condition-/380435251569?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item5893b54171#ht_1342wt_1159 [ebay.com]
It has WiFi, BlueTooth, Camera, touchscreen, Keyboard, GPS, and compass. It also runs A version of Linux "Android" but you can use c for it. One wonders how long it would take to get a version Ubuntu or MeeGo running on it.
Another option would be the HTC HD2 but they are still over $200 but already run Win
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just out of curiosity, what functional (as opposed to ideological) alternatives to the Raspberry Pi are there in this price bracket?
None, I think. Only less functional (say, 8-bit microcontroller kit / Arduino stuff?), more expensive ones (like Beagleboard), or used / bulky / second hand gear.
Personally I like the Raspberry Pi a lot for its combination of cheap, small, brand new, and open-friendly. Biggest minus IMHO is that it's not 100% open due to lacking chipset documentation/drivers. Which limits what OS'es you can run or develop on it. Had such documentation been complete, this would be a perfect dev board for alternative OS experiments.
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sheevaplug is $99 (Score:2)
admittedly it does have a power supply and case and more memory...but no hardware floating point and no display adapter
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You can get the OpenRD, which is the bigger brother of the sheevaplug, it also lacks hardware floating point but it does have video and audio outputs.
It also has SATA so you can connect an internal hdd.
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I don't see any evidence that it's actually possible to purchase an OpenRD ultimate.
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I have two of them right here, newit.co.uk sells them although i'm not sure if they have any stock currently.
Early adopters. (Score:2)
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Hmmm, why don't you just put it in a case and add a power switch? If you can get it set up, I'm sure you can buy a case for $5, drill a few holes and solder the connections to a power switch :)
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If these things were readily available, I'd agree with you... but since they're not, drilling a few holes and adding a power switch shouldn't be all too hard :p
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Right. He said he was willing to wait. You sound like you can't believe that not everyone has drills, soldering irons, solder, Raspberry Pi cases and power switches lying around.
User friendliness? (Score:5, Insightful)
My 2c worth:
How about making it so that when it powers-up, it's ready to go, without having to set up a user account, etc... just create the image on the SD card, then have the Pi come up to a desktop environment with a few helpful links. One of them should be a user-friendly programming environment that's just a mouse-click away, containing a few useful and easily modified example programs. Make the language something better than BASIC, but just as easy-to-use/learn... "Think of the children".
Re:User friendliness? (Score:5, Interesting)
Screw the children. The raspberry sounds like a near perfect platform for a freedom box. [wikipedia.org] Imagine your own personal "facebook" server that knows how to find the personal servers of all your friends without actually relying on the "man in the middle attack" that is facebook itself.
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Yeah, and get 20 extra, because the advantage of Facebook is that random family & friends are likely to have an account, while you don't know a single person who has a freedom box. It's like being the only person on the block with a video phone.
Re:User friendliness? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:User friendliness? (Score:4, Interesting)
the advantage of Facebook is that random family & friends are likely to have an account, while you don't know a single person who has a freedom box.
Network effect. And for those who don't want an actual freedombox, let them run an instance in the cloud, it is still better than facebook's model of centralization for corporate stalking purposes. Amazon has tiers that are essentially free for personal use as long as you stay under cputime/diskspace/bandwidth limits.
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Yeah because people are going to give up the ease of setting up a facebook account with having to jump through ridiculous hoops to run a freedombox instance. Oh wait....
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It's not nearly powerful enough to do all of what they want to do. In order to achieve their goals they basically need to replace every personal service on the web. That would mean relocating a very large fraction of the processing power in the world to people's homes. You're not going to achieve that by putting a Raspberry Pi in every home.
The Raspberry Pi's biggest merits as an end-user computing device is small size, low power and low cost. It's not inconceivable to think that it might perhaps become the
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Its designed by linux fundies. Of course its going to be hard to use and non intuitive.
default user is "pi" (Score:3)
The guide adds in another username, but that isn't strictly necessary. I expect they had it come up into commandline mode by default to avoid starting X if it's not needed.
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Re:User friendliness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but provide a foolproof way to roll back to the factory image...
If education is the goal, the ability to experiment with the system safe in the knowledge that you can't permanently damage it is very important...
To give an example:
When i started with computers, i had a Sinclair Spectrum... This machine, and some of the subsequent systems i had provided me a FAR superior introduction to computers than todays windows boxes for a number of reasons.
