Milestone: The Millionth UK-Made Raspberry Pi

judgecorp writes "The millionth Raspberry Pi microcomputer has been made in the Foundation's Welsh factory. Total sales so far are 1.75 million, including the initial stock made in China." (Do you have one? If so, what are you using it for?)

RasPi had so much potential

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, they made these little computers a bit *too* cheaply. In my experience, their poor power regulation makes them just flaky enough to be totally unsuitable for use as anything other than as a nerd toy.

Which is really too bad - I wanted them to pull it off, and they do make a neat nerd toy, but in any kind of actual production use where random failures are a Bad Thing, and failure to boot is damn near guaranteed to happen occasionally, they are unsuitable.

On the other hand, I hear that the beaglebones have solved this problem, though I've never laid hands on one myself.

And on the gripping hand, Arduino has been, for me, open source and cheap done properly. Love that kit.

I have one!

[nurhussein]

I'm using it to learn about ARM, and write baremetal code for it. Maybe it'll morph into a little OS. It's lots of fun. Anyone else doing this?

Re:RasPi had so much potential

[ledow]

Same here.

My RPi from the very first batch has been gathering dust ever since I ran into a whole bunch of power and USB issues (the USB and SD port - or is it the Ethernet and SD, I forget? - both compete for bus resources and slagging any one of them can *silently* drop packets on the other). They tried to fix it but their debugging was non-existent for so long I stopped providing helpful data. About a year later, they put out a firmware fix that basically bodges things because the hardware design can't be changed.

Couple with initial compatibility problems resulting in sending my SD card to Broadcom themselves at the request of some RPi folks and then NEVER hearing anything back, not a dicky-bird, and still having the problems on even the latest firmwares, and the whole thing ended up in the attic. You honestly can't use a device that has problems that intermittent / unpredictable under heavy load, especially when all the interesting stuff will keep it under heavy load for the majority of its runtime.

Some day I'll knock it up to be a doorbell or some other non-critical electronic project but it's really just-another-IC to me at the moment, so it's gathering dust. Keeping it purely for future nostalgia value ("I remember I spent fucking months trying to get this to work!") and the fact that selling it isn't worth it because they cost so little.

Depending on your definition, they delivered the device they promised. Trouble is, it's next-to-useless for anything non-trivial in the homebrew-gadget department and don't even get me started on their selling this to schools (I work in schools - I showed everyone, from teachers to decision-makers to techies, right at the peak of the popularity of the launch when it was featuring on the BBC. We unanimously agreed that it was a nice gadget that, if you have the knowledge to use it with the educational resources provided - which is next to none - then you don't need it and can do much more interesting things on an ordinary PC).

Router

[duppyconqueror]

I'm using it as a home router. It connects to my cable modem and two wireless access points. One access point is a guest network for all the randos who come visit and want to get on wifi, and the other one is for my family's use. I have dhcp handing out IPs, and iptables rules preventing communication between the networks and haxors from the cable modem side. So far, it has worked great, and if an access point ever dies (which seems to be an increasingly common occurrence), I just have to swap in a new one with minimal reconfiguration.

I have 2

[OldGoatDJ]

I use one of mine in my Linux class to show another flavor of Linux and to demonstrate networking. I have used the other one, with a webcam and speakers, to facilitate a scary halloween display.

Web power strip and door annoyer

[verifine]

We had a web power strip at work (8 outlets, control via web interface) go stupid. Rather than toss it, I brought it home and used 8 GPIO pins on the Pi to control the relays. It has a new web interface with direct control, control by time of day and control by offset from sunrise/sunset. My fireplace mantle lights turn on at 40 and 39 minutes before sunset. One turns off at 11 PM and the other turns off 30 minutes after sunrise. Currently at 275 days runtime. Sweet!

The boss bought one at work for a special project. Our janitors always block open the door to a room containing network switches and patch panels. Boss has tried for 12 years to get them to keep it closed. One Pi plus a pair of USB powered (analog input) speakers and mpg123, plus one GPIO pin connected to a magnetic reed switch on the door. Leave the door open for more than 60 seconds and one of two dozen prerecorded voices ask politely but loudly that you shut the door. Another message gets played every 15 seconds until the door is shut. Had some fun working on an algorithm that isn't quite random, so it prevents replay of a message until at least 1/3rd of the other messages have been played. Problem solved, the door is always shut now. 90 days uptime on that Pi.

Love em!