1, this computer was mine and mine alone, my parents never used it and couldn't care less about it... i could experiment with it all i liked, by contrast had it been a shared family computer i would be scared of breaking it for fear of angering my parents and siblings.
2, the computer came with a manual clearly laying out that whatever you do you can't break the machine via software, if you made it crash worse case you just hit reset and your back at the original basic prompt as if nothing had happened. by contrast, a windows system is very easy to break and could be quite complex, time consuming and expensive to fix afterwards. Knowing that you can't permanently break the system and that worst case you can perform a trivial reset procedure is VERY important, as it gives you (especially as a child) confidence to experiment with the system, and experimentation is the best way to learn.
3, the computer came with a manual that gave programming examples and encouraged you to try things out, again safe in the knowledge that you couldn't break it... by contrast, windows actively discourages users from messing with the system, certain files are hidden by default, certain locations on the filesystem are considered off limits and display a warning (which is quite scary to inexperienced users) when you try to access them...
4, the computer came with a built in programming language that was readily accessible and oriented at beginners and also came with lots of examples, providing a good way to ease people into it, i don't think windows even includes qbasic anymore and even when it did it was well hidden.. instead you have a few scripting languages that are not beginner friendly, are not located where a novice will find them and are not documented in the supplied paperwork...
5, you got a paper manual... sure i would usually advocate electronic manuals because they are more environmentally friendly, searchable and easier to update.. BUT, for a novice having an electronic manual is a stumbling block - with zero computer knowledge, how will they know how to view the electronic manual?
Hopefully if properly marketed and distributed, the raspberry pi can replicate much of what made the earlier computers so accessible to youngsters, and teach people to experiment with computers rather than to be fearful of them.
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I don 't think there is any kind of factory image or onboard flash storage, just whatever image you download and load onto an SD card.
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Very well said, Bert64. You've perfectly delineated what I was trying to say, but with much better detail. Thank you!
Hopefully, someone involved with the Pi will read your comments, and "make it so!"
Ideally, a pre-programmed SD card should also be available, so one need only buy it, connect it, and power it up to see a window on the desktop with:
READY.
_
(Or some other such prompt!)
As someone else pointed out, make a default, hard-coded, "ROM"-based OS for the Pi, which cannot be "broken" by inexperienced use
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PHP is so inconsistent it hurts. So error-prone it makes Windows look perfect. No, learning quirks is not how you learn languages. Just a shame so many people use it because "yeeaaah open souuurce!"
Another reason is probably that you can learn PHP quite easily and get results fast.
<?php print("Hello world!"); ?>
And to sum this up... (Score:5, Funny)
It's hard to explain to the GUI crowd why this is such a big deal...
I don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know what the purpose of the Pi is? An educational computer for children (like the amiga or the atari back when we were young).
It has a TV out and an HDMI Port. I live in Europe, I don't know any family without a TV (well very few, but they don't have a TV by choice and not because they can't afford one, however they have a computer and therefore a computer display). RasPi is a UK Company. The European community is regulating cellphone chargers. They must use an USB Micro-B connector (with 800-1000 mA output). Guess what? This is also the sort of power supply the RasPi needs. Since most Europeans get a new cellphone every 1-2 years, these chargers are disposable (every new phone comes with a new charger even though the old one is still working perfectly).
So display available, check. Power supply available, check.
Now all we need is an SD card, a Keyboard and a mouse (USB). I live in one of the most expensive places in the world. But a cheap keyboard and a cheap mouse would not cost more than 15 us dollars. And if I were a smart kid, I'd ask family and friends if I could buy used ones (which I probably would get donated). NEarly all families already have a mac or windows pc (but might not want their children to break it while experimenting) mouse and keyboard could be used from the already available computer.
Well, now we have only one item left that is missing, the SD card. Many digital cameras are replaced here with smart phones. It's not the same but I see those aging cameras laying around in many house holds. Guess what, they often use SD cards. But since the SD card needs to be reformatted and somewhat inserted permanently into the device, it might be reasonable to buy a separate one.
This leaves us with one extra expense: a new SD card for $20-30, big deal!
I personally think the RasPi team has a very neat design there, don't you?
Cheers,
-S
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Do you know what the purpose of the Pi is? An educational computer for children (like the amiga or the atari back when we were young).
Quite frankly, I don't know what it is. After so many articles on /. I assumed it to be sensationalism akin to the likes of Bitcoin. I have not RTFA, or any "full articles" on this subject to be honest. Is it the next evolution of the "One Laptop Per Child" project?
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It's easy to make fun of a plan that you don't understand (and apparently can't be bothered to research).
As I understand it, the idea is to lower the barriers to entry for budding programmers -- making it cheaper and more convenient. In their interviews Eben Upton and David Braben have gone into considerable detail about how this device can lower both the financial hurdles and the inconveniences (or "energy barrier") that discourage some from ever taking those first steps in programming.
No it's not going t
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I live in the US and guess what? Everything you said about the EU is also true here.
Yes the Pi strikes me as a modern C64 but even cheaper. What is needed IMHO is more hardware add ons for it. Motor controls and such.
A Pi + Wifi Dongle + Webcam + old RC car == Wifi controlled rover or robot. Or you could use Bluetooth + an old nokia phone for control if you really wanted too.
As a desktop it is going to be limited in performance but still usable.
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check the Pi wiki. Although not many people own one yet, there are a hand full of hardware extensions in the works or already available. I find it amazing how a small eco system around the Pi is already evolving:
- Expansion Boards [elinux.org]
- Peripherals [elinux.org]
- GPIO Documentation [elinux.org]
Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules [sparkfun.com] which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi.
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"Sparkfun has these BlueSMIRF BT modules [sparkfun.com] which can be connected to one of the uarts of the Pi."
It is $65!
A bluetooth USB dongle that works with linux is much cheaper.
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Yeah, but the one of sparkfun has "Gold" in the name!
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people think Desktop with shiny windows if they hear the word computer.
The Pi has (for example) GPIO ports along with SPI, I2C, UART and more. If this is not enough, or you don't want to design your own PCB you might add a gert board [raspberrypi.org] and you get motor drivers without any knowledge of electronics. Now you have a robotics platform. Since it is running Linux one has a plethora of programming languages at hand to do something useful with these features (for example robotics).
Or you may just want to build an appliance which can be controlled via http, IR whatever (media center any one?).
Of course, it can also be used as very cheap desktop or server of some sort. But for people with an imagination beyond the Desktop this little computer is a big deal.
2 millions ordered in that short time without millions of marketing budget tells me that some people might have a vision beyond the Desktop. And that for only $35.
Cheers,
-S
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I want to yank the climate control unit and stereo out of my 300SD and replace it with a touchscreen computer that can show me maps and play mp3s, talk to my phone, etc. An amplifier is easy enough to come by. I need some way to interface to the various climate control units, hence a gertboard or I2C to some arduino, preferably one with some high-power controls built in to run relays etc. Now if I could actually get an R-Pi that would be cool. You'd think someone else would be at least talking about offerin
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While not as cheap might I suggest this.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10585 [sparkfun.com]
Plus maybe a Nook Color rooted or any number of the Android tablets on the market?
You would have lots of IO, A touch screen and so on. Assuming that your phone is Android or maybe symbian you can use the GPS and wifi in your phone for the tablet so you have 3g and nav.
Just an idea.
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While not as cheap might I suggest this.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10585 [sparkfun.com]
Plus maybe a Nook Color rooted or any number of the Android tablets on the market?
Well, I have a (composite) display and a (USB, linux-supported) touch overlay laying around right now, so that would be vastly (~$150) more expensive than the R-Pi (~$50.) If I didn't have anything the savings would be smaller, so that would make more sense; a used fire maybe. I could use the components of my EEE701, but it's a working package right now so I'm hesitant to disassemble it. I am considering it, however the small footprint of the R-Pi is a major feature in this application as well because if I
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I would go with a rooted nook because it has Bluetooth which the Fire lacks. It also has a faster CPU than the PI. The real benefit of a rooted Nook would be Google Nav.
If you have an android phone that you can use as a hotspot you can use this app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.comptonsoft.tgps_lite [google.com]
To share your GPS with the Nook or any other rooted android tablet.
You could also work this in just for fun http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10227 [sparkfun.com]
And for real fun you could combine this.
http:// [sparkfun.com]
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They are adequate for any general-purpose computing you need to do in a school. Granted, they can only do one complex thing at a time, but that's fine. As long as you can read a web page and take notes at the same time then you've pretty much reached the maximum complexity necessary in that environment. I don't know if you remember but once upon a time we had computers with as little as 64kB of RAM running GUI applications with scalable fonts, computers with 256kB of RAM with multiprocessing microkernel and
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The advantage of not needing much IT support to speak of because it's cheaper to just swap a whole computer are vast.
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The idea is that there is a high likelihood you already have keyboards, mice and screens (You can connect it to a tv or monitor)... No point forcing people to buy things they might not need.
Most new computers come with a complete set of keyboard/mouse/screen/cables and people typically throw away the perfectly good ones they used with their previous computer, which is terribly wasteful.
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You can use it with a TV, which most people already have so thus no need to purchase a monitor.
You could purchase a keyboard and mouse, or you could just get a used one for free, these things get thrown out all the time. Or you might already have them. Depending on your intended use of the device you might not want these things either.
A case you can do without, its not pretty but it works just fine. Depending on your intended use you might not actually want a case at all.
For a power supply you can use many
Disappointed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well mine arrived yesterday. First impressions:
Build quality is a bit iffy - the SD / HDMI and power connectors won't last 5 minutes with frequent swapping and some of the solder joints look to have been "reworked".
Connected keyboard/mouse and HDMI monitor put the Fedora image on an SD card and powered her up.... Kernel panic :( Futzed around for a while and finally found that it didn't like the keyboard I was using (generic cheepie).
Connected the network and removed the keyboard and mouse. Eventually booted to a login prompt on the display. SSH in and all looked good.
Decided to try Debian. That had the same problem with the keyboard as Fedora. Found another keyboard (ancient Fujitsu Siemens one) that it didn't object to and got into the GUI. Biggest problem here was the resolution was some strange one (1896x788 or something) which looked awful on a 1920x1080 screen, but at least I was able to fire up the browser and "surf the web".
Back to Fedora... Tried to get into the GUI again with the working keyboard but startx crashed the first time and just came up with a blank screen the second.
Reflashed the image and had an awful row with the password settings. By luck I'd set a local timeserver when I'd first logged in by SSH (no, I don't give extarnal access to every device on the network so the default timeservers weren't accessible). This meant the passwords were set with a valid date. Second time around the "firstboot" script ran, setting up users but without the time being set, so the passwords were flagged as expired and had to be changed on every login - very annoying.
Finally got into the Fedora GUI but it was slooooooow.
Overall, yes it works. Some effort is needed on the default images if it's to be used by the great unwashed. Need to play with the GPIO as that's where my interest is...
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"some of the solder joints look to have been "reworked""
The ones associated with the ethernet socket, perhaps? Yes, that got "reworked" because the manufacturer substituted the specified sockets with cheaper ones that didn't contain "magnetics". The manufacturer had to take the boards back and fix that.....
As for the keyboard problem, its entirely possible that your USB PSU isn't as capable of putting out the 1A @ 5v it claims on the plate. If you go to the Pi forum, you will find a couple of threads from
Debian notes (Score:5, Informative)
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Join the real 'once in a lifetime' club..
Get a first post, modded +5 insightful..
***
It would be nice to see a larger uptake of the RP, a good goal would be to try and get this into the hands of kids as young as possible, so they can get exposure to something other than windows/apple
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As young as possible - some kid is bound to try and chew on it and then a lawyer will file a class action because it doesn't taste like rapberries.
Sir,
I can foresee that you will have a very bright future in the legal profession
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When did posting something germane to the discussion, and which actually adds to it, become karmawhoring?
The more amusing quirk of the Slashdot moderating system is when you see a first post modded redundant because 20 other people said the same thing....
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What exactly does "non-profit" mean?
Something like this [wikipedia.org].
Why don't we see a lot more 'small businesses' doing this for the tax break?
They are not on the list, and probably they want to use profits to get rich.
There's nothing stopping a non-profit from switching back to for-profit later, right?
I suspect a reorganization would be required to set up a new corporation, with different name, different charter [investopedia.com], its own board of directors, etc. It's doable, but it's not something you can do just by callin
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They're a registered UK charity, which means they're subject to fairly strict rules around profit and public benefit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organisation#United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
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You are beholden to skype to make a port for Linux/ARM, never good to get locked into a single vendor service.
Or you could possibly try to run the android version on it...
Alternatively you could use a standard communication protocol like SIP, and for that there are a multitude of clients available with sourcecode, most of which have already been compiled for ARM (although you could even compile them yourself if really necessary).
You can even run a full blown Asterisk PBX on it, i do so on a similar ARM